DETROIT -- When Detroit Tigers owner Christopher Ilitch said last week that he was “very pleased” about the team’s progress, it was merely a comment made in passing at a press conference that had nothing to do with baseball.
And yet it rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. There is, it seems, very little pleasing about the performance of the 2022 Tigers.
So general manager Al Avila, when he met with reporters before Wednesday’s game at Comerica Park, made one thing clear from the outset: Nobody’s happy with the Tigers’ record.
“I said not too long that I was not happy, and that I was very angry, as a matter of fact, about how things have turned out,” Avila said. “We expected to have a better record, and we’re working towards it.”
Then he added, “We’ve been happier lately.”
Indeed, during their four-game sweep of the Cleveland Guardians this weekend, the Tigers looked very much like they did during their best stretches of 2021, and how they hoped to look in 2022.
The formula is no secret: A handful of struggling players have started hitting more like their career norms. And, oh yeah, the addition of rookie Riley Greene at the top of the lineup hasn’t hurt, either.
“Riley Greene coming up and being an impact player right away has been a positive,” Avila said. “Those are the things that (Ilitch) is talking about, not necessarily wins and losses. Nobody’s happy about that. We expected to be better and we’re working to be better.”
In addition to fielding questions about manager A.J. Hinch’s contract and the status of absent pitcher Eduardo Rodriguez, Avila touched on a variety of issues in his interview:
(On injuries to pitchers)
“Sometimes these things happen. I mean, it happens every year, really, lockout or no lockout. That’s why I’ve always insisted that pitching is really important, the depth of your pitching is important. If anything positive has come out of (all the injuries), it’s that the depth of our pitching has been exposed and it’s been pretty good. And that gives us more hope for next year and the rest of this season, and that in the near future we’ll have good quality pitching and the depth to be able to compete for a championship.”
(On the Aug. 2 trade deadline)
“We’re not a rebuilding team anymore. We want to be better than where we’re at right now, but that doesn’t mean that we have to take a step backwards. We’re going to try to make the team better as we move forward. We’ll have to consider every option that we have.”
(On trading Isaac Paredes for Austin Meadows in April)
“When you make a trade like that, you’re not making a trade thinking, ‘We’re trading a bad player for a good player.’ We acquired Paredes, we liked Paredes, we thought he was a good player. At that time, Riley Greene gets injured and we’re trying to win. We’re trying to get a more established major league player that can impact us right now.
“It’s not like we thought, ‘Oh, we’re going to trade this guy who’s not any good.’ No, we’re trading a player that we thought was good for a player that we thought was good and established to help us now.
“Obviously, Austin has been through a lot of adversity in the first part of the season, and here we are. But within time, he should be back into the rhythm of things. And hopefully he’ll produce the way we expected him to produce.”
(On Javier Baez’s first year with the Tigers)
“I think if you talk to Baez, he wouldn’t be happy with it either. Obviously he’s a better player and history shows that, and I think he’s working towards that. You’ve got a player in the prime of his career that can make an impact.”
(On why the Tigers have struggled this year)
“I think it’s a plethora of things, because you’re looking at one player or one situation. It’s been all across the board. Right now, we’ve won a few games in a row. You’ve got (Jonathan) Schoop producing, you’ve got (Eric) Haase producing, we bring up Riley Greene and he’s producing, and Miggy’s getting like three hits a game, right? So if your players are producing, you’re going to win some games, right? So it’s not one player, it’s been really a plethora of players and then injuries that have compounded things.
“It’s been a little bit of everything, and we’re all responsible. The players have to be accountable, the coaching staff has to be accountable and the front office has to be accountable. And it all starts with me.”