The Motown rebuild (part 2 of 2)
A three-year thrill ride to the top.
Mike Ilitch was a revered figure in Detroit, for a number of reasons. Born and raised in the city, he built one of the two major national pizza franchises with roots in the area (he founded Little Caesars, the other being Dominos) then expanded his holdings by purchasing the Detroit Red Wings in 1982. Patient rebuilding and investment eventually made the Red Wings one of the premier franchises in the NHL by the late 1990s and led to Detroit’s moniker as “Hockeytown.”
Another passion of his, though, was baseball. Ilitch had a brief minor league career in the 1950s as a light-hitting infielder who never made it past Class A ball, with part of that time being a farmhand of his hometown Detroit Tigers. Once his baseball dream was over, he successfully went into business and eventually bought the team that once had him as a minor leaguer - ironically, purchasing it in 1992 from Dominos founder Tom Monaghan, who sold the team as part of Monaghan becoming more active within his Catholic faith.
Once the 2003 Tigers season ended, Ilitch decided to open up his checkbook once again and find free agents who could patch the numerous holes in the Tigers lineup and minor league system. But first, a slew of minor-league signings during the offseason ended up helping to stock Toledo’s roster or bring a little bit of spring-training competition, with Marcus Thames being the one nugget who made it to the 2006 season as a role player, picked up off the Texas Rangers’ discard pile despite being their return for veteran outfielder Ruben Sierra in a 2003 midseason deal with the Yankees. Those deals, though, could be described as the routine signings a team makes to bolster its depth.
The Tigers also used the strategy of the Rule 5 draft once again to help themselves out, making two selections in the 2003 Rule 5 draft and keeping one: first baseman Chris Shelton, whose torrid start in 2006 helped get the Tigers out of the gate strong. Alas, he was one of those who never saw a playoff roster as he fell back to replacement-level status. (The other draftee, Lino Urdaneta, had the distinction of compiling an ERA of infinity with the Tigers based on one appearance. Luckily, he made one more big league appearance later on with the Mets to shave his career ERA down to 63.)
After the Rule 5 draft, the Tigers began collecting the bigger fish, poaching right-handed relief pitcher Al Levine and catcher Mike DiFelice from divisional rival Kansas City as free agents one day and two other Missouri-based players, infielder Fernando Vina (St. Louis) and outfielder Rondell White (Kansas City) the next. These were guys on the back side of their careers, but most of them served as stopgap players to make the team more respectable.
While he had a fairly promising young group of starters, one need Dave Dombrowski and Mike Ilitch addressed was the need for a veteran innings-eater, so they got Jason Johnson, a seven-year veteran and 10-game winner for Baltimore the previous season, on a two-year pact to lead the staff. That was exciting stuff, as was the subsequent trade of shortstop Ramon Santiago and a minor leaguer to Seattle for shortstop Carlos Guillen, who blossomed into an All-Star for the Tigers three times in the next five seasons (2004, 2007-08) and would stay with the team long enough to see the beginning of its run as kings of the AL Central in the early 2010s. (Santiago would return for 2006 after the Mariners released him, making it a completely winning deal for the Tigers.)
But the biggest and most shocking move was to come on February 6, 2004: the Tigers signed Pudge. After inking a one-year pillow contract with the perennially penny-pinching Florida Marlins the previous year and leading them to an unlikely World Series victory, Ivan Rodriguez was looking for a better deal. He got it with the Tigers, who signed him to a 4-year, $40 million pact. Ignoring the idea of going from the penthouse to the poorhouse and concerns about Pudge’s recent injury history - he missed a significant amount of time in his final three years in Texas and was already a 13-season veteran catcher at age 32 - it was an opportunity neither party could pass up, particularly as the reporting date for spring training was drawing close.
That was bad news for incumbent catcher Brandon Inge, who was also a defensive stud but an offensive dud, hitting just .203 in 2003. But the Tigers found a way, returning Inge to his infielder roots and moving him out to third base to replace Eric Munson, who was let go after the 2004 season.* There Inge’s bat improved and he became a mainstay at the hot corner for the next several seasons.
With those changes, a surprisingly large part of the mainstay lineup for the 2006 pennant-winning Tigers was already wearing the olde English D. The team immediately improved by 29 games in 2004, going 72-90, and although they backslid in 2005 to 71-91, most of the 2006 team - which signed outfielder Magglio Ordonez from the White Sox in the 2004-05 offseason and added second baseman Placido Polanco and starting pitcher Zack Miner in mid-season 2005 trades with Philadelphia and Atlanta, respectively - was in place. The next pieces were both graybeards and youngsters on the hill: signing veteran starter Kenny Rogers in 2006 to a two-year contract at the age of 40 and 38-year-old closer Todd Jones for his second tour of duty with the Tigers, where he had pitched from 1997-2001. They were joined by fruit at long last from the Tiger farm: fireballing starter-turned-setup man Joel Zumaya, whose nickname became “zoom by ya” for his 100+ mile-per-hour heat, and 2006 Rookie of the Year Justin Verlander, who went 17-9 for the Tigers in his first full campaign. (He’s done a bit since then, too.)
Finally, Alan Trammell was a great Tiger and a Hall-of-Famer as a player, but not so much as a manager. The Tigers let him go after the 2005 season and brought former World Series winner (and onetime Tigers farmhand and minor league manager) Jim Leyland out of managerial retirement at the age of 61 to guide the 2006 squad.
Although the 2006 team galloped off to a great start, they faded at the end after clinching a playoff spot with a week to go in the season. In the final week of the season the Minnesota Twins caught and passed the Tigers for the AL Central title, meaning they would get the top team in the league, the New York Yankees, in the opening round. Few gave them a shot, but the Tigers regained their mojo and ousted the stunned Bronx Bombers in four games. It took them just as long to sweep the A’s out of the ALCS, culminating in my all-time favorite baseball highlight:
It sucks that we couldn’t handle a clearly inferior but playoff-hardened St. Louis Cardinal team, but the 2006 season began a renaissance in Detroit baseball, ending a period where the Tigers had lost their relevance after their previous playoff appearance in 1987. Again, they slid back a bit in 2007 (6 games out of a playoff spot) and fell back to last in the AL Central in 2008 (albeit the last-place team with the best record.)
In 2009 we were perhaps a missed call (yes, Brandon Inge was hit by that pitch) away from winning the AL Central after blowing a three-game lead with five games to play and being forced into a one-game playoff at Minnesota. There would be one more stumble to an 81-81 record in 2010 before the Tigers gained their rightful spot atop the AL Central for four seasons (2011-14), winning a second pennant (this time toppling the Yankees in the ALCS) in 2012. (Ironically, that was their worst team by record in the four-year run.) They would make one last playoff charge in 2016 before being forced to rebuild once again, this time without Mike Ilitch as he passed away February 10, 2017.
Without him, and without good leadership, the Tigers came perilously close to their 2003 depths in 2019, finishing 47-114. Unfortunately, this time we don’t have the same genius at GM and buy-in from ownership. After letting Dave Dombrowski go in the middle of the 2015 season, Mike Ilitch’s final hire was the recently-fired GM Al Avila. Since the elder Ilitch’s passing, his son Chris runs the team now as chairman and CEO, and Chris didn’t have a baseball background like his father did. Once again, the talent pipeline has petered out and the payroll isn’t there to hire a team. It may be another long summer in Detroit, but the template for rebirth is there if they want to use it.
*As I alluded to in part 1, Eric Munson really did win me a bed.
I attended a Tigers game on June 11, 2004 against the Florida Marlins and had a good seat behind home plate, looking right down the third base line. They had a promotion where a randomly chosen fan (me, because I was there early on the lower deck and sitting sort of by myself on an aisle seat) was picked to be a winner of a double bed from a local store if a Tigers player hit a double. They asked if I wanted to play and I said “sure,” so I was on their Jumbotron and everything.
It took until the sixth inning for Munson - the lightest-hitting guy in the lineup based on his .230 average - to hit the team’s only double (after a couple triples and two home runs) in the 8-4 win. Turned out I got a queen bed set, and it also turned out to be handy after my ex-wife and I separated. My dad and I had to drive back up to Taylor, Michigan in his truck to get it, but it was a nice bed I had for several years afterward. Thanks, Eric.