PATIENCE IS A VIRTUE
Yankees hope youth movement pays off like it has with Tigers
DAVE DOMBROWSKI’S parting gift as Tigers general manager could of all things become a problem for the Red Sox’s president of baseball operations — Dave Dombrowski.
The young starters obtained by Detroit at the 2015 trade deadline have made the Tigers a potential threat to the 2016 Red Sox, either as a wild-card contender or as a playoff opponent should both teams get there.
Also, what Detroit did at the 2015 deadline should be both blueprint and encouragement to the Red Sox’s greatest rival, the Yankees.
The similarities are strong between what the Tigers faced last year and what the Yankees have this season. Detroit owner Mike Ilitch is as much a go-for-it owner as a Steinbrenner. The octogenarian is determined to win a championship in his lifetime. He has funded huge payrolls and had resisted rebuilding.
But much like the Yankees this season, the 2015 Tigers couldn’t sustain strong enough play to be solid contenders, yet they lingered in the wild-card race. The Tigers stalled and stalled hoping for a surge that never came. Dombrowski lobbied Ilitch as surely as Brian Cashman did Hal Steinbrenner that the proper choice was to accept that the 2015 club was not good enough to win a title and to sell to try to strengthen the near future.
“It was not per se an easy one to convince [Ilitch], but yet he made the healthy decision with the facts we gave him,” Dombrowski said by phone.
So, on the final two days to make non-waiver deals last year, Dombrowski traded his three main walk-year players — David Price, Joakim Soria and Yoenis Cespedes. His contract was expiring and, though Detroit had won the previous four AL Central titles he sensed “in my heart” he would not see the fruits of the trades. Dombrowski was right. He was fired less than a week later.
He was unemployed less than two weeks before he was hired to run the Red Sox’s baseball operations. Dombrowski entered a situation similar to his years in Detroit: He pretty much had an open checkbook and permission to trade prospects rather than obtain them. That led to the signing of Price and the acquisition of Craig Kimbrel in the offseason and Drew Pomeranz last month.
Yet, Boston went into Saturday in a precarious playoff spot: yes, just one game out of the AL East lead, but also just one game up on the first wild card spot and two games up on falling out of the playoffs completely. The team the Red Sox led by two games was the Tigers. Dombrowski’s old team could — among other things — keep his new one out of the playoffs or perhaps play Boston in the onegame wild-card contest.
The expectation was that if Detroit vied for the playoffs this year, it would be behind its highpriced pieces and the brawn of its lineup. But three young starters Dombrowski got at the deadline last year have been invaluable. Michael Fulmer, the key player from the Mets for Cespedes, is going to win the AL Rookie of the Year and might be in the Cy Young discussion.
But Matt Boyd and Daniel Norris — obtained from Toronto for Price — have been excellent as well (7-4, 3.87 ERA combined). Fulmer, Boyd and Norris were 17-8 with a 3.18 ERA. And because Jordan Zimmermann, one of those high-priced additions, needed to go to the disabled list for the second time and was replaced by Norris, the Tigers rotation in 20 games was third in the AL in ERA (3.05) and OPS against (.652). In 18 of those games, a Tigers starter had yielded three or fewer earned runs.
“We were trying to get the best talent, but we were also trying to get talent close to the big leagues,” Dombrowski said. “From an ownership perspective, we were not looking for five, six, seven years down the road. We needed contributions right away.” Sound familiar? The Yankees did take some Single-A talent in Justus Sheffield (for Andrew Miller), Dillon Tate (Carlos Beltran) and Gleyber Torres (Aroldis Chapman). But Adam Warren and Ben Heller are in the Yankees bullpen now, and outfielder Clint Frazier can be in the 2017 outfield. Beltran and Chapman, like Price, Soria and Cespedes, were traded as walk-year players.
Mainly, the philosophy is the same. The Yankees are not going into an extended Mets/Cubs/ Astros rebuilding period. Like the Tigers, they want to flip to again being strong contenders immediately. Detroit is showing the possibilities.
The Yankees actually entered the weekend just 2 1/2 games worse than the Tigers and on the outskirts of the race, in part because of the steady growth of Luis Cessa and Chad Green. The Yankees obtained that duo in the offseason from the Tigers (Cessa previously had joined Fulmer in the Cespedes trade from the Mets) for Justin Wilson. Imagine if Detroit had kept Cessa and Green to join Fulmer, Norris and Boyd. Instead, the Tigers reverted to their comfort level under Ilitch and gave nine-figure contracts to Zimmermann and Justin Upton.
Zimmermann, after a strong first seven starts (1.50), has been mainly ineffective (7.30) or injured since. Upton, even with his first hot streak of the season, still had just a .685 OPS and the AL’s thirdworst Wins Above Replacement.
Therefore, perhaps another lesson the Tigers might offer the Yankees is that the answer to quickly becoming contenders again does not reside in reinflating payroll.