Thursday, February 12, 2015

Good News & Bad News - Team Building in the D

The Tigers are in TROUBLE. If you haven't heard by now, Victor Martinez suffered a partially torn meniscus during his offseason training last week and underwent surgery yesterday. They're hoping to get him back before the start of the season, but but who knows if that'll happen.

This may not end up being that big a deal, but it does underline the main problem with the Tigers going into the 2015 season. They are getting OLD. And increasingly injured, which is kind of related. Cabrera & Verlander are both 31, which isn't ancient by baseball standards, but definitely past the prime years and nearing retirement. Kinsler is 32, Victor is 36, and Joe Nathan (supposedly closing games, although my money is on Soria) is 40.

Of the main contributors on offense last year, JD Martinez (26) is the only one possibly looking up towards his prime. Of the best pitchers last year, Scherzer & Porcello are gone, Anibal Sanchez will be 31 (and has a major problem staying healthy), and Verlander will be 32 and coming off the worst season of his career. Whether it was a blip on the radar or an indication that his production has fallen off the cliff remains to be seen. Cabrera is once again rehabbing from a lower body injury (as they say in the NHL) which may limit his production.


The Good News
The Tigers DO have some young talent, with JD Martinez breaking out last year, Nick Castellanos making the Big Club, and the acquisitions of Jose Iglesias a couple years ago & Shane Greene this offseason. We haven't seen much yet from Bruce Rondon, Tyler Collins, Steven Moya, & James McCann, but chances are a couple of them will turn out. And the Tigers will need them to, because...

The Bad News

The Tigers are in a LOCKED UP salary situation. I mean, REALLY. Cabrera is getting $30M+ through 2023, at which point he will be 40. Verlander is getting $28M through 2019, when he'll be 36 years old and probably throwing 87 mph fastballs. Victor is locked up through 2018 at $18M/yr. Kinsler and Anibal Sanchez are most likely on their last contract ever, both ending in 2017 with a team option for 2018. Kinsler was uncharacteristically healthy last year, but Sanchez, Cabrera, Verlander, and Victor are all already showing major signs of wear.

The Tigers' championship window to win with this group goes only to about 2016, and 2015 might already be written off as a lost cause. Ulp.



***

As was pointed out on 97.1 The Ticket last week, the Red Wings are sort of the "anti-Tigers," which is weird because both teams are owned by the same guy. The Tigers have drafted pretty poorly over the past several years, mainly using their minor league prospects in trades to get guys like Cabrera, Sanchez, Gose, etc. and sign the big-name free agents. The Wings, on the other hand, draft AMAZINGLY well but haven't swung any huge trades in a while and haven't gotten the big-name free agents.

The Tigers have come ohsoclose to winning a World Series, and appear to be nearing the end of their run. Meanwhile, the Wings have been rebuilding on the fly since their last appearance in the Stanley Cup Finals (2009, having won in 2008) and are now tied for 2nd in the Eastern Conference, 2 points behind Tampa Bay. Nearly all the major contributors on the team were drafted by the Wings:
  • 1998, 6th round, pick 171 - Pavel Datsyuk (6th round???)
  • 1999, 7th round, pick 210 - Henrik Zetterberg (7TH ROUND?????)
  • 2000, 1st round, pick 29 - Niklas Kronwall
  • 2002, 9th round, pick 291 - Jonathan Ericsson
  • 2003, 2nd round, pick 64 - Jimmy Howard
  • 2003, 4th round, pick 132 - Kyle Quincey 
  • 2004, 3rd round, pick 97 - Johan Franzen
  • 2005, 1st round, pick 19 - Jakub Kindl
  • 2005, 2nd round, pick 42 - Justin Abdelkader
  • 2005, 5th round, pick 132 - Darren Helm
  • 2007, 1st round, pick 27 - Brendan Smith
  • 2007, 3rd round, pick 88 - Joakim Andersson
  • 2008, 4th round, pick 121 - Gustav Nyquist
  • 2009, 2nd round, pick 60 - Tomas Tatar
  • 2010, 1st round, pick 21 - Riley Sheahan
  • 2010, 5th round, pick 141 - Petr Mrazek
  • 2011, 2nd round, pick 35 - Tomas Jurco
That's both goalies and 12 out of 15 of the team's points leaders. Of the other 3 players on the points leaders list, Danny DeKeyser and Luke Glendenning were signed as the hockey equivalent of undrafted free agents. The 2 best young players on the team were drafted in years that the team made the finals. How's that for rebuilding on the fly?

***

Speaking of rebuilding on the fly, let's look at another Detroit team that has flat-out failed to do this - the Pistons. Dumars stated that he wanted to emulated the Spurs in how they managed to stay in contending status year-in & year-out. Here's the Spurs' rebuild on the fly plan & how Dumars failed to follow it:
  1. Stability at the coaching position. The success of the Spurs' longevity starts with Greg Popovich. He's been running the team since 1994 and took over as HC in 1996. He's one of 9 coaches to win 1,000 games.
    Joe Dumars' best shot at this was to stick with either Rick Carlisle, Larry Brown, or Flip Saunders. LB is maybe the best coach of the group (depending on how you feel about Carlisle) but stays nowhere longer than 4 years. Carlisle was the best bet to be good & stick around, and Flip was the last bet. None of them lasted longer than 2 years. FAIL times 7.
  2. Keeping a veteran core intact. Pop got a bit lucky in landing Duncan, Parker & Ginobili in the draft. Even so, he nearly blew it & traded away Tony Parker for Jason Kidd before it became clear that Parker was REALLY good.
    Dumars should have identified Billups, Ben Wallace & Tayshaun as his core players & kept them intact. In 2006 Ben Wallace's skills were declining and he was poised to get overpaid in free agency. Joe D decided to let him go,  which I actually agreed with at the time, but that fiscal responsibility would later disappear. He traded Chauncey in 2008 for Iverson in the hopes that the Pistons would stay competitive while he revamped the roster. Predictably with both team leaders gone and a rookie HC in charge, the inmates were running the asylum. Dumars let 'Sheed go in 2009 after he killed 2 coaches (Flip & Curry), and then blew all his cap space on the wrong people. In Bill Simmons' 2010 NBA Trade Value column, 4 Pistons would rank among the 25 worst contracts (Charlie V 16th, Maxiell 15th, Rip 9th, & Ben Gordon 6th). FAIL, FAIL, FAIL, FAIL.
  3. Keep the roster fresh with interchangeable parts. Pop did a great job of working with NBA spare parts like Michael Finley, Richard Jefferson, Stephen Jackson, and Boris Diaw. He was able to fit them in around his core 3 guys, and then let them go when the team needed to get younger or adapt in some way.
    When Dumars tried to rebuild the team's core, he did so around players who were really interchangeable parts. The key to signing interchangeable parts is you have to sign them to short contracts, no more than 3 years long, so that was a fail. Plus, Dumars tended to reward his interchangeable parts with bit contracts. That's how guys like Maxiell ended up getting $5M/yr when he was really a $1-2M player. FAIL.
  4. Draft well late. Pop nailed this with foreign players in the 2nd round, and got good value in the late-first round as well. Kawhi Leonard was the 15th pick, so while he's playing above expectations, he's not coming out of left field. But Tony Parker and Tiago Splitter were both picked 28th, Danny Green was drafted 46th overall, and Ginobili was taken 57th in his draft.
    Dumars has actually drafted well late. While he never got anyone quite as good as Parker or Ginobili, he did draft Arron Afflalo, Amir Johnson, Carlos Delfino, Khris Middleton, Kyle Singler, and Jonas Jerebko, all good late picks. That's two NBA starters and 3 quality bench players (Singler is not an NBA starter, I don't care what our depth chart says). The problem is Dumars let the best 2 go for practically nothing, and threw Middleton in the Knight for Jennings deal. He did something similar with Mehmet Okur in 2004. Okur was the 38th pick in 2001, stashed in Europe for a year, then played 2 years on a rookie deal before geting $8.2M/yr to play for Utah. Dumars didn't want to pay, and Okur was blocking Darko's path to playing time (reason # 2,571 why Darko was a terrible pick), so he gave up on Okur and watched him make an All Star game playing for Utah. Half FAIL.
That was depressing enough to go through that it took me three days to write that post. Yeagh. My conclusion after looking through all of that was that Dumars mishandling the coaching position cost the team more than all the rest of those mistakes combined. Each of the other mistakes were inflated by the lack of consistency and central leadership at the coaching position. Had you replaced Dumars & the HC du jour with Popovich, the Pistons probably would've ended up with an extra title or 2 instead of just 2004.

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