Inside the Article:
It was truly one of the most regrettable tenures by an executive in professional Detroit sports history, comparable even to the rein of error of maligned former Detroit Lions general manager Matt Millen. Fans of the Detroit Tigers still shudder whenever they hear the name Al Avila, and the current edition of the team continues to try and work itself back up from the myriad of non-stop mistakes he made on the job.
Al Avila can only name two regrettable moves he made as Tigers’ GM
Looking back on his years with the Tigers as general manager, which began in August of 2015 with the surprise firing of Dave Dombrowski, Avila was only able to name two moves that he admitted he regrets.
“If you’re around this game long enough,” Avila said this week on the show Foul Territory, “you’re going to have some of those that you regret … the kind that leave a bad taste in your mouth.”
Avila revisits the Paredes for Meadows deal
The first trade Avila admitted he regrets was trading Isaac Paredes to the Tampa Bay Rays for Austin Meadows.
“Meadows hasn’t been on the (active) roster last year and this year and Paredes is doing very well for Tampa. So that’s obviously a really tough one to take,” Avila said.
The Justin Verlander trade in 2017
He then followed that up with the fateful Justin Verlander trade to the Houston Astros for Franklin Perez, Daz Cameron, and Jake Rogers. Only Rogers remains with the Tigers right now.
“There are other ones that don’t go as well, but you did the best you could. I’ll give you a perfect example of the Justin Verlander (trade). With Verlander, we got actually a pretty good return,” Avila said.
“If you look back at that trade at that time and the players that we got back, the only one that’s on the team right now is Jake Rogers, but that was a pretty good return that just didn’t turn out to be very good,” Avila said. “But you get into that situation, he was traded basically beyond the trade deadline, he passed through waivers, nobody claimed him, so to make a trade like that is very, very difficult, in particular, to get that kind of return.”
Wrapping It Up: The Tigers will take considerable time to recover from Avila’s tenure as GM
Avila was finally fired last year, and replaced with former San Francisco Giants executive Scott Harris.
Harris inherited a tall task when he took over in the Motor City, and fans may have to wait quite a while before the Tigers are even remotely back in contention as we were all accustomed to during that great run from 2006 to 2014.
