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Yashinsky: Dave Dombrowski's Dilemma Has No Clear Answer

July 21, 2015, 12:23 PM by  Joey Yashinsky

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Dave Dombrowski

The trade rumors are starting to fly.  National pundits are beginning to weigh in, offering their opinions as to how the Detroit Tigers should operate at the upcoming trade deadline.

Most experts are of the belief that the Tigers need to sell the farm. 

Send David Price to a contender.  Find a new home for Yoenis Céspedes.  See if there’s any interest in a suddenly not-so-reliable Joakim Soria.

But one problem still remains.  The Tigers aren’t really out of this thing yet.

No Miracle Required

Entering play tonight, the Detroit club sits a very manageable four games back of Minnesota and Houston for the two AL Wild Card spots. 

Making up a four-game deficit with 70 to play is not a scenario requiring a miracle.  Not even close. 

If the Tigers can play solid ball, start to piece some series wins together, they will make up ground quickly.  You tread water for a few weeks, stay in the race, then Miguel Cabrera comes back to the lineup and you feel pretty good about your chances.

But it might never get that far.  Dave Dombrowski has hinted this week that he also might be in the “selling” frame of mind.  And you can’t blame him for thinking that way.

After sprinting out of the gate to a 9-1 start, the team has played uninspired baseball since.  It’s been a stale product.  An untoasted PB&J, and with grape jelly in place of the more respected strawberry.

Can Tigers Come Alive? 

If you had to make a guess right now as to whether the Tigers would come alive in the final two months or continue down this path of mediocrity, all logic would point to option “blah” as the reasonable choice.  There’s been very little in the way of consistent on-field performance that would lead you to think otherwise.

But still, the standings tell a story.  They matter most.  A team can stumble, bumble, and trip all over themselves.  At the end of the day, if the newspaper says you’re only a few games out, then theoretically that makes you a contender.

Such is the lose-lose, fork-in-the-road dilemma facing Dombrowski in the next ten days.

He can hold on for dear life, pray the team finds a groove, and that Price’s powerful left arm carries the team all the way into the heart of October.  If it doesn’t work and the club falls out of the AL playoff picture, then he’s wasted a precious chance to deal a valuable asset and risks losing him for nothing this winter. 

Or he can do as many in the media are imploring him to do, and gut this thing like an outdated Formica kitchen.  Out goes the team’s best starter, its closer, its left fielder, and anybody else deemed to have reasonable worth on the trade market.  The problem here is that you’d be ripping up a team with four consecutive playoff appearances before finding out if they could make it five.

"The White Flag Trade"

There’s precedent for a move such as this, and if history is any indication, the garage sale route will not be a big hit with Tigers fans.

In 1997, the White Sox found themselves just 3.5 games out of first place with the trade deadline fast approaching.  The front office decided the team was not destined for late-summer glory and dealt three of the team’s best pitchers, including top lefty Wilson Alvarez and shutdown closer Roberto Hernandez.

Needless to say, the mid-year surrender was shredded by fans and media alike.  It even garnered its own special moniker, the “White Flag Trade.”  The ChiSox would finish the campaign just six games back of the Indians, and fans were left to wonder “what if” in the years to come.

The best-case scenario for Dombrowski would be the Tigers either catching fire or going in the tank over these next handful of games.

If they carry last night’s Ian Kinsler momentum into tonight, grab another W tomorrow, and send Price to the mound for a four-game sweep on Thursday afternoon, the playoff race tightens and you feel much better about this specific roster’s chances of contending.  Winning five or six straight and becoming a real wild card threat would relax the chatter about going Full White Flag on 2015.

At the same time, it would also make Dombrowski’s life easier if the team fell flat on its face this week.  Instead of capitalizing on last night’s heroics, the team drops the next three to punchless Seattle and continues to fall further back in the race.  Then the second-guessers have no leg to stand on when it comes time to expose this roster to the rest of the league like an All-Star filled piñata.

No Simple Answer

It’s a delicate dance, and one that hopefully will play itself out on the field this week and next. 

It makes plenty of sense to chalk this year up to a miss and bring in a host of quality young talent in exchange for the Tigers’ stable of productive, soon-to-be free agent veterans.  The club has underperformed all year and it’d be very hard to criticize going this route.

But the standings, greeting the baseball world each morning in black and white, don’t always agree.  Sometimes the standings say, “We know you’ve stunk for the better part of four months.  But you’re still very much alive.  Hang in there.”

Dave Dombrowski has to determine the right course of action for this team.  He must blend the importance of the franchise’s future while still showing proper respect to today’s still-beating heart.

You no longer have to be an elite in the summer to be a champion in the fall.

You just need to find a way into the tournament and let the annual randomness of that event take over.

Whether this organization decides to give that process a fair chance we will soon find out.



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