By Jeff Moss
DetroitSportsRag@GMail.com
December 10, 2013

Imagine that you go out to dinner with another couple a few times a month and this husband and wife have been discussing their desire to have a child for over a year.

Then the wife stops drinking wine when you dine out.  She also ceases excusing herself from the table to burn a cigarette outside of the establishment.  And every single time you see her, her belly gets a little larger.

Now, imagine trying to tell your significant other that Mrs. X is OBVIOUSLY pregnant — only to be told by your spouse that there isn’t enough circumstantial evidence to draw that conclusion yet.

That is how I feel about this Tigers offseason, where I am continually being told by the Detroit sports media and other imbecile fans that Dave Dombrowski isn’t cutting payroll, but instead is trying to win with a leaner, faster, more defensively-oriented team.

ARE YOU PEOPLE DUMB, NUTS or NAIVE? Or D) ….. ALL OF THE FUCKING ABOVE???!!!!!!

You dopes want evidence that an edict has come from upstairs to be more budget conscious? I have more circumstantial proof that the Ilitch Family has set a payroll than Marcia Clark and Christopher Darden had on O.J. Simpson. Unfortunately, I am pretty sure I’ve got the same damn jury pool as well.

For shits and giggles, let’s just take a look at the Tigers offseason moves to date:

1) Dombrowski refused to pick up the club option on Jose Veras for a measly $4 million –s pretty reasonable amount of money to commit to a quality reliever you just acquired a few months ago.  This team’s bullpen is still a mess (here comes Casey Crosby to the rescue!!!!), and you just gave up a decent prospect (Danry Vasquez) for Veras in July.

Oh yeah, this is what Dombrowski said about Veras on July 30th:

“We are pleased to add an experienced arm to our bullpen.  Jose can pitch in a variety of roles, provides depth in the bullpen, and complements the roles of Joaquin Benoit and Drew Smyly.”

By November 1st, a guy who pitched adequately for the Tigers became expendable even though the pen is still a pressing need.  I wonder why?

2) Dombrowski refused to make a qualifying offer to Jhonny Peralta even though there was only a very slight chance that his agent would have accepted the one-year, $14.1 million deal.  And even if Peralta had accepted, DD would have had an All-Star for an affordable short-term deal.  This horrid decision — which HAD to have been made because the budget was tighter than Scott Anderson’s pants — ended up costing the Tigers a first-round draft choice.

3) Dombrowski dumped Prince Fielder’s albatross of a contract on the Texas Rangers in exchange for Ian Kinsler.  The trade looked awesome when one contemplated the possibility of signing either Shin Soo-Choo or Jacoby Ellsbury  with the savings, but not so much when the left field answer became Rajai Davis.

Not only that, but the payments the Tigers are compelled to send to Texas in order to even out the deal won’t even commence for another three years.

4) The Tigers traded one of the top 15 starting pitchers in all of baseball in Doug Fister for a cheap utility infielder, a cheap lefty specialist and a cheap lefty starting pitching prospect.  Meanwhile, Fister was expected to almost double his $3.75 million salary this offseason.

5) Was it a coincidence that the Tigers signed Joe Nathan the day after the Fister trade was consummated? Or do you think it possible that the closer couldn’t ink a deal in Detroit before another $7 to $8 million was off the books?

I’ve got sad news for you people.  This isn’t a Mike Ilitch Production any longer. The fact that Lynn Henning was writing only a couple days ago that the only way Choo could sign in Detroit was if Scott Boras could convince Mr. I to take on that salary is laughable.

The only way Boras can probably get access to Mike Ilitch at this point is if he dressed in scrubs and came to the Ilitch mansion disguised as a home hospice caregiver.

I have been told by multiple sources that Mike Ilitch isn’t well.  That he has his good days and his bad days, but the situation is grim and the last thing he is doing is running Olympia Entertainment on his “death bed.”

We always speculated that once Mr. I was gone, the Ilitch Kids would take over the operation.  But this isn’t a collaborative effort either.  Chris Ilitch is the king of that mountain and he is the one instructing Dombrowski to cut costs.

Denise lost the battle for control of the empire with Chris a long time ago and the other children aren’t exactly thrilled with little brother™ (Mike Hart) calling the shots.

So if you want to know why the Tigers have been making all of these cost-slashing moves that would make a coupon-cutting grandma envious, your villain is Chris Ilitch.

This is the thanks Tigers fans get for supporting this franchise in record-breaking fashion.  This is the appreciation from Chris Ilitch for those three million fans who file through the Comerica Park turnstiles every summer.

This is the gratitude from Chris Ilitch for Tigers fans making Fox Sports Detroit broadcasts the nightly ratings king even though we have to suffer through John Keating’s blotchy red face in HD, Mario and Rod bojangling for the organization and an endless reel of “Call Sam Bernstein and His Ugly Family” resets.

I mean, you basically have a monopoly on summer programming.  Not only are the ratings through the roof, but the Tigers are TIVO- and DVR-proof; you actually have to sit through the commercials.

Instead of penny-pinching this offseason, why hasn’t the Ilitch family maximized on this commodity by creating their own TV network?

And please don’t sell me the bill of goods that the Tigers aren’t actually cutting the budget because Justin Verlander and Anibal Sanchez are getting substantial pay increases.  I am pretty sure the organization was familiar with those pay bumps when they inked those deals.

Not to mention every single team in baseball received an additional $25 million from the national TV deal; I would like to know where that money is going.  If you keep your payroll stagnant while ignoring a substantial MLB-wide rise in revenue, you are, in effect, cutting the budget!!!!!

(And if you really think these moves are being made to free up cash for Max Scherzer’s next deal, you probably thought the Fielder savings were going to be spent this winter as well.  Now, who’s being naive, Kay?)

Chris Ilitch isn’t Mike Ilitch.  He didn’t play minor league baseball in the Tigers organization.  It’s not his lifelong dream to see this team win a World Series.  He grew up through Little Caesars hockey.  I am guessing he loves the Red Wings and that his old man’s baseball team is just a luxury he’d love to sell for a tidy profit.

The days of impulse shopping are done.  Instead, Tigers fans are being told to ignore all of the cost-cutting measures and to just be content that the bottom of the lineup will consist of Alex Avila, Andy Dirks/Rajai Davis, Nick Castellanos and Jose Iglesias.

We are being told by the Detroit media that this is the formula to generate more runs.  A team that has failed to win a World Series because of a lack of offensive production in the postseason is going to tie their fate to that Murderer’s Row.

A catcher coming off a season where he had a .693 OPS.

A new left fielder who owns a career OBP of .316.  Just keep in mind (as DSR contributor Jimmy Petro Jum Pete pointed out) that Rajai Davis is coming off a season where he had a .312 OBP and .375 slugging percentage.

Quintin Berry’s 2012 OBP was .330 and his slugging percentage was .354.  Those numbers resulted in him not making the 2013 roster.  Not a two-year, $10 million deal.

Nick Castellanos is being penciled in at third base even though the young prospect couldn’t earn playing time over Matt Tuiasosopo in September of this year, when the team was desperate for a right-handed stick.  The same Matt Tuiasosopo who had a second half OPS of .429!!!

NOW we are to believe he is ready to be an everyday corner infielder?!?!

And now we will have a full year of Iglesias in the lineup as opposed to Peralta.  Yep, we are trading one of the best-hitting shortstops in the game (at least the St. Louis Cardinals think so, but what have they ever won?) for a light-hitting middle infielder who had a career OPS of .581 in the MINOR LEAGUES.

We are being told that THIS is the cure for the Tigers offense .  I’ve got news for you: Before you can “manufacture” runs, you HAVE TO GET ON FUCKING BASE!!!!

But we’re fast now!!!! We’ve got Ian Kinsler, who has swiped 36 bases in the last two seasons.  Please ignore the fact that he got caught stealing 20 times, which actually makes his base running “abilities” counterproductive to scoring runs.

This team’s lineup is worse.

The Tigers starting pitching staff is not as good and is without depth.

Even the bullpen hasn’t improved from last season.  People forget that Joaquin Benoit and Drew Smyly were actually pretty damn good; the problem was the other relief pitchers.

Can the 2014 Tigers win a World Series with improved defense and a worse product in every other facet? I guess.  It’s not like we haven’t had a front row seat watching inferior teams win a championship at our expense (2006 Cardinals, 2012 Giants, 2013 Red Sox), but is that the game plan you trust heading into this season?

The Tigers are more than halfway through wasting the prime years of Justin Verlander and Miguel Cabrera by going ring-less.  Now they have rolled the dice, thinking they can get over the top with an inferior squad.

Look, I am not thrilled with everything that Dan Gilbert has done in his life.  Hell, he failed to win an NBA title with one of the top five players in the history of basketball on his roster for seven seasons.  And he is currently employing an awful head coach (Mike Brown) who is in his second mind-boggling stint in Cleveland.

But there is a rumor out there that a deal is basically in place for the Quicken Loans billionaire to purchase the Tigers once Mike Ilitch passes away.

If the alternative is Chris Ilitch ordering Dave Dombrowski to give away assets at 30 cents on the dollar just so the Tigers can be managed in a fiscally-responsible manner, I hope this inevitable transfer is expedited.

Dan Gilbert might not be perfect, but I doubt he would pocket the influx of $25 million in new TV revenue and not reinvest it on the field.

The Lions wasted the career of Barry Sanders without winning a Super Bowl. They are well on their way to doing so with Calvin Johnson.

Those would be petty misdemeanors in comparison to the prospect of this era of Tigers baseball resulting in ZERO World Series titles.

And we are getting closer to that grim reality with each passing day.