Stubborn Mike Ilitch Sergei Fedorov’d Max Scherzer

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By Jeff Moss
DetroitSportsRag@GMail.com
January 26, 2015

Here is a piece of advice to anyone who enters into a contract negotiation with a man whose company logo is a cartoon of himself as a Roman dictator ….

DON’T PISS HIM OFF!!!!

If we learned anything from the fallout surrounding Max Scherzer’s “$210 million” contract with the Washington Nationals, it is that you never want to insult Mike Ilitch in the midst of financial discussions.

Truth is, Mike Ilitch does not lose free-agents whom he WANTS to keep in either baseball or hockey.

We should have already learned that lesson back in the summer of 2003 when Sergei Fedorov — the greatest playoff performer the Red Wings have ever employed — offended Ilitch by simply hesitating before finally ACCEPTING the Wings’ offer — only to be told by Ilitch that the deal was off the table.

Yes, contrary to what you have been told for years by the Detroit sports media, Sergei Fedorov wanted to return to Detroit. Unfortunately for #91 though, he was going through a depressing divorce from Anna Kournikova and was debating whether or not he wanted to continue to play second fiddle to Steve Yzerman.

Mike Ilitch took Fedorov’s internal debate over whether or not to continue playing in Detroit as a personal affront and told Sergei to pound salt. I have been told this story by people EXTREMELY close to Fedorov (they might share the same last name) and I don’t doubt it for a nanosecond.

Fedorov ended up taking less money to play in Anaheim and the rest is history. History that repeated itself in the Max Scherzer Saga.

I am not sure if anything sordid occurred in the Tigers/Scherzer negotiations prior to Scott Boras‘ telling Dave Dombrowski no thanks to the 6 year, $144-million deal — or if that alone was enough to draw Ilitch’s ire — but shit turned south between the two parties and it NEVER got better.

How else do you explain this press release from the Ilitch Family?:

Screen Shot 2015-01-19 at 11.47.55 AM

Or the fact that Scherzer’s likeness was pulled from television ads that the Tigers were running in order to sell tickets in 2014? Yes, I have been told that the Tigers marketing people removed Scherzer from TV spots.

Because who wouldn’t want to promote the fact that you employ the reigning AL Cy Young winner??!!! Of course, it wouldn’t be the last time Ilitch, Inc. would cut off their own nose to spite their face.

And what was Scherzer’s major offense? That he turned down $144 million over six years? Well, why the FUCK wouldn’t he?!??! He should have accepted a deal for $4 million a year less than Justin Verlander when he is a better pitcher than Justin Verlander?!!??!?

If the Tigers were REALLY serious about keeping Scherzer, they would have offered him a deal worth around $165 million for six years and Max probably would have had to take it last spring. But they didn’t and Scherzer rightfully tested the market.

For whatever reason, Scherzer was never a Mike Ilitch “boy.” I could speculate that it had something to do with Max’s analytical businessman approach, but I have no idea. He clearly wasn’t one of the old man’s favorites, however, and that’s why he is now pitching in our nation’s capital.

Guys like Yzerman (whom Ilitch prevented Scotty Bowman from trading back in 1996), Verlander, Miguel Cabrera and Victor Martinez are ALL Mr. I favorites and that is why JV, Miggy and V-Mart are still here and Max is not. It’s as simple as that.

While Ilitch — in his decrepit state — made a point of finding Victor before the season ended and telling him he wanted Martinez in a Tigers uniform for the rest of his career, he NEVER had Dombrowski re-engage Boras looking to bring Scherzer back.

This wasn’t about paying a luxury tax or an untenable budget moving forward …. this was all about Max Scherzer not being one of Mike Ilitch’s favorite toys.

The contract Scherzer eventually received from the Lerner family was EXACTLY the sort of deal that would have been extremely favorable to the Tigers’ current situation.

If you don’t believe me, check out Fangraphs’ Dave Cameron and his take on the Scherzer/Nationals agreement. The points in bold are MY emphasis ….

Scherzer signed a seven year contract, and in exchange for pitching for them for those seven years, the Nationals have agreed to pay him $210 million in salary. Divide $210 million by seven years and you get $30 million in AAV, which is how this deal will be reported. But because of how this deal was structured, it’s not really $30 million per year.

Instead, the Nationals will pay Scherzer $15 million per season, but do so for 14 years; essentially, they’ve deferred half of each season’s salary seven years into the future. Effectively, they signed Scherzer for $105 million over the seven years that he’ll pitch for them, and then they’ll pay him the next $105 million after the contract ends, making this the most deferred money contract in baseball history.

You know what the crowd projected Scherzer to sign for this winter? $168 million over seven years. I guessed $175 million. Pretty much everyone else did too. The $210 million figure is going to grab headlines, but this is essentially the contract that we all thought Scherzer would get this winter; it’s just structured differently than we anticipated.

And, as Jeff wrote last night, $170ish million is probably about what we should expect Scherzer to be worth over the next seven years. The extra $40 million in guaranteed money is just there to offset the fact that so much of it is being paid far off in the distant future.

In terms of guaranteed dollars, Scherzer got $55 million more than Lester did, which makes the gap between the two contracts seem enormous. When you factor in the payout structures, though, the value of the two contracts is actually only $10 million apart; the Nationals didn’t actually pay all that much more for Scherzer than the Cubs did for Lester. 

Scherzer really only needs to justify about $170 million in salary over the next seven years, because the rest of it is just there to account for the fact that the Nationals are forcing Scherzer to make them a long-term loan in order to keep their payrolls at a manageable level while he’s actually on the team.

Like I said, this contract was perfect for Mike and Chris Ilitch if the elder was really interested in keeping one of the best starting pitchers in all of baseball on his team. Not only would the Olympia folks be getting Scherzer at a discount for the next few years, Dan Gilbert (the team’s presumptive next owner) would have had to foot the bill for the balance of the deal.

And don’t kid yourself, the deferred payments wouldn’t have stopped Gilbert from fulfilling a lifelong goal of owning Detroit’s baseball franchise.

And while Scherzer himself never ruled out a return to the Tigers — and it’s my belief that Detroit was his preference — he was dead to “Mr. I” since last March. We just didn’t know it.

Boras and Dombrowski echoed the same thoughts after the Nationals’ press conference.

A man who will turn 86 years old before the baseball trade deadline — and who is currently dealing with his second cancer diagnosis — let his ego and personal grievances get in the way of WINNING a World Series before he dies.

You really showed Max, Mr. I!!!!!!!!!!!