LYNN HENNING

Henning: Market flip-flop puts Tigers in trading flux

Lynn Henning
The Detroit News
JaCoby Jones needs more time in Triple A before he become the Tigers' everyday center fielder.

Al Avila was on the phone Wednesday morning, mentioning that a baseball offseason seems these days to be more like a few weeks.

So many national meetings a big-league general manager attends. Then the holidays. Then the January Tigers Caravan and TigerFest. And, presto, it’s here: spring training.

With essentially the same Tigers team some might recall missed last autumn’s playoffs.

Oh boy.

Avila has been trying. And listening. And talking. And finding a dead market, as most GMs have discovered, mostly because a new owners-players contract was signed last month that made trading for big contracts obsolete, at least temporarily.

You have talented kids with cheap contracts? You’re hanging onto them. You have big-name players who are paid accordingly? You’re also hanging onto them, but not by choice.

“I would say the probability of going into spring training with essentially the same team is high,” said Avila, who had hoped to lighten Detroit’s payroll and, moreover, get some younger talent into the Tigers’ bloodstream.

“Is there a chance for a trade between now and spring training? Yes — but not probable.”

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This simple fact of big-league life as 2016 has bled into 2017 will not trigger stampedes to the Tigers’ season-ticket kiosks. Avila knows it. So does owner Mike Ilitch, who is still making final decisions, even as son Chris becomes steadily involved.

It takes new blood to excite fans, at least if they have been two-year strangers to the postseason. The Tigers lit up their ticket-office phones in past years when they traded for, or signed, celebrities: Pudge Rodriguez, Magglio Ordonez, Gary Sheffield, Miguel Cabrera, Victor Martinez, Prince Fielder, Justin Upton, etc.

This year?

Well, Cameron Maybin was traded to the only team that had interest in his $9 million contract, the Angels, for a proportionally undistinguished pitching prospect in Victor Alcantara. And, of course, a team in need of a backup catcher that all along figured to have interest in Alex Avila, signed Avila, which became the Tigers’ best option as James McCann’s fill-in.

That’s been the brunt of the business.

No cheddar shredding

The Iitches have joined Avila on one unshakable thought: They will not dump payroll for the sheer sake of pruning salaries, even if it means the Tigers take something approaching a $10 million hit on 2017 luxury-tax assessments.

They want value for their star players, which in other years they probably would have gotten, at least until the new contract put clamps on spending that Commissioner Rob Manfred (hello, Dodgers) also wants slashed, beginning now.

Avila finds himself in the same spot his old boss and ally, Dave Dombrowski, confronted in the early years (2002-2004) when the Tigers were stuffed with big salaries that couldn’t be traded.

Dombrowski leveled with his season-ticket holders at what he thought was a private luncheon in 2002.

“If you can trade him,” he said, referring to various Tigers, “give me a call.”

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Dombrowski, of course, is regarded as a trade wizard. But his trade opportunities always — with the Tigers, and now with the Red Sox — have depended upon a cooperative market.

The Tigers are stuck and may remain stuck until, perhaps, July, when teams get a bit tipsy with playoff dreams and austerity tends to be last winter’s reality.

The Tigers could be in better shape in July, at least to make deals not now feasible, if you can digest a corresponding fact: The team’s playoff chances would need to be dim, which seems plausible given the Indians’ strength and the fact Cleveland has done nothing but get stronger since missing by one game winning last year’s World Series.

Critics say this suggests there is no plan in place at Comerica Park. No consistency. No real strategy to the Tigers’ ways.

In fact, the plan hasn’t changed an iota in the past year. It’s the market that has flipped.

The Tigers have had in place a two-year blueprint extending from last year’s offseason through next winter.

The idea was to make deals more along the July, 2015, deadline swaps that brought Michael Fulmer, Daniel Norris, Matt Boyd, JaCoby Jones, etc., to the Tigers as the dowry for Detroit dealing David Price, Yoenis Cespedes, and Joakim Soria.

The Tigers had no chance at trading their highest-priced treasures a year ago when injuries or bad half-seasons made Cabrera, Justin Verlander, and Victor Martinez non-marketable.  Last July was, for a team in Detroit’s circumstance, also a bad shopping mart. The Tigers’ consolation was that a reasonable playoff chance existed, even when they missed by a game or two of getting a wild-card ticket.

Winter doldrums

Now, the winter has frozen out Detroit as well as other teams — unless you have cost-efficient players to trade (Chris Sale, Adam Eaton, as two premier examples) and a partner that’s loaded with young talent (Red Sox, Nationals, etc.).

The two-year plan remains in place. The question is whether Avila will ever find a landscape where he can deal, say, Verlander, Victor Martinez, Ian Kinsler, Francisco Rodriguez, or J.D. Martinez, a slugger who during most winters would have been gobbled up but who now is one more big bat among a glut of available power-hitters.

The Tigers, at the very least, will get a payroll break at the end of 2017 (Anibal Sanchez, Mike Pelfrey, K-Rod, etc.). But that helps only in terms of finances. It’s the need for younger arms and bats that won’t be boosted if Avila can’t find meaningful buyers at some point during the coming year.

It’s a freaky time, for sure. Consider one Jose Iglesias. Lots of teams, during most offseasons, are hunting for help at shortstop. Iglesias would be in most winters something of a prize. Young, fine defender, competent bat.

But not many, if any teams, find it imperative to add a shortstop. And so the Tigers, who would make Dixon Machado their replacement at short (nearly as good of a defender, a bat that probably would be in the neighborhood of Iglesias’) and who in most years would get a helpful return on Iglesias, find a dearth of serious buyers at the same time Machado is out of minor-league options and realistically needs to start rather than risk dugout mildew.

Center field is another problem. At least for now. And yet the Tigers because of their financial pinch had no justifiable way to keep Maybin. Other teams related to Detroit’s issues there, because not one, other than the Angels, wanted him in a deal. Not one.

The Tigers believe Jones is a probable replacement there, and a potentially good one. But he likely needs serious time at Triple A before he can fill a hole that today is in the hands of (choose your side dish): Tyler Collins, Anthony Gose, or Alex Presley.

The Tigers likely will make some sort of deal for inexpensive help there. But at the moment the shopping aisles simply aren’t offering sane choices.

It’s two weeks until the Caravan and TigerFest greet Tigers fanatics. The customers love these times. A freshly remodeled team, repaired by a trade or two, or by a handsome free-agent signing, offers hope for a new baseball year.

But you won’t find a lot of that in supply this week. It’s simple reality. Simple human nature. People want to be excited about a new baseball year and its new roster.

Avila will be working the phones, hoping for a thaw. But the trade market, at least for now, is on ice.

lynn.henning@detroitnews.com

Twitter: @Lynn_Henning