Ex-Tigers Executive Admits Team Knew Red Flags Surrounding High-Priced Slugger
It's safe to say the Detroit Tigers made a massive mistake by signing Javier Baez.
After he looked like his former self with the New York Mets when that team acquired him from the Chicago Cubs ahead of the trade deadline in 2021, the Tigers inked him to a six-year, $140 million contract to become their everyday star shortstop.
That decision has turned out to be a disaster.
Baez has failed to produced a single season where his OPS+ is above the league average of 100, putting up a figure of 91 in 2022, then seeing it fall to 63 the following year and an abysmal 46 this past campaign.
He was borderline unplayable in 2024, accumulating a -1.1 bWAR that might have forced manager A.J. Hinch to sit him on the bench even if he hadn't undergone season-ending hip surgery.
And with $73 million left on his deal, he is the owner of one of the worst contracts in the sport.
It's a mess the current regime is having to deal with, and it's something that could have prevented the current president of baseball operations, Scott Harris, from landing their dream free agent, Alex Bregman, this winter.
What makes this situation even more frustrating is Detroit's previous executive who signed Baez to that deal, Al Avila, is now admitting the team knew the red flags surrounding the high-priced slugger.
"We knew the swing and miss was there ... and we knew that, even my analyst was telling me, there's regression there. But nobody could've predicted falling off a cliff the way he did," he said on the "Tigers Today" podcast.
While that second part might be accurate, the first part is still unexcusable.
Baez might have produced a slash line of .299/.371/.515 and an OPS+ of 140 with the Mets, hitting nine homers, 18 extra-base hits and 22 RBI in 47 games. But he also finished the 2021 season with the worst walk to strikeout ratio (0.15) and swinging strike rate (21.7%) in Major League Baseball, per FanGraphs.
Those were clear indicators that he was in a prime position to take a step back, yet Avila still felt like handing him that high-priced contract was a good idea.
That decision, among others, ultimately cost Avila his job.
But it's still impacting the Tigers to this day, something that could have been avoided if he had further taken those red flags into account.
