When Can You Tolerate Failure?

By Stephanie Close

Baseball is a sport defined by failure. We’ve all heard the cliché. Most teams fail, rebuild, and win in an almost cyclical fashion. This cycle is well understood by front offices and fans alike. It’s the norm in Major League Baseball. Some teams fall outside that norm and are showered with success. Take the New York Yankees for example. Can you remember a season in your lifetime where the Yankees were not legitimate playoff contenders on opening day? Unfortunately, we are not the Yankees. We’re die-hard fans of the home team ball club, the Detroit Tigers. A team that has not had a winning season in almost 7 years. Tigers’ fans are well accustomed to the failure that defines the sport, but where do we draw the line?

On Wednesday August 10th, 2022, that question was answered with the departure of Al Avila, the Tigers’ General Manager. Al Avila took over his position from Dave Dombrowski near the end of the 2015 season, a time where the Tigers organization was determined to cut costs and begin a lengthy rebuild. Avila began trading away high-profile franchise players to kick off the rebuild. While it certainly was a joyous occasion for Tigers’ fans to watch their favorite players go off to win World Series Championships with other ball clubs, the promise of rebuilding brings, at the very least, a small amount of optimism that one day your club may return to its former glory. It’s been a difficult 6 years watching the Tigers post losing records while we waited for high profile prospects to develop in the minor leagues. That difficulty was met with cheers leading into the 2022 Major League Baseball season when Al Avila and Chris Ilitch announced that the rebuild was over.

For the first time in a long time, we witnessed the Tigers sign big names in the off season with Javier Baez and Edwardo Rodriguez. The Tigers were finally spending money again and anticipating the Major League arrival of our top two prospects in Riley Greene and Spencer Torkleson. The season got off to a bang with a walk off single by Javier Baez on opening day, but what started as a bang, quickly fizzled into just another losing season.

As of today, the Tigers are dead last in the American League Central Division with a 43-68 record. Not too long ago this would have been accepted, but at the end of a long rebuild Tigers fans are once again left with little to look forward too. It appears that after nearly 7 long seasons and a lack of production from established ball players and high-profile prospects alike, we can finally answer our initial question. Failure in baseball can be tolerated, but failure in the complete absence of success cannot.