No firm timetable has been disclosed by the Tigers. But a team’s need to put a new general manager in place, with some immediacy, hints at a probable September hire, as the Tigers cast a broad national net in their hunt to replace Al Avila as front-office chief.
Some names have emerged, as the Tigers are believed to be already at work interviewing internal contestants, which begin with Sam Menzin, 31, an assistant GM who, in Avila’s absence, is now primarily in charge of personnel matters within Comerica Park’s third-floor offices.
A national crowd, large and filled with high-profile names, is either being considered or, in some instances, is believed to have been initially approached by Detroit.
► Josh Byrnes, 52, senior vice-president of baseball operations for the Dodgers, has from the outset been considered a possible Tigers target. He formerly was GM with the Padres and Diamondbacks and has a long relationship with Tigers manager AJ Hinch, who is understood to be all but co-piloting the GM safari, alongside Chris Ilitch, Tigers CEO and chairman.
► Matt Slater, special assistant to the GM and head of player procurement for the Cardinals, is on Detroit’s radar. Slater has worked with the Cardinals for the past 15 years and specializes in an area of basic need for Detroit: identifying and bringing to a big-league roster talent from all of MLB’s spheres — farm system, international market, free-agency, trade targets, etc. Slater holds business and law degrees, was groomed by Hall of Fame GM Pat Gillick during their earlier days with the Orioles, and was a past finalist for the Phillies GM job.
Slater also has regional ties to the Tigers: He grew up in South Bend, Indiana. His wife is from Traverse City, and his youngest son is a University of Michigan student.
► Dana Brown, scouting director for the Braves, who has been an architect behind drafts that have fed a steady flow of skilled players to a Braves team that last year won the world championship and is pushing for a division title in 2022.
► Sig Mejdal, a one-time NASA engineer who moved to the baseball-analytics side and helped forge Cardinals and Astros rosters before joining GM Mike Elias in Baltimore. The Orioles have had a stunning renaissance, thanks to rich drafts Elias and Mejdal have helped bring, at last, to Baltimore.
► Randy Flores, Cardinals assistant GM and director of scouting. Flores has been a major evaluator driving a classic baseball town’s sustained and competitive ways.
►Pete Putila, assistant GM, Astros: He has been with Houston the past 11 years and has helped the Astros evolve into a near-dynasty. Putila worked beneath then-GM Jeff Luhnow and alongside Hinch when Hinch was Astros manager.
► Carlos Rodriguez (vice president, baseball operations) and Kevin Ibach (senior director, pro personnel and scouting), Rays: Here are two young execs cut from Tampa Bay’s avant-garde scouting and personnel sectors. They are reflective of a Tigers team’s focus on scouting and drafting, all as the Tigers work to avoid another 100-loss season and move, they hope, toward someday becoming a playoff team for the first time since 2014.
► Dan Kantrovitz, vice-president of scouting, Cubs: Worked previously with the A’s as an assistant GM and earlier was with the Cardinals as an assistant scouting director. Played shortstop at Brown University and was drafted by the Cardinals. Kantrovitz next month turns 44.
► James Harris, assistant GM, Guardians: Harris has a past college (University of Oregon) and NFL (Eagles) football background on Chip Kelly’s staffs and has worked the past six years with the Guardians. He has specialized in player acquisitions and evaluations on the farm and big-league levels.
► Daniel Adler, assistant GM, Twins: Adler has multiple business and law degrees from Harvard and is headed soon to a GM office, somewhere, in the MLB cosmos.
As the contestants for Avila’s old job are pared, what is known, with near-certainty, is that Luhnow will not be re-teaming with Hinch in Detroit. There will be no reprise of their Astros partnership that made Houston a model of MLB excellence, with their issues stemming from an Astros stolen-signs scandal — which cost each man his job — not necessarily the only reason a reunion has all but been ruled out by the Tigers.
The fan-favorite
Less clear is whether there would be interest on the part of fan-favorite Theo Epstein in making the Tigers his third tour as a GM after earlier helping build Red Sox and Cubs teams into champions.
Epstein, 48, remains a consultant to Commissioner Rob Manfred two years after departing the Cubs.
Would the Tigers entice a brilliant personnel man and Yale grad, who also holds a law degree, to take a job as formidable as the Tigers’ ongoing project?
It is believed to be a longshot, with Epstein’s flair for secrecy offering no light there. But the Tigers are understood to be as open-minded, as all-encompassing, in their search as at any point in the 30 years since the Ilitches took control of Detroit’s baseball franchise and steadily put their stamp on the Tigers’ brand and placed their hires in Detroit’s executive offices.
Permission to speak with the Tigers in almost all cases is not believed to be an issue. The GM position would rank, in most cases, as anything but a lateral move for nearly all of the above. MLB clubs fairly routinely grant permission to interview when their employees are sought for higher-level positions.
What all of the candidates know has been deduced not only locally but across the MLB terrain: The Tigers are intent on mounting a full-front assault on drafting, scouting, signing, and marshaling a brand of talent that is scarce on the 2022 roster and has been in short supply for years, if not decades.
The Tigers built their last playoff run heavily on outside acquisitions: free-agent forays that landed Pudge Rodriguez and Magglio Ordonez, both of whom, at the time, were on the free-agent sidelines because of then-significant medical questions that didn’t deter Tigers owner Mike Ilitch.
Carlos Guillen was a trade trophy, as was infielder Placido Polanco. Miguel Cabrera became a Tigers trade-market capstone in 2007. But only in Justin Verlander, Curtis Granderson, and Brandon Inge, was the previous decade’s rebirth tied principally to players signed and developed by the Tigers.
They have struggled to bring everyday talent to Detroit in years since, with Nick Castellanos and Alex Avila ranking as exceptions. Riley Greene is the centerpiece for a new Tigers model in 2022, with another prime-time prospect, Spencer Torkelson, expected to pair with Greene once Torkelson emerges from a setback that at mid-season returned him to Toledo for Triple A-tuning.
The international market has been an issue, as well, for the Tigers, who did not help matters when, in 2014 and 2018, they traded away a terrific pair of left-side infield hitters: Willy Adames and Eugenio Suarez.
But it has been in failing to establish any flow of playoff-grade talent from the domestic draft and Latin American rookery that the Tigers have made scouting and personnel assessment an obvious criterion for their new GM, whoever it proves to be.
What is known is that Ilitch understands this hire cannot be a miss and should not be regarded as risky when so many bright contenders, with rich credentials, understand the Tigers’ potential, their exalted place in MLB history and a team’s “Baseball Town” culture.
It is commonly said across the MLB terrain: There are only 30 jobs in baseball that offer the latitude and the potential gratification that come with being an MLB general manager.
The Tigers have one of them. And at the moment, it is wide open