Detroit — It’s not a question of if the Tigers are going to trade starting pitchers Michael Lorenzen and Eduardo Rodriguez.
It never was.
The question is how long Tigers president Scott Harris holds out for the best deal before cashing his chips. It could happen two minutes after this story gets posted on the website. Or, more probable, he takes it to the 6 p.m. trade deadline wire Tuesday.
Lorenzen and Rodriguez both understand this. Lorenzen knew this was the likeliest outcome when he signed his one-year deal in the offseason. He knew if he pitched well, he was going to be flipped to a contender at the deadline.
Matthew Boyd would have been in the same spot, had he not been injured.
Lorenzen has already packed up his stuff in Detroit. If something were to change, he figured it would be a lot easier to unpack than to hastily pack on the run to another team.
It’s a little trickier with Rodriguez, of course, because of the opt-out in his contract — which the Tigers and teams looking to acquire him at the deadline must assume he will exercise this winter. People I’ve spoken to in the industry say the opt-out is a nuisance, but not necessarily a deal-killer.
It’s hard to envision a scenario, other than injury, where he doesn’t opt-out. That’s how the Tigers and the teams thinking about trading for him need to operate. He’s got three years and $49 million left on his current contract.
If he’s healthy, he will probably double that, given the current established market for quality starting pitchers. He might even be able to entice a team to add a couple of extra years to the deal, taking it out past his age-35 season.
So, it would be folly to think — again, unless there is a sudden change in health — that he’s not going to opt-out and test the market this winter.
What we don’t know is the extent Harris and Rodriguez’s agent have discussed a possible extension. That’s one of the X-factors in this. But, it feels safe to assume that if there was an extension on the table that was agreeable to all parties, the Tigers wouldn’t be taking it this close to the deadline.
Certainly, they wouldn’t do what manager AJ Hinch smartly did and move Rodriguez’s next start back to Wednesday.
Bottom-line, Rodriguez is viewed as a rental. That doesn’t mean the Tigers should give him away for a package of low-level prospects. These mediocre starts he’s had since coming off the injured list aren’t going to lower his value or deter teams from bidding on him.
His track record is established. Who he was in the first two months of the season is who teams are trading for. There’s no recency bias here. This is a quality, left-handed starter who has playoff and World Series experience on his resume.
Harris is right to expect a return commensurate to that. Especially since just about every contending team that’s identified itself as a buyer is looking to add starting pitching.
Could the market change? Could the Mets trading off Max Scherzer and possibly Justin Verlander dilute interest in Rodriguez and Lorenzen? Could more bubble teams, like Seattle, start selling assets and flood the market? The Rays traded for Guardians right-hander Aaron Civale Monday. So, yeah, that could happen.
Could Harris hold his cards too long and have to fold? Anything is possible. Even that wouldn’t be the end of the world. Still, at this point, with so many teams still in the playoff hunt and just about all of them needing pitching, it seems unlikely.
Here are a couple of driving forces, from the Tigers’ point of view.
▶ The Tigers are still in the business of upgrading their talent throughout the organization. Even though Harris dangled the carrot of possibly changing course if the Tigers stayed in contention into August, certainly he had to know that would’ve been chasing fool’s gold.
To expend resources to make a run at a division title this year — given how weak the A.L. Central is — would run counter to everything Harris and chairman and CEO Christopher Ilitch have put in place. It would have contradicted their goal of building a sustainable winner. It would have probably set this transition back another year or two.
And for what? An early playoff exit?
Listen, this is a team coming off a 96-loss season and with a farm system ranked at or near the bottom by industry evaluators. They have to try to fully exploit the opportunity they have on Tuesday, with legitimate trade chips, to pump some fresh talent into the system.
▶ This 2023 version of the Tigers at the trade deadline is vastly different than any previous version since the teardown began in 2017. And that’s because of the vast improvements made and the vast sums of money pumped into the infrastructure, into technology, into analytics, into player development, into scouting.
The database of information the club has now on players at all levels, on prospects at all levels, is so much more advanced and complete than it’s ever been.
Keep that in mind if the prospects they get back for Lorenzen and Rodriguez aren’t maybe in the top 50 of MLBpipeline or Baseball America or any of the other trade outlets. We’ve already seen this with players Harris has acquired. Players like Matt Vierling, Tyler Holton, Zach McKinstry, Andy Ibanez and others. None of them was highly ranked. Three of them were castoffs from other teams.
The Tigers are better at evaluating talent these days, plain and simple. And they are better at making players better once they get here. Lorenzen is a perfect example of that at the big-league level. Colt Keith, Jace Jung, Parker Meadows, Sawyer Gipson-Long and so many others are examples of that at the prospect level.
▶ Lastly, this isn’t the last opportunity for Harris to bolster the talent in the organization — it’s just the current one. The Tigers are playing the long game, here. Whatever doesn’t get done by Tuesday could be revisited in the offseason, at the general managers’ meetings and the Winter Meetings.
Not trying to be contradictory here. Harris is absolutely hyper-motivated to trade Lorenzen and Rodriguez. He’s hungry to fill up the talent pool throughout the organization. But, this isn’t a fire sale. He doesn’t have to — nor should he — make a bad deal.
If teams don’t pony up for these two veteran starters, then the Tigers collect the compensation picks and move on. Or, they try to sign one or both again this offseason.
Either way, Harris has the commodities teams are looking for — veteran starting pitching — and he’s brokering that leverage until he gets the right deal.
On deck: Pirates
Series: Two games at PNC Park, Pittsburgh, Penn.
First pitch: Tuesday – 7:05; Wednesday – 12:35 p.m.
TV/radio: Tuesday – Bally Sports Detroit, 97.1; Wednesday – Bally Sports Detroit, MLB / 97.1, 1270
Probables: Tuesday – RHP Matt Manning (3-2, 4.32) vs. RHO Johan Oviedo (4-11, 4.60); Wednesday – LHP Eduardo Rodriguez (6-5, 2.95) vs. RHP Osvaldo Bido (2-1, 4.50).
Manning, Tigers: Manning came out firing against the Angels in his last start, his fastball hitting 97 and 98 mph out of the gate. But, things quickly went awry. He didn’t have the same feel on his secondary pitches that he’s had since coming off the IL, and the hot-swinging Angels took advantage of it. Because of the All-Star break and some bad weather, this will be just his third full start since he pitched 6.2 no-hit innings against Toronto.
Oviedo, Pirates: The National League loss leader (11) had three rough starts in July (18 earned runs in 15.2 innings) and two quality starts. He’s coming off a good one, holding the Padres to a run over six innings. He throws his slider 39% of the time and his 96-mph four-seamer 35% of the time. But, his nastiest pitch might be his curveball, which is holding hitters to a .169 average and a 31% whiff rate.
Twitter: @cmccosky