Written by Jeff Shand-Lubbers at Sporting Charts
After a tremendous start to the season (9-1), to say the Tigers collapsed would be an understatement. It was true that the team was in the latter stages of its possible championship window, with an aging roster and recent additions David Price and Yoenis Cespedes not under contract in 2016, but the team was hoping to squeeze another October run before an inevitable offseason roster overhaul.
Needless to say, a record of 65-88 following the first two weeks of the season meant that the roster overhaul happened sooner than the offseason, with Price, Cespedes, and Joakim Soria all traded in late July. Furthermore, the overhaul didn’t end with the players, as General Manager Dave Dombrowski didn’t last more than a few days after making the difficult (but correct) decision to eliminate even the slimmest of chances that the team could make a late season run.
There were a number of reasons for the downfall. Victor Martinez’s four year contract through 2018 immediately began looking like a liability. Nick Castellanos’s promise was not turning into production, as he put forth a second straight subpar year at the hot corner. Miguel Cabrera was still Miguel Cabrera when healthy, but he missed 42 games due to injury, the most in his entire career since his 2003 rookie season. The Tigers’ bullpen was not a roster strength, though Dombrowski had spent the last few years faking his way through the season with a subpar bullpen (even if it blew up in the team’s face in multiple offseasons).
However, despite all of those things, the chart below shows why the Tigers’ overall collapse occurred as quickly and dramatically as it did.
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