One of the key themes of the Detroit Tigers 2017 teardown was the abysmal timing of the final collapse. From the club’s perspective, the inability to win on the field and the number of major contracts on the books made it unavoidable, but there couldn’t have been a worse time to be both saddled with expensive, unmovable contracts. As teams began avoiding big ticket free agents and hoarding their prospect talent more closely, trying to acquire high level prospects for expensive stars like Justin Verlander and J.D. Martinez became more difficult as well.
The league was going through a transformation in 2016-2017, one that is more obvious in retrospect.