This post is part of a series. Click here for the introduction. Click here for part 1. Click here for part 2.

We didn’t really cover coaching last week, so let’s dig in! The Tigers have had a few notable managers before my time (Hughie Jennings won 1,131 games before 1920, Ty Cobb as a player-coach, and the gloriously named Edward Mayo “Catfish” Smith, who led them to the ’68 title), but my first baseball memories include Sparky Anderson. Sparky had a cup of coffee in the big leagues, but otherwise spent his playing career in the minors before accepting a coaching job at age 30 for the Toronto Maple Leafs, a triple A team in the International League. By 35, he had risen to his first MLB managerial post with the Cincinnati Reds. From 1970 to 1978, he coached the Reds (who became known as “The Big Red Machine”) to two World Series wins while coaching all-time greats like Pete Rose, Johnny Bench, Joe Morgan, and Tony Pérez. After finishing second in the division in ’77 and ’78, Anderson was slightly puzzlingly fired by Cincinnati. The Tigers were happy to step in the next year.

When I was about 7 weeks old, Sparky became the manager of the Detroit Tigers. When he saw the early returns from the roster, including Alan Trammell, Lou Whitaker, Jack Morris, Lance Parrish (and later that year, Kirk Gibson), he declared they would win the pennant within 5 years. Well, in 1984, they did just that. The Tigers were contenders until 1988, when the teams stars were aging or departing. Sparky stayed at the helm until 1995, when a combination of years of losing and the 1994 season-ending players’ strike soured him on the game. His refusal to coach 1995’s replacement players during spring training may have resulted in the Tigers helping to push him out the door as well. He retired at 61 with the 3rd most wins by a manager in baseball history at the time (2,194). He still sits at 6th despite retiring quite young for a baseball manager. I loved Sparky Anderson because I loved baseball and he was Detroit’s manager. He was known for being hands off and just letting his great players do their thing. He was also hyperbolic and effusive with his praise of his team (he once referred to Kirk Gibson as the next Mickey Mantle. I mean, I love me some Kirk Gibson, but Mantle was maybe the most talented player ever). However, his players loved him and so did the fans.

After Anderson came the likes of Buddy Bell, Larry Parrish, Phil Garner, Luis Pujols, and even Alan Trammell. Nobody had any kind of success, although this was most likely due to lack of talent more that anything else. In 2006, Jim Leyland came in and immediately turned around the Tigers, getting them all the way to the World Series before falling to the St. Louis Cardinals. Leyland, who had been named manager of the year for the Pittsburg Pirates in ’90 and ’92 and had won the World Series for Dave Dombrowski’s Florida Marlins in 1997, won manager of the year again ’06. The Tigers remained contenders under Leyland, even making the World Series again in 2012, this time losing to the San Francisco Giants. The chain smoking Leyland, known for his acerbic wit and grumpy demeanor, retired after 2013. He was fairly popular among fans in Detroit due to the two World Series trips, but not beloved like Sparky.

The recently retired Brad Ausmus succeeded Leyland and was definitely not well loved. The Dartmouth educated long time catcher (“Smart and an ex-catcher? Surefire great manager! Who needs experience?” -Detroit front office in 2013, probably) took a very talented team and an owner willing to throw everything at winning and produced…not much. The Tigers did win the AL Central in his first year, although with an unimpressive 90-72 record, but were quickly swept out of the playoffs by the Baltimore Orioles in 3 games. They slumped to last in the Central the next year, bounced back a little to 2nd in his 3rd year, and then free fell to 64-98 in 2017. With that, Ausmus was out the door and Tiger fans were happy to see him go. Ron Gardenhire, the former Minnesota Twins manager who was well know for his teaching skills and emphasis on the details of playing “the right way”, came on board in 2018 to help oversee the rebuild, now in full swing. The Tigers started relatively well during Gardenhire’s three years in charge, pointing to his coaching and preparedness, but faded when the god-awful players on the roster lack of talent failed to continue the mild success by mid-summer in each year. The Tigers somehow finished 3rd out of five teams in the Central in 2018 with a 64-98 record, 5th worst in all of baseball. They finished worst in MLB with 47 wins in 2019 and 23-35, good for 3rd worst, in the COVID shortened 2020. With 8 games remaining, Gardenhire retired due to health reasons. I think most Tiger fans appreciate his efforts in a thankless task. Nobody was winning with those teams; in fact, not winning was the point. These three seasons have already yielded Riley Greene and Spencer Torkelson, their two best positional prospects, plus whomever gets picked in this year’s draft. So we’ll see how that works out, I guess.

Al Avila made a bold choice this year in hiring one A.J. Hinch, fresh of his one year suspension for this. If you want to see it in action, check out this Youtube video explanation which helped break the story nationally. Hinch didn’t come up with the idea and likely wasn’t personally involved, at least based on baseball’s own investigation. It even sounds like he didn’t approve of the scheme and personally wrecked the monitors used a couple of times. However, he didn’t outright stop or even do enough to discourage the practice, so he was suspended for a year. The Houston Astros were really, really good under Hinch, for one reason or another (cheating is sometimes helpful). Avila is banking on his success in a similar rebuilding situation in Houston, as well as his embrace of analytics and World Series experience, to take the Tigers back to the top. If you can get past the whole cheating thing, this is a great hire. It’s smart to use analytics as a tool and go with a proven commodity in the manager role. And, to his credit, he served his penalty without appeal and has been open and apologetic about his failure to curb what was going on. This is a hire Machiavelli would have approved of; he was available only because he was fired after the scandal in Houston. As long as he’s being sincere about having learned from his mistakes (and has the players’ respect), this could work out great. Once again, I’m cautiously optimistic. Ok, we’ll be back next week with the roster breakdown.