This mentality from Detroit Tigers fans needs to stop

The Detroit Tigers don’t need to trade everybody anymore.

The Detroit Tigers have been incredibly disappointing this season. At the time of writing this article, the team is 13-26 and have an entire starting rotation’s worth of injuries. At this rate, the team will most certainly be sellers at the trade deadline.

Or should they be?

Look, I get that fans are upset with some of the hitters who are underperforming and they want to see change. Trust me, I do too. But given general manager Al Avila’s track record with trades, do we really want him making more trades?

Because trading everybody at the deadline for prospects has worked so well to this point, right?

To go over said track record would be beating a dead horse. The Justin Verlander and J.D. Martinez trades have been disasters. He chose not to trade Matthew Boyd back in 2019 when he had a couple years of control left and would’ve netted a nice return. There’s nothing left to say there.

More recently, the trades have been slightly better. He was able to fetch pitching prospect Reese Olson from the Milwaukee Brewers in exchange for reliever Daniel Norris last year, and he appears to be a nice find. Then in April, he flipped struggling infielder Isaac Paredes for Austin Meadows. Despite the lack of short term success with that trade, it should pay dividends in the long run given that Meadows is not a free agent until 2024.

Also, who would the Tigers trade? Jonathan Schoop and his .453 OPS (although he leads all second baseman in outs above average)? Or how about Robbie Grossman and his .553 OPS? Maybe Michael Fulmer if he gets his act together? They don’t really have anybody with value who would net a decent return.

There has been lots of chatter about trading some of the team’s pitching depth for bats. But has anybody seen all the injuries this pitching staff has accumulated? As the old saying goes, you can never have too many arms. Given the situation, I don’t think it would be wise for the Tigers to do that.

At some point, the Detroit Tigers have to stop trading everyone the second things go bad. If they keep doing that, the rebuild will truly never end.

This is not meant to be an attack on Detroit Tigers fans. None of us here at Motor City Bengals or FanSided would ever do that. This is just something I’m still seeing amongst the fanbase after all this time. We as Tigers fans have never handled adversity well, even going back to the good old days.

Tigers fans have every right to be frustrated after five (going on six) years of losing. They should expect better after this long stretch of darkness. But they can’t trade everyone forever. That isn’t a sustainable way to build a roster. If the team is still in limbo in a year or two, then maybe we can talk about starting over…again.

But for right now, I’ll say it one more time: trading everyone is not the solution.