Former centerpiece of Tigers’ Ian Kinsler trade follows Matt Manning to KBO

Detroit Tigers fans, if you ever need a reminder of how fast hope turns into hindsight, look no further than the KBO transaction wire.

This week delivered a double take for Tigers diehards: Matt Manning signed a one-year, $1 million deal with the Samsung Lions. Days after that, Wilkel Hernandez –– once billed as the centerpiece of the Tigers’ 2017 trade of Ian Kinsler –– signed with the Hanwha Eagles.

Two names, two very different paths, both headed to the KBO. And if that doesn’t sum up a strange, sobering chapter in recent Tigers history, nothing does.

Pair of once-promising Tigers arms in Matt Manning, Wilkel Hernandez seek to revive their careers in KBO

Back in 2017, the Tigers sold the fan base a vision. Shipping out Kinsler meant embracing a rebuild — and Wilkel Hernandez was supposed to be one of the arms anchoring it.

He wasn’t just part of the deal. He was the deal. The headliner. The upside play. The pitching prospect whose left arm was supposed to grow into something real. And now, he's boarding a flight halfway a round the world to revive a career that never quite got off the ground in Detroit's system.

That’s not a knock on Hernandez. Baseball is cruel, development is fickle, and not all promise matures on schedule — or at all. But it is a quiet indictment of how many Tigers “core pieces” of the rebuild quietly slipped through the cracks.

And then there’s Manning, the former first-round pick. The prospect once listed lovingly alongside Casey Mize and Tarik Skubal. The pitcher who was supposed to be a cornerstone. Now, he's a KBO import –– after being DFA'd by the Tigers and outrighted by the Philadelphia Phillies, only to drift into minor league free agency.

Manning didn’t just fall out of the rotation in Detroit. He fell out of the league. And while the KBO offers pitchers a genuine second act, it also marks the end of “sure thing” status in Major League Baseball. For a pitcher once viewed as untouchable, that's a tough landing.

The KBO isn’t a burial ground — it’s a proving ground. Plenty of players have rebuilt their careers there and returned stronger. Both Hernandez and Manning could. But from a Tigers fan standpoint, this still stings. These weren't depth signings or organizational extras; they were supposed to be something. And now it's the end of the line ... somewhere else.

Years ago, the Tigers sold the future. This week, two pieces of that future went overseas –– not as stars or conquering imports, but as hopeful reboots. The hardest part is not that they’re gone, but that the expectations they once carried are finally too heavy to bring with them.