Tigers fans will lose their minds over Al Avila's recent comments on Javy Baez

Lowlights from Al Avila's tenure as the Tigers' general manager include a 114-loss season in 2019 (Detroit's second-worst campaign in franchise history), drafting two (arguably three or four) misses in the first round in Matt Manning and Alex Faedo (and maybe Spencer Torkelson and Casey Mize), letting Justin Verlander go in a trade with the Astros, and, of course, signing Javier Báez to a six-year, $140 million contract.

No one looks back on the years under Avila's leadership with any fondness whatsoever, and Scott Harris and the current Tigers front office is having to bear the brunt of the fallout. Although Harris certainly makes some questionable decisions himself, he got the Tigers into second place in the AL Central in his first year as President of Baseball Operations, and then into the postseason in his second year.

If Avila's reign will be remembered for any one thing, it'll probably be the Báez contract, the worst active deal in baseball behind perhaps only Anthony Rendon's with the Angels. The Tigers won't release Báez, so they have to find ways to be good in spite of him.

And, on Thursday, Avila admitted that he had an idea that Báez was a bad signing the whole time. He said, "We knew the swing and miss was there ... and we knew that, even my analyst was telling me, there's regression there. But nobody could've predicted falling off a cliff the way he did."

Former Tigers GM Al Avila says he knew there were signs of regression in Javy Báez before Detroit signed him

It doesn't take a professional analyst to look at Báez career path and realize a steep decline was on the way, and that's part of what makes this so infuriating. In 2021, which was a pretty good season for him by most metrics, he put up one of the worst strikeout rates of his career with the Cubs and Mets and led the National League in strikeouts. His defense was dropping off too; he put up his worst fielding percentage at shortstop that year with 20 errors.

It's totally unforgivable that the signs were that obvious to the average fan, yet Avila still made the move despite getting that same advice from analysts in the front office.

The Tigers have three more years and $73 million of Báez left. There's no reason to believe that he's going to magically turn back into the player he used to be, and there's no excuse Avila could make to try and justify it.