Ilitch Passes

The owner of the Tigers, Mike Illitch, died on Friday:

In a press release from Ilitch Holdings, Inc., Chris Ilitch (Mike’s son) announced his father’s passing on Friday. Mike Ilitch was the co-founder of Little Caesar’s pizza chain and Chairman of Ilitch Holdings in addition to owner both the Detroit Tigers and Detroit Red Wings.

It’s no secret that Ilitch was very determined, and wanted to see the Tigers win. Every year we see teams decide to rebuild, but not the Tigers. It was Mike Ilitch’s money that made Justin Verlander‘s $28M annual salary possible, and the same goes for Miguel Cabrera. Despite luxury tax penalties and a poor local economy, Ilitch’s Tigers were headed into 2017 with a $195M+ payroll. He was a savvy businessman, a passionate team owner, and a very well respected man in Detroit.

My thoughts go out to his family, friends, and fans of both his teams and his pizza.

We will now see how the Tigers approach to constructing a team changes. The team was in the mode of constantly tinkering at the edges to produce a World Championship for Illitch, to no avail. They usually put a good squad on the field, sometimes a great squad, but they never could quite get over the hump. One might think that if the team is out of it at the trade deadline, they might try to move Miguel Cabrera or Justin Verlander for a slew of prospects, but since both are 10-5 men, they could simply say no.

from baseballmusings.com http://ift.tt/2l4IiOf