Toes in the Water: A history of the Detroit Tigers and Free Agency
This offseason the free agent market has been as slow as a Rusty Staub standup double. Most of the top free agents are still unsigned, you’d think the old Detroit boss Jim Campbell was holding the purse strings. Campbell was so cheap that instead of bringing his wife flowers, he used to bring her seeds.
The free agency era might be coming to an end as we know it. For more than forty years players have had the upper hand on the open market place. Every few years a record-breaking contract has been signed, but the last few years owners have suddenly gotten a case of financial responsibility. The changing economics of baseball are making harder for players to get tens or hundreds of millions of dollars.
The free agency system began in the winter of 1975/76 when an arbitrator declared that pitchers Dace McNally and Andy Messersmith were free agents, a ruling that essentially struck down baseball’s reserve clause. Without the reserve clause, players could bargain with any team for any sum of money. The union and the owners quickly agreed on a system that made players free agents after six years of MLB service time. Within a few years teams were forking over million for the best free agents every winter.
The big names in early free agency were players like Reggie Jackson, Joe Rudi, Don Baylor, and Nolan Ryan. But as those players and others were signing lucrative deals and helping teams like the Yankees and Angels to improve themselves quickly, the Detroit Tigers turned up their noses at the new free agent era.
“We’re not interested in making one baseball player a millionaire,” Campbell said in 1978. The Tigers were notoriously frugal, they were known to trade players if they even dared to ask for a raise.
Operating with their eye on the farm system and player development, the Tigers were rarely spenders in the first decade of free agency. What follows is a summary of every major free agent signing by the franchise.
Tito Fuentes – 1977
A few weeks into spring training in 1977, Ralph Houk realized he didn’t have a starting second baseman.
The Tigers had three players in camp that Houk was evaluating, and none of them were appetizing. There was little Chuck Scrivener, a converted shortstop who had spent eight years in the minors for a reason: he couldn’t hit. Then there was Mark Wagner, another natural shortstop who could hit better than Scrivener, but had a rough time holding onto the baseball. The Tigers also had veteran Puerto Rican infielder Luis Alvarado in their camp. The 28-year old had played eight seasons in the majors for four different teams, and he was a very good fielder. Unlike Scrivener and Wagner, Alvarado had several years of experience playing at second.
Across the field in Lakeland, Houk could see 19-year old Lou Whitaker, a slim second baseman with a rocket arm who dazzled Detroit coaches with his ability to turn the double play. But the consensus inside the organization was that Whitaker needed another season in the minors before he was ready for The Show.
On February 23, general manager Campbell pulled out his checkbook and paid $90,000 for free agent Tito Fuentes. It was a surprise move, but it filled a short-term hole.
Fuentes had escaped Cuba during the revolution and found his way to the Giants where played second for that club for close to a decade. He was 33 years old, a bit slower than he’d once been, but he was still had steady hands and he was a good contact hitter.
Tito had his last good season in his only year with the Tigers. The switch-hitter batted .309 in 151 games and kept second base warm for Sweet Lou. In September, Whitaker and his double play buddy Alan Trammell arrived, and Fuentes’ days were numbered.
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