Tigers manager Ron Gardenhire answers questions from the winter meetings in Orlando on Dec. 13, 2017. George Sipple, Detroit Free Press
He didn't call it boot camp, exactly. That mentality doesn't suit the long baseball season anyway.
But don't be fooled, Ron Gardenhire aims to change the culture of the Detroit Tigers. He has no choice, really. He's got a young team with few expectations and a boss who wants him to teach his youngsters how to win.
Even when they don't.
That's why the Tigers' new manager is here.
"We wanted that leadership quality," said general manager Al Avila. "We wanted (Gardie) to teach the guys the right way. There is going to be a learning curve here. (So his job is to) prepare the team to win, and get that winning attitude, even though you might (lose) the game."
What Avila really wants is for his young team to walk away feeling, "Hey, we played to win."
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It's a critical step in what is likely going to be a long climb back to the postseason and, to listen to Avila and Gardenhire and the players Thursday afternoon, it's easy to hear how much things have changed. For the first time in more than a decade, this franchise kicked off its winter caravan with no talk of the postseason.
And that feels odd, if not long overdue. It also feels like a plan, which is more than you can say for what's going on with the teams that play at Little Caesars Arena.
The Tigers know they aren't contenders this season, and that they probably won't be for a while. Fans know that, too. And it's liberating.
Rebooting can feel this way. Especially when a team is so good for so long but wasn't quite able to win it all.
"It's exciting," admitted Avila, who said his offseason was more challenging and more invigorating than it had been in years.
It's almost as if Avila and his staff and scouting department had to use different parts of their brains, had to reconfigure the way they thought about everything.
No longer can they identify the best free agents on the market and cut a check. Gone are the days of trading young talent for the veteran who can help them in a playoff push. And all that talk about the closer? Yeah, they'll need one, but the absence of one isn't going to sink their season.
The goals are different now. Again, that's where Gardenhire comes in, to help develop good habits.
"Its about respecting the game," he said.
And fundamentals. And drills to help develop them. And meetings to go over the details. Every day.
"We are going to do our program every day," he said. From spring training, right on through the regular season.
What will he emphasize?
"Defense and pitching are going to be very strong points of what we do," he said.
You mean no more waiting for three-run bombs?
Well, he won't turn down those. But this season is about details, and developing the youngsters and keeping an eye on what's happening in the minors, where, Avila pointed out, the franchise has three Top-100 prospects.
Avila thinks that part of the fun this summer will be watching all of this develop.
"Keep an eye on the minor leagues," he said. "We've got some really good young exciting talent. You can visualize the future a little bit better."
Avila used adjectives such as "athletic" and "quick" to describe the players he hopes will eventually lead this team into that future. Words we haven't associated with this team for years. That's tantalizing, too.
As long as you remember that this is a process.
"A rebuild," Avila said emphatically.
Even if his players ( at least, some of them) and manager aren't quite ready to call it that.
"They will come to work every day and will try to win," Avila said. "And we want that."
An approach Avila noticed last year whenever the Tigers played the White Sox. The Sox won just 67 games in 2017 — only three more than the Tigers — but played in a relentless style.
"Every time you played them, they came after you," he said. "I saw that. I visualized that. That’s what I want here.'
And that's why he hired Gardenhire, to light a fuse in the clubhouse and shake up the culture, to develop a winning attitude on a team that isn't likely to win much. To set the table for the future.
Contact Shawn Windsor: 313-222-6487 or swindsor@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @shawnwindsor.
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