Believe who you will, but Al Avila would like to speak for himself.
“Those are stories that sometimes, obviously, it bothers you to hear those kind of things,” Avila told the Jamie and Stoney Show on 97.1 The Ticket. “But you can go to (special advisors) Kirk Gibson or Alan Trammell. I mean, they’re in the rooms, as well as the rest of my staff, and they hear all kinds of possibilities that are thrown out, sometimes throughout days, sometimes throughout months. When I heard the Javy Baez thing, I went to all of my guys, like, ‘Did I forget something?’ It kind of took me by surprise. To my recollection or my staff, there was never really a talk about Javy Baez in a trade for Fulmer in any context.
“Now, with Bregman, we did have dialogue about Bregman and Fulmer in a context of different scenarios. But there was never, let’s say, a solid, ‘You can have this,’ and all of a sudden, ‘No, we’re not going to do that.’ But there were conversations. Now back then, remember, Fulmer was coming off an All-Star year and Bregman was struggling coming up. These conversations obviously take place all the time, so it’s just one of many conversations.”
The Tigers, of course, opted to hold onto Fulmer, whose career has been derailed by injuries in the years since. He underwent Tommy John surgery this spring and won’t return until sometime next season. Baez and Bregman, meanwhile, have become two of the best young hitters in baseball.