Last time we heard from Joel Zumaya, about three weeks ago, the former Tigers reliever called not so quietly for the organization to 'clean house' amid a brutal start to the season.
After Detroit's 13-0 loss to the White Sox on Wednesday, its second 13-0 loss this month, Zumaya sounded off again, twice for good measure.
First he posted a photo of GM AL Avila on Instagram and wrote, "No Major League Baseball team should be getting shut out like this!!! If the mercy rule was in effect, what would y'all really think!!! This is getting beyond disturbing and they are still leaving the faith in this man's hands!!! ABSOLUTELY MIND BLOW!!!"
In Avila's six full seasons as GM, the Tigers have the second worst winning percentage (.415) in the majors. The bulk of his tenure has coincided with a major rebuild, but that rebuild has gone nowhere. In the season the Tigers were supposed to return to contention, they have returned to irrelevance.
Zumaya, a star reliever on the 2006 Tigers team that won the American League pennant and sparked a baseball renaissance in Detroit, followed up on Facebook shortly thereafter to offer a simple 'solution' to all the Tigers' problems:
"Start from the top, all the way down to the bottom and start canning people!! STARTING WITH AL AVILA!!! I'm tired of hearing and reading BS!!!!" Zumaya ranted, adding the hashtag #MakeDETroitGREATagain for good measure.
Zumaya's post referenced an A.J. Hinch quote after Wednesday's game in which the manager called the Tigers' 24-38 start "unacceptable."
"We are better than this," said Hinch. "We have not loved up to the standard we expect. We're all accountable, players, coaches, manager, front office, everybody, because it's been below par."
Meanwhile, the Tigers were holding a players-only meeting in the clubhouse to try to shake themselves out of their funk. Eric Haase later said that it wasn't a fiery meeting because the Tigers are "a little past that ... and getting in the weeds with the negative stuff isn't going to be a good path going forward."
Zumaya seemed to object to that, too.
"If you're going to have a players only closed-door meeting and not have anyone get heated during the conversations then obviously no one cares enough for a change!!!" he said.
Zumaya said the Tigers had "plenty of" similar closed-door meetings during the 2006 season "and in half of them Jim Leyland came in storming through the doors like an angry troll ripping (our) asses!!! And let me tell you it wasn't just once the man would pace up and down the locker room reminding us why we are here and what we are here for!!!!"
Hinch reacts to losing in a more measured fashion, for better or worse. Asked about his message to the team after Wednesday's debacle, Hinch said, "It speaks for itself. The results are pretty obvious."
And to Zumaya, so is the solution.
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