Y’know, there was a time, not so long ago, that the Detroit Tigers were buyers at the trade deadline, rather than sellers.
Oh, for those hazy, crazy days of 2010-13, when the Tigers spun … well, we wouldn’t call them blockbusters, mostly — Jhonny Peralta (2010), Doug Fister (2011), Aníbal Sánchez (2012) and José Iglesias (2013) weren’t stars yet — at the deadline, finding undervalued gems to boost their playoff hopes. (There was 2014, too, with David Price arriving and Austin Jackson, Drew Smyly and a teenaged Willy Adames departing mid-game, but that was a blockbuster.