He supposedly was gone from Detroit. For good.
It ended up being a single year.
Not, it seems, that Alex Avila ever truly left the Tigers. Or disengaged from a fan base, which, for all its impatience with him, deep down liked the man. In fact, prepared to like him again — a lot — if he could ever reunite with a bat that six years ago made him an All-Star starter.
It has happened. Take a peek at those numbers from 2017. Not bad for a guy whose job title carries the words “back-up”: .