LAKELAND, Fla. -- A leadership experiment of sorts is playing out in Florida, where two baseball managers separated by 15 years and 2,107 big league games are setting their rosters and lining up their pitching rotations in advance of Opening Day.
At Joker Marchant Stadium in Lakeland, Ron Gardenhire and the Detroit Tigers enter the season with modest expectations and a drastically reduced payroll. When the Tigers said goodbye to Justin Verlander, J.D. Martinez, Justin Upton and several other high-priced veterans, they officially forsook instant gratification for long-range thinking.
Drive 35 miles on Interstate 4 past the Florida Air Museum and a Bob Evans restaurant or three, and the stakes are higher.