Team 85: The 1976 Tigers

• Year: 1976
• Record: 74-87
• Win Percentage: .460
• Win Percent Change: +102
• Run Differential: -100
• Pythagorean Record: 69-92
• AL Finish: 10th of 12
• Manager: Ralph Houk
• Best Transaction: Drafted Alan Trammell, Dan Petry, and Jack Morris.  The Tigers didn’t make a lot of moves in 1976, so this stellar draft will have to do.  While Trammell and Morris were both Tigers for over a decade, led them to a World Series and won numerous awards, the Tigers also let one get away in this draft.  In the seventh round the club drafted Ozzie Smith but failed to sign him.  Don’t get me wrong, I think Trammell was a better player than Ozzie, but still, it would have been fun to have the both of them for a little while.
• Worst Transaction: I couldn’t really find a bad one.  They traded away Leon Roberts before the season,  but that wasn’t really a serious loss.
• Upper: Mark Fidrych.  This was Fidyrch’s year.  This was the year a 21 year old pitcher on an awful team was the biggest story in the American League.  Fidrych went 19-9, won the Rookie of the Year Award, and finished 2nd in Cy Young voting.  The Bird also led the league in complete games and ERA, that complete games title loses some of its luster when you consider what happened to the poor guy’s body later in his career.  Fidrych is also responsible for the Tigers finishing fourth in the league in attendance even though they were a bad team.
• Downer: Aside from Fidrych, the pitching staff was a disaster.  The Tigers finished 11th in the league in ERA as they coughed up tons of walks and home runs.  Dave Roberts and Joe Coleman were both far below league average and logged over 300 combined innings.  The Tigers middle infield was also weak as they had several hitters posts OPS+ numbers below 80, hence the drafting of Alan Trammell.
• Summary: The 1975 Tigers lost 102 games, so the 1976 Tigers, while bad, were certainly an improvement.  Fidrych, Ron LeFlore and Rusty Staub gave Tigers fans some hope, but they were still a couple of years away from respectability.  Youngster Ben Ogilvie smacked 15 home runs in only 325 at bats and John Hiller put together another great season as the Tigers closer.  It’s really too bad that a talented guy like Hiller had to play on so many bad teams.  This was really the last of the BAD seasons, though.  As the 1970s came to a close, some of the Tigers young talent started to blossom in Detroit and things turned around in a hurry.

Photograph property of Sports Artifacts.

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