Q&A: Avila talks baseball family, Tigers' path

Al Avila recalls his time coaching at St. Thomas University as one of the happier periods of his life, but the challenge of taking his baseball acumen to the Majors was his ultimate goal.
The son of a scout, Avila wanted to make a career in professional baseball, working his way through the ranks in the Marlins' front office under Dave Dombrowski before joining him with the Tigers in 2002 following a brief pit stop in Pittsburgh.
Tabbed as Detroit's executive vice president of baseball operations and general manager in August 2015, Avila enters his second full season in that role, looking to get the Tigers back to the postseason for the first time since '14.
:: General manager Q&As ::
MLB.com recently sat down with Avila in his office at Joker Marchant Stadium in Lakeland, Fla., to discuss his father's influence on him, the emotions of his team drafting his son and how good Michael Fulmer can be in the future.
MLB.com: Your father, Ralph, was a scout, responsible for signing many players, including Pedro Martinez. What did you learn most from him that has helped you throughout your career?
Avila: I followed my father around a lot when I was a kid. When my father started, he started as a bird dog covering Florida. He became a full-time scout for the Dodgers and worked under Al Campanis. He used to scout in Florida, so I used to follow him to the games; if I didn't do that, I would never see him. He was always at a game in the afternoon, at a game at night, weekends; the only way I could spend time with my dad was going to the baseball games with him.
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Back in those days there were no computers, cell phones or anything like that, so he had to write everything down. I remember the cards that he had where he wrote down the lineups, then he would write down the height, weight and all that, and then the comments. They had a grade scale for your arm, for your speed, for your power. When I was a kid, I would always watch him and how he would grade out guys and his comments about guys. I got to see that at a very early age; you're talking about 10, 11 and 12 years old. So that's how I got to start there.
MLB.com: A player you signed as a 16-year-old has gone on to have a decent career -- Miguel Cabrera. Could you tell when he was a teenager and you first saw him that he was going to be this type of player?
Avila: Miguel is an interesting case. John Henry had just bought the Marlins, and he wanted to be aggressive out there and get the best players. That was the mandate. At that point, I was the scouting director, coordinating the Draft and also was in charge of the Latin American stuff. I told the guys, "Go out there, find the best players you can and let's go after them." They brought me to Miguel Cabrera.
Miguel Garcia, who works for me now, had followed him basically the whole year. I went there and saw him for the first time; you could tell he was an advanced player as far as his hitting ability, but he had great tools. He had a cannon for an arm, he had really smooth hand, and even though he was a big guy and slow because his legs were very thick, his feet moved very easy. He was athletic even though he wasn't a quick, fast guy. You could say his actions were more smooth. His hitting ability was there from Day 1. You can't say at 16 that we thought we were going to sign a future Hall of Famer and franchise player, but we thought we had a pretty good player, a special player that was going to be real good. Obviously, he developed into a future Hall of Famer.

MLB.com: You worked with Dave Dombrowski for more than 20 years between Florida and Detroit. Replacing him as Tigers GM, what was that like for you?
Avila: I've been Dave's assistant since the Florida Marlins days, then followed him here for all these years; I'm going on 16. It was difficult, because he's the guy that I started with and he's the guy that obviously I learned a lot from. The transition in that sense was not easy for me. But ownership makes a decision, they move on and you have to be prepared to step in. Like any transition, it's not always easy; this one was probably more difficult than most. But I can say that at the very least, I was prepared to step in and do the job. It was difficult in one sense, but in the other sense, it was a smooth transition.
MLB.com: In 2008, you're the assistant GM and the Tigers draft your son, Alex. What were your emotions like when that happened?
Avila: That was actually a tough time for me because I didn't want us to draft him. I didn't want to go through the scrutiny of, "Oh, they're just drafting the guy's son." David Chadd, who is one of my best friends in the game and was the scouting director at the time, we're in a meeting like we are in every meeting before the Draft and we're putting up the names in preferential order. He's in the slot where this is the best player available in this slot for us, so his point was, "If we don't take him, we're not taking the best player in this round, which we've done for the last 20 years. So because he's your son, we can't take him? You're doing a disservice to the organization." So he took him.
Obviously the rest is history, because he didn't spend much time in the Minor Leagues. Silver Slugger, All-Star appearance, and here's a trivia question and you can look it up, but I was told that he's caught more postseason games than any catcher in Tigers history. I thought it was a pretty amazing thing, considering we've had some great catchers here over the years: Lance Parrish, Bill Freehan. I thought that was an amazing thing. He's done pretty well for himself.
MLB.com: The two of you were on the same team through 2015, but you let him leave as a free agent -- signing with the division rival, no less, with the White Sox. How tough was that whole situation for you?
Avila: Actually at that moment, it wasn't tough, because we were going through a transition here. The team, we were disappointed that year, we ended up losing and we made some trades along the way. That winter, I thought it was the best thing for the organization to start making some changes. He was one of the casualties in that. We had to move on, see if we could change the culture a little bit.
Last year, we had a disappointing season, because we wanted to get to the playoffs. This year, it was different. We were a little short in the catching department; we didn't have a guy at Triple-A that we could bring up. If we did, that would have been the best choice, but we didn't have that. We were looking for a veteran catcher that could come in and lead the staff, could hit left-handed, and he was the best fit.
MLB.com: Re-signing him in December must have made for a happier holidays for the family.
Avila: Actually, my mother was the happiest person. When we let him go, she was the most angry.

MLB.com: You added an analytics department to the front office after taking over as GM. There was a time in the not-so-distant past that some teams were considered analytics teams and others were considered scouting teams. Do you think teams have done a good job in balancing the two at this point?
Avila: I can't speak for other teams, but for us, that's been our goal, to be able to have that balance. We've always been a scouting-heavy organization and we've kept that going, because we've actually added more scouts and we're going to add even more. I just don't want to add a scout to add; we want to add the right people. However, in saying that, one of our biggest goals is to have our analytics catch up to our scouting. We've really moved fast and invested a lot of money; right now, going on over $1 million in technology and personnel. Right now, we have five people in the analytics department and we will be adding, also.
We're really at the stage of infancy with it, and our goal is to be up at 100 percent by the end of the year to where we can develop our own in-house analytics, not just use outside sources. We're catching up, and it will be well-balanced between that and scouting. It just helps you make better decisions, whether it be for the amateur Draft, in trades that you make, free-agent signings. It can also help out signing six-year Minor League free agents. It's a plethora of areas where the numbers can give you a good insight on what could be a good move or not in combination with your scouts' reports.
MLB.com: One of the players you got back in the Yoenis Céspedes trade was Fulmer, who won American League Rookie of the Year Award this past season. How much better do you think he can get?
Avila: I think he's just starting to touch what he can do. Last year in Spring Training, he was one of the first guys we sent back to Minor League camp because he was not very good. He had the physical ability and he had the heavy fastball, but his secondary pitches weren't there and he was struggling. In order to get him more innings, get him more work and get his development going, we had to send him back. That was probably the best thing we did, because he got his work in there and he started to develop his other pitches.
We actually brought him up a lot faster than we'd have liked to because he wasn't a finished product, but he became more of a finished product once he got here, so he was learning on the job. We were pushing him to throw that changeup more; a pitch that, at that point, he wasn't comfortable with yet because he hadn't commanded it yet. He was still learning it and he ended up learning it at the Major League level, so that tells you of his courage. You had to carry them in a wheelbarrow; that's how big they were. We were pushing him to throw that pitch and give credit to him; he did it and he got better as the season wore on. That's where he's at. You can imagine he'll get better even more so as he gets more experience.

MLB.com: What is 2017 going to be like this season without Mike Ilitch around?
Avila: Very sad. He's missed so much, even right now. Every year, he would come to Spring Training and spend a few days here. I would eat dinner with him before most games. When the team wasn't doing well, he made you feel good. He understood the game and why you're not playing well. He also understood, 'How are we going to make it better?' He would work with you. He'll be deeply missed.
You can blow a lot of smoke; this guy was legit. This guy was for real in that he was a real compassionate man. Very smart; he knew it, he knew what was going on. He knew if things went well or didn't go well, he knew why. But he always made you feel good. Particularly when the season starts, he'll be missed a lot because you just got used to him eating with you, talking. And it wasn't always baseball. He'd like to lighten things up. I'm going to miss that personally, because obviously it was a calming effect on me during the season. The baseball season really can get you wound up tight where it's tough to get through a game, much less a season. He made it easier on you, so he will be deeply missed.

MLB.com: The American League has been represented in the World Series by teams in your division for the past three years; the Royals twice and the Indians last year. How much more competitive has the division become in recent years with some of these teams hitting their stride?
Avila: I've been saying it; it's been, if not the best, certainly among the best in all of baseball for many years. The Royals have been tremendous, Cleveland's been tremendous, the White Sox are always trying to get better all the time, and even Minnesota, people always leave them behind, but Minnesota this year in particular is going to have a good young team, and they've always given us trouble.
Our division, it's one of the toughest ones. I look at other divisions in the National League and think, "Man, if we were over here, maybe we would have won 100 games instead of 88 or 86." Our division is really tough. The American League in general, is tough. You look at the East, you look at the Red Sox, it's hard to win a game. That's how competitive it is.