Detroit Tigers should be open to Michael Fulmer trade, deal would be near impossible

The Detroit Tigers should be open to the idea of trading Michael Fulmer, but a fair return package would be nearly impossible to get.

The Detroit Tigers probably aren’t trying to sell Michael Fulmer, but he’s certainly the most attractive player on their roster. Pretty much every team in baseball could use an All-Star starting pitcher, and one with an additional four years of team control would make him attractive to teams across the spectrum of competitiveness.

Earlier today we passed along the report that the Chicago Cubs had contacted the Tigers about a potential trade of Fulmer for Kyle Schwarber. While that trade in itself was laughable, the idea that the Tigers should seriously consider trading the young ace starter is not.

The Detroit Tigers are looking at what appears to be the second half of a lost season. With a core of star players that are mostly at or beyond their peak, they need to begin assembling a group of young (and talented) players that can make up the next division winner. Fulmer appears to be one of those guys, but he doesn’t have to be.

If (when) the Tigers wave the white flag on the 2017 season and begin selling veteran players (J.D. Martinez, Alex Avila, and Justin Wilson seem like obvious candidates to be traded), they’ll also be waving the white flag on 2018 and (probably) 2019 as well. If everything goes right, the Tigers could be challenging for the playoffs in 2020.

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Fulmer remains under team control through 2021, so he still fits within that window. It’s entirely possible that he could anchor a rotation in 2021 (in his age 28 season) for a Tigers club with championship aspirations. He could also provide the franchise with a legitimate All-Star caliber player through the lean years.

But Fulmer could also help accelerate the rebuild. The Tigers’ asking price should be high, but if they found a willing partner who offered a fair deal, they’d be looking at a butt load (to use the scientific term) of top-tier prospects in return. A legitimate return package would be four to six top-flight prospects with two or three of those prospects being capital-E Elite.

In other words, the cost of prying Fulmer away from the Tigers would be something like five Fulmers (the kind of prospect he was when the Tigers got him from the Mets) — prospects who are pretty darn good and are only a year or two away from being major league ready.

And that’s the problem. It’s difficult to find a team willing to give up that much to secure one player. The odds of that team having the right mix of prospects in the right part of their development curves to make it worth the Tigers’ while.

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The Tigers don’t have to trade Fulmer, they probably don’t even want to. In order to get him out of Detroit some team is going to have to give up a ridiculous amount of talent. So much talent that the Tigers simply can’t say no. Few teams have that much depth in their system which probably makes the odds of a Fulmer trade happening less than 5%.