The Detroit Tigers are one of nine MLB teams that are in violation of baseball's debt rules, according to a report by the Los Angeles Times. Here's the explanation of the situation by ESPN:
↵↵↵The violations in question concern debt-service rules intended to limit a club's debt to 10 times its annual revenue, according to the Times. Other teams named in the owners' briefing were the Baltimore Orioles, Detroit Tigers, Florida Marlins and Washington Nationals.
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The other teams named were the Philadelphia Phillies, Chicago Cubs and Texas Rangers. What penalties the Tigers could face is unclear, though the article mentions a few:
↵↵↵Among the possibilities are ordering a team to raise equity, requiring expenditures to be approved by MLB in advance and suspending a team's owner.
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The Tigers currently have one of the highest payrolls in baseball, hovering around $105 million for this season. That's actually down from last year, when they spent $122 million. Couple that with underachieving teams that don't make the playoffs and a downtrodden Detroit economy and you have a recipe for debt.