Well, they may be an incredible terrible pro team this year, but the worst years were the last few.
vmart, verlanders, cabrera, upton, ... ... .. just a ton of overpaid players relative to their recent output wiht Detroit.. verlander get a bump back up this year? he wasn't so good the last ~2 or so in ootp relative to 25-30M/year. 150M/yr of underperforming crap on this team for quite some time now..
cabrera is a bad contract in ootp (in RL i think he'll have a bounce back year, unless his real age is closer to ~35-37. even then, i'd expect #'s similar to how he is rated in ootp, which is still quite good, but clearly a tick down from a few years ago.) -- should assume all players from a third-world country have forged or non-existent birth certificates to get more money. when large porions of population aren't born in hospitals let alone documents with any real integrity about the birth, god only knows when they were born when motivated by millions of dollars to lie.
anyway, detroit has a vmart expiring contract even if you cannot move. Cabrera is still rated ok, so you can trade him now, since he would be too old for any multi-year rebuild. zimmerman is a dumpster fire in ootp, so either trade or eat the contract. after that, it's smooth sailing.
even with det's crap market, you can reach pretty high payrolls and maintain a heavy scouting and development budget. onyl takes 1 decent season to get the fans back.
they have some good arms in the minors and maybe a position player or 2. i haven't perused the new bats, yet. but matt manning, beau burrows are quality prospects.. haven't looked at the fraedo kid. the OF stewart usualyl can be a decent offensive weapon.
at least half a good staff is there, which saves ~40M/year for a short while.
buy up smart free agents, and you can make playoffs in year 2 or more likely year 3. year 2 may be required to get budget back up to a respectable level with a solid season of winning baseball.
i take some liberties, but as of this year it wouldn't make much of a difference:
i know how much i am going to make relative to quality of the team, so i set my budgets in a precise way that fits, otherwise you have to deal with some lag time (2018/2019, this may be a lower budget than the one that is given - i don't take whichever is higher, i take the more likely correct budget - mine). also, i'll pay off the entirity of a contract if i want, as opposed to piecemealing it each year... i should have that perogative as the ceo/gm. the owner is "me" too
Zimmerman is a prime candidate for that, if a trade partner isn't found.. heck, i'd trade for $1 in return just to get rid of the contract. only because the game requires somethign in return to complete a trade.
even if i can't give it all at once, i can setup a trust to pay out those monies on a specific schedule, while benefiting from earning interest as it sits there, initially. perfectly realistic and smart financial management if you have the money to do it. there's no reason to kick the can down the road.. that is the worst financial move 99.9999% of the time in pro sports, yet they all do it.
like the tigers, the lions were hamstrung financially from 2011-2017 seasons. only this year did they have cap room to do anythign meaningful in FA. they may have a smart gm now.. don't just go for big names and expensive contracts. no player outside of the best 2-3 QBs are worth 20+M. unfortunately when a large portion of 32 nfl gm's are ******ed about financial management, even average QBs get 25M/year. at other positons you can avoid it the "dumb" contracts a bit more.. but still get your hand forced to passover the expensive ones too for the sake of the future.