Detroit Tigers: 3 things we want to see from the team under Scott Harris

Scott Harris will hopefully modernize the Detroit Tigers organization

Under the Al Avila regime, the Detroit Tigers were quite possibly the least forward-thinking organization in all of baseball. Avila just wasn’t savvy enough to be a top baseball executive in the modern game. Now under Scott Harris, that looks like it is going to change.

Harris comes from a baseball background that includes working for the likes of Theo Epstein and Farhan Zaidi. When he laid his out his vision for the club at his introductory press conference, it gave Tigers fans some much-needed hope. He actually seems like a smart baseball mind.

There are many things that other organizations do that the Tigers have been late to the party on, like good international and amateur scouting, savvy trades, and smart spending. We’d love to see them be active in the free agent market again this offseason, but right now it’s really hard to tell what this team will do.

This team needs to be more forward-thinking. Here are three things we’d like to see the Detroit Tigers organization do under Scott Harris.

Make more trades—specifically savvy trades

This is something the Detroit Tigers almost never did under Avila. They only trades he made were largely when the team was selling off pieces, with the lone exception being the Austin Meadows trade. Needless to say, most of them didn’t work out very well.

But hopefully under the Harris regime, that will change. The best teams in the league—the Dodgers, Astros, Braves, you name it—are all very smart in terms of their trades. The Braves rebuilt their entire outfield at the trade deadline last year, and they were all contributors in their World Series run.

The Dodgers acquired Mookie Betts in what was virtually a salary dump for the Red Sox, as hard as that may be to believe. As we well know, the Astros gave up pretty much nothing for Justin Verlander.

Then you have a team like the Rays, who are the kings of savvy trades. They always seem to have a leg up in trade negotiations. What may seem like a strange trade on the surface often ends up being a win for them. These are all things the Tigers simply haven’t done over the past several years.

Scott Harris seems like a smart enough guy to where that may change. In no way am I saying that the Tigers should copy other organizations—Harris made it pretty clear that they aren’t going to do that. We just want to see them act like a smart, modern baseball organization.

Hopefully, the Tigers will be active on the trade market this offseason. Even if it’s just small trades, that would be fine. It’s better than what this team has done on the trade market lately—which is nothing.

Better player development at the major league level

The Tigers have gotten better with player development at the minor league level, with guys like Kerry Carpenter, Parker Meadows and Wenceel Perez reviving their careers in the farm system this year. But further development at the big league level remains a major issue.

Look at Spencer Torkelson. A 1:1 pick, considered by many to be a generational hitting talent, was anything but during the first half of the 2022 season. They couldn’t fix him up here, so they sent him to Toledo. He’s looked better since he was recalled on Sept. 1, but it was really discouraging to seem him struggle so much.

Akil Baddoo is another example. He looked like a budding star last season, but has fallen off a cliff in 2022. As a result, his spot on the roster next season is no guarantee.

Are there any player development wins for the Tigers in recent years? One immediately comes to mind, and that’s Eric Haase. A minor league journeyman, Cleveland gave him to the Tigers for a bag of peanuts, and had a solid rookie season in 2021 where he hit 22 homers. Many projections had him regressing to the mean in 2022, and early on it looked like they were right, but about halfway through the season he found his swing again, and he’s arguably been the Tigers’ most consistent hitter as a result.

They’ve been much better on the pitching side thanks in large part to pitching coach Chris Fetter. I mean, they got quality innings out of Drew Hutchison this season for crying out loud. He also fixed Joe Jimenez. Fetter truly is a wizard.

But the bottom line is, the Detroit Tigers need to be better at developing hitters at the major league level. They can start by firing hitting coach Scott Coolbaugh—something that should’ve been done a long time ago.