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 international and amateur scouting

This is a big one. The Avila regime was notoriously bad in both of these areas. They got a little better at scouting within the U.S. with guys like Wilmer Flores, but the international scouting never improved.

Looking at the Tigers prospect rankings on MLB Pipeline, you have to scroll all the way down to 11 and 12 before you find any international prospects—Cristian Santana and Roberto Campos, respectively. In fact, less than a third of Pipeline’s top 30 Tigers prospects are international free agent signees.

Their latest signee, SS Javier Osorio, who’s ranked No. 29 on Pipeline’s list, was awful this season in rookie ball. He had a .508 OPS in 46 games. He’s still just 17 years old, but that’s horrible offensive production regardless of age and level of professional baseball.

Not to use the Astros an example again, but they are one of the premiere organizations when it comes to international scouting. Three fifths of their current starting rotation were signed for next to nothing out of Latin America—Luis Garcia for $20,000, Framber Valdez for $10,000, and Cristian Javier for $10,000. That’s unreal scouting by Houston.

Looks at some of the best young players in the game today, many of them were signed as international free agents. Shohei Ohtani, Juan Soto, Julio Rodriguez, Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Ronald Acuna Jr., all signed off the international market. International scouting is a huge part of today’s game.

I’m not asking for the Tigers to be that shrewd in international scouting (though it would be nice), but they need to be much better than they’ve been over the past seven years. Harris should just clean house in that department and start from scratch.