Detroit Tigers: 4 candidates we’d love for Scott Harris to hire as GM

Scott Harris has yet to hire a GM for the Detroit Tigers

Detroit Tigers president of baseball operations Scott Harris has been busy the last few days, letting go of longtime assistant GM David Chadd and several people on the training staff, as well as hiring Rob Metzler to be the team’s new assistant GM and de facto scouting director. But he has yet to hire a GM, something he said he would do at his introductory press conference on Sept. 20.

Yesterday, we got news that he still intends to hire a GM, but hasn’t yet started that process and hasn’t held any interviews.

Last week, there were two rumored names to be candidiates for the position, but that’s all we’ve gotten on that front. Obviously, the Ilitches are really good at keeping things close to the vest, but it’s a but surprising that the Tigers still haven’t hired a GM.

While we wait not so patiently for Harris to make a decision, we’re going to go over a few names we’d love to see the Detroit Tigers hire as their new GM. Let’s get started.

Carlos Rodriguez, Rays VP of baseball operations

Harris already poached from the Rays once, why not do it again? Rodriguez has been with Tampa since 2010, when he was an international scout for them. He worked his way up to director of internaitional scouting, a position he held from 2015-19, where he signed a bunch of recognizanle names.

Wander Franco, Vidal Brujan, Jose Alvarado, Diego Castillo. These are all bonafide big-leaguers that Rodriguez had a hand in signing and scouting. The Tigers would kill for that kind of international scouting.

He transitioned into his current role in 2020, where he assists president of baseball operations Erik Neander in all areas of baseball operations while overseeing the club’s player development, baseball performance science, international scouting and academy operations.

Harris has preached wanting to create a culture of development with the Tigers, and that starts with scouting. Metzler will oversee that area of the team, but having Rodriguez on board will not only provide Metzler with somebody he’s familair with, but will also add somebody with an outstanding international scouting background to the front office.

The Detroit Tigers need to improve their international scouting. Having someone like Rodriguez on board would help tremendously with that.

James Harris, Guardians assistant GM

Though it might seem confusing to have two people with the same last name at the top of their front office, if the Detroit Tigers wanted to start a law firm of Harris and Harris, we wouldn’t be upset about it.

Harris’ resume is incredibly impressive—I’m talking about James, just to be clear. He actually got his career started in football, starting as a consultant for the San Francisco 49ers, as well as being an assistant atheletic director for the University of Oregon. He went on to be the chief of staff for the Philadelphia Eagles for a few years before moving over to baseball, where he was a special assistant in the Pirates’ front office for less than a year.

Cleveland hired him to be their director of player development in 2016, eventually working his way up to his current role of assistant GM.

This would once again be playing off Scott Harris’ culture of development motto. The Guardians have become one of the better organizations in all of baseball at developing home grown talent, and that’s largely thanks to the work of James Harris. The team won 92 games and won the AL Central with one of the lowest payrolls in baseball because they can develop players.

James Harris would be a home run hire. Stealing a well-respected front office excecutive from one of your division rivals would be an all-time thievery by Scott Harris.

Orioles assistant GM Sig Mejdal

Do you like analytics? Well, this is the GM candidate for you. Mejdal has spent his entire career using analytics and sabremetrics to try to get players in the best situations to succeed.

He got his baseball career started with the Cardinals in 2005, where he led their at-the-time new analytics department. In 2012, the Astros hired him to be their director of decision sciences. Under his watch, the Astros led the wave of analytics is major league baseball, ranking near the top of the league in shift-usage.

When Mike Elias became the GM of the Orioles, he took Mejdal with him to be his assistant GM. While in Baltimore, he has continued to do his thing when it comes to analytics, completely reshaping the Orioles’ analytics department.

Mejdal seems like an ideal fit for the Detroit Tigers, given the analytics backgrounds of both Scott Harris and A.J. Hinch. Plus, he’s familiar with Hinch from their days in Houston.

The Tigers have made a huge shift toward analytics over the past couple of years. If they wanted to double down on that, Mejdal would make a lot of sense.