Detroit Tigers hire Mark Conner to serve as scouting director

Detroit Tigers make yet another hire on Saturday.

The Detroit Tigers have gone out and hired another member of their re-tooled front office. There is still more to be done, but they have added in a new member of the scouting department. The team went out and hired a new scouting director.

Mark Conner was brought in from the San Diego Padres organization to join the Detroit Tigers front office. He will slot in underneath Rob Metzler, another new hire. Conner will serve as the scouting director, working under Vice President and Assistant General Manager Rob Metzler.

As mentioned, the Tigers were able to poach Conner from the Padres, where he has spent the last 12 seasons. He held the scouting director title for seven seasons with the Padres before getting bumped up to a special assistant role for General Manager A.J. Preller with the team.

Conner brings a plethora of good experiences to the table over the years. He has helped the Padres stockpile prospects. Well, most of them have been traded as the Padres geared up for their postseason run, acquiring Juan Soto.

But Conner has excelled in the department of drafting players and also evaluating the farm system from within. Having the knowledge to do both will help him immensely here in Detroit and allow him to help Metzler.

While Metzler will be the “right-hand man” of Scott Harris, Conner will serve in the same role with Metzler. They continue to build the scouting department from the top down, adding in pieces to help the team change the way they operate for the better.

Harris continues to get the job done. Bringing in Conner to assist with the team’s scouting aspect of the front office will help the Tigers make some serious strides quickly. One of those things will be finding better and more efficient ways to draft and get the job done.

There’s a lot to like with the new direction that this team is trending. It’s easy to drink the kool-aid on hires like this that continue to show that the team is starting to build towards a new culture, a new operation, and a new brand.

This offseason will be long, and a ton of moves are still left to be made. This applies to the front office and the on-field product, but the Tigers are changing for the better. It will take time, but the trendline for this team has crossed into the positive area.