Detroit Tigers: 6 things you missed from Scott Harris’ GM Meetings presser

We finally heard from Detroit Tigers president of baseball ops Scott Harris about his offseason plans

The GM Meetings are underway, and we’ve already had our fair share of Detroit Tigers rumors. But we also finally heard from Scott Harris about his plans this offseason to upgrade the Tigers roster.

Harris talked about a number of things related to the roster, what positions he thinks need improving, and also talked about some non-roster related stuff. He didn’t go into a whole lot of detail about anything, but there were still some interesting nuggets.

The presser wasn’t broadcast anywhere, so you likely missed it. Not to worry, we’ve go you covered. In this piece, we’re going to go over six things you might have missed from Scott Harris’ first press conference of the offseason. Let’s get started.

Javier Baez will be Detroit Tigers starting SS on Opening Day 2023

Scott Harris said that he expects Javier Baez to be the Tigers starting shortstop on Opening Day next year, which squashes any hope that they would upgrade the position and move Baez to second base.

Harris elaborated on why he’s sticking with Baez, calling his defensive struggles last year “an anomaly.”

Harris is the president of baseball operations for a major league baseball team, and I’m just a blogger/writer on the internet, but I fear he may be mistaken here. If anything, his anomaly came in 2019, when he put up a whopping 31 outs above average. He has not come anywhere close to that any other year in his career.

This is obviously somewhat disappointing to see. I only say somewhat disappointing because nobody was really expecting the Tigers to pull the trigger on moving Baez to 2B and signing another shortstop. It is only one year into a six-year deal, after all. Again, best-case scenario for the Tigers here is that Baez finds his swing again next year, turns the clock back to 2018 when he finished second in NL MVP voting, and opts out of the contract.