Tigers: 4 trade deadline mistakes Scott Harris must avoid at all costs

2. Making a trade just to make a trade

While we want Harris to make some trades, trading someone just for the sake of trading someone is something Al Avila did often, and look how far that got him. Trading a player simply because they're on an expiring deal is just really uninspiring and not creative whatsoever.

There has to be some intent in the deals he makes. He needs to identify a prospect or an MLB player he likes and try to get that player.

Avila failed to do this so many times. In 2017, he traded J.D. Martinez to the Diamondbacks for Dawel Lugo, Sergio Alcantara, and Jose King. None of those players are in the organization anymore.

That same year, he flipped Justin Upton to the Angels in a salary dump. I guess you could say there was intent there, but he did this at the old August waiver trade deadline, so the Angels only had Upton for the last month of the season. He would end up opting in to the rest of his contract, so really the Halos committed highway robbery with that trade.

Scott Harris is supposedly much more savvy. Hopefully we get to see some of that over the next two days.