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

Trade deadlines for the Detroit Tigers under Al Avila...did not go well. That's blantantly obvious. Thankfully, he's no longer the Tigers GM. Scott Harris is the team's president of baseball operations, and this will be his first trade deadline.

There's two days to go. The official deadline to make trades is Aug. 1 at 6 p.m., which means Harris has less than 48 hours now to make some deals. One thing is for sure: he has plenty of mistakes to learn from in recent Tigers history.

Last season may have been Al Avila's worst trade deadline yet, and that's saying something. He had several movable assets, including LHPs Andrew Chafin and Gregory Soto, and RHPs Michael Fulmer and Joe Jimenez. The only one that got moved was Fulmer, to the Twins in a last-minute deal. Robbie Grossman was also dealt to the Braves for a random prospect in A-ball.

This team simply cannot afford another bad trade deadline. Scott Harris needs to work some magic here. The word is he's pretty savvy, so we're going to see what he's got. But with that said, here are four trade deadline mistakes he must avoid.

1. Standing pat (not making any trades)

Standing pat does the Tigers absolutely no good. They aren't in contention, and there's no reason to keep guys like Michael Lorenzen and Jose Cisnero since they are veterans on expiring deals. One could argue they could keep Eduardo Rodriguez and try to re-sign him, but that's a conversation for another day.

Harris cannot afford to sit on his hands and make no deals. That's basically what Avila did last year, and you could argue that cost him his job. That wouldn't happen to Harris in just his first year on the job, but it certainly wouldn't be a very good start to his tenure.

We'd like to believe that Scott Harris is better at this job than Al Avila was, at least when it comes to trades. Simply making a move or two would be a good start.

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.

3. Being too passive

This is something we're kind of already seeing, at least that's what it feels like from the outside. The deadline is less than two days away, and while there has apparently been a lot of interest in the likes of E-rod and Lorenzen, no deal has been made. Other teams around the league have already been making deals for a few days now. What's the hold-up?

We really hope Harris isn't waiting for a deal to come to him. We would like to see him be much more aggressive. That's what was so promising about the Gregory Soto trade. Talks started with Dave Dombrowski at the Winter Meetings, then after the trade was announced, Dombrowski said Harris called him to re-ignite those talks.

We're hoping Harris is more of a go-getter, but the fact that he hasn't made a deal yet is slightly concerning. Hopefully we'll see something here soon.