Tigers make key front-office promotions to improve player development

As the Tigers are set to kick off a four-game series with the Toronto Blue Jays, the team announced a series of promotions on Thursday.

Ryan Garko has been promoted from vice president of player personnel to assistant general manager. Georgia Giblin, who has been one of the biggest forces in the growth of the Tigers' performance science department, has been promoted to vice president, baseball performance science. Joining the organization is Andrew Thomas, who will be the vice president of baseball analytics.

Garko has been instrumental in updating the Tigers' farm system, providing players with individual plans to succeed based on the organization's goals. Hired during the final days of the Al Avila era, Garko has implemented a simple philosophy. In previous years, minor league players told us the organization did not have an itemized list of things to work on.

Ryan Garko has already made several key changes within the Detroit Tigers organization

One item that stuck out in our conversation with Garko was identifying what right-handed pitcher Keider Montero needed to improve, and it was simply having things available in his native Spanish. As a result, he has been a steady riser in the minor league system.

This goes beyond just one player. In talking to several pitchers last season like Brant Hurter, Lael Lockhart Jr and most notably, Sawyer Gipson-Long, they were told to work on a new pitch or bring back something they threw previously. Sawyer took a few starts off last season to learn how to throw a new pitch to keep lefties off balance and as a result, was able to increase his K per 9 from a career 8 to over 10 in 2023.

Both Hurter and Lockhart saw improvements in their numbers, and both were key in Double-A Erie winning their first Eastern League title.

Even the simple idea of nutrition, with Garko and Giblin, Tigers prospects were getting better choices for protein and diet. It was a change that may sound odd that it took that long for the Tigers to do so but Garko, along with the implementations from Giblin, Detroit is now much more of a modern organization.

While the titles may sound superficial, the work Ryan Garko has done since his arrival is not. It may not all be visible on the surface as the offense continues to struggle, but having a modern farm system where new baseball data and common sense are used has made a huge impact on player development.