Stop blaming Scott Harris' trade deadline for Tigers' current maddening slide

The Detroit Tigers have struggled mightily since the All-Star break, and some fans are pointing at president of baseball operations Scott Harris as the scapegoat.

After a 9-4 loss to the Minnesota Twins at Comerica Park on Wednesday, the Tigers are now 7-12 since the break. Detroit started the second half horribly, losing eight of nine (including six in a row). Then they bounced back with four consecutive victories ... but have now lost four of six.

Harris was criticized for what some labeled an underwhelming deadline, but he hasn’t received enough publicity for acquiring multiple arms, a couple of which — Kyle Finnegan and Charlie Morton — have already proved impactful. Also to Harris’s credit, he hasn’t turned up his nose at the criticism; rather, he’s responded to it with a logical rebuttal, communicating the danger of gutting Detroit’s sparkling farm system in exchange for quick fixes.

Harris didn’t need to go out of his way to defend his deadline, though, mostly because there’s no proven correlation between an aggressive deadline and second-half success. Look at the Milwaukee Brewers as an example. Despite an even more conservative deadline than Detroit, Milwaukee has only continued its winning ways in the second half, going 14-4 since the All-Star break. The Brewers have had elite chemistry all season long, and they opted to lean into that formula rather than mess with it. So far, it’s paying off.

Of course, there are teams who were much more aggressive than Detroit at the deadline: the New York Yankees, New York Mets, Chicago Cubs and Houston Astros are examples. All four clubs were lauded by fans for being unafraid to make moves at the deadline, yet all four clubs have struggled in the win column since.

The Yankees snapped a five-game losing streak on Wednesday and are 8-11 since the All-Star break. The Mets have lost eight of nine and are 8-10 since the break. The Cubs are 9-9 and the Astros are 8-11.

Blaming Harris’s deadline for Detroit’s cold second half is a lazy, oversimplified approach. The few, carefully curated moves that Harris did make have thus far proved fruitful (on the whole). Moreover, Milwaukee is showing the value of deadline prudence, whereas other teams are showing that a bold deadline on paper doesn’t guarantee positive change in between the lines or in the clubhouse.

Sure, there are plenty of examples in league history of a contender filling gaping holes at the deadline and being better for it. Perhaps a team like the 2025 Yankees has problems that, despite an active deadline, remain unsolved. Sometimes, these issues can be leadership- or culture-based, with roster changes not able to reach the core of the team’s greatest ailments.

The Tigers haven’t suffered from such deep-rooted problems this season. They were seen by some as the best team in baseball earlier in the summer for a reason. Enough winning pieces are there, which the majority of Detroit’s games this season have indicated (much to the inconvenience of Harris’s greatest critics).

Detroit isn’t suffering from a failed deadline. The Tigers are going through a tough stretch of a 162-game season, which all teams — even World Series winners — experience. There’s no reason Detroit can’t reclaim its May magic as the campaign approaches crunch time. It’ll come down to execution on the diamond and has nothing to do with the front office, which has done its job assembling a contender.