The one trade Tigers fans begged for but didn't get at the 2025 deadline

The Tigers were active ahead of the trade deadline, as promised, but fans probably don't know who a lot of these new guys are, much less how they're going to help Detroit win a World Series this year. They started off with Chris Paddack and Randy Dobnak on July 28, and from Wednesday to Thursday's 6 PM deadline added Rafael Montero, Paul Sewald, Kyle Finnegan, Codi Heuer, and Charlie Morton (in that order).

That's definitely a considerable haul of new arms, but their efficacy will remain to be seen. Montero is notoriously terrible, Sewald is hurt with no timeline to return, and Finnegan, Heuer, and Morton all had 4.00+ ERAs (some much higher) before they were traded.

Scott Harris explained, "The flashiest moves often generate the headlines. They're not always the most effective moves. [...] We felt like, at this moment in time, giving up on young players to chase short-term fixes for this organization is not in the best term of the Tigers, both in the short-term and long-term. So we tried to attack it creatively."

"Creative" is definitely one word for it. Undoubtedly, the flashiest move the Tigers could've made would've been trading for Eugenio Suárez, a move that fans were chomping at the bit for, but he ended up with a different former team when the Mariners sent three top-20 prospects to the Diamondbacks for him.

Tigers' underwhelming trade deadline unfortunately didn't include a reunion with Eugenio Suárez

The Mariners have a pretty deep farm system themselves, but the Tigers have the best by a lot of estimations. Tyler Locklear was the highest-ranked prospect in the Mariners' half at No. 9 — could the Tigers have gotten away with trading fewer prospects who rank higher, or just the same amount who rank lower? Either way, it was clearly too much for Harris to oblige to.

The Tigers were a good team before the deadline and remain so after, but there's no question that Suárez would've given them that extra edge that the sum of their entire haul this year does not. Detroit is banking on their ability to fix some of these guys up and make sure that they'll be able to meaningfully contribute which, to be fair, they do have a history of.

Maybe the trade deadline just isn't Harris' venue. He made a few unexpectedly bold additions in the offseason (or at least tried to), and if these new players can actually make an impact and help the Tigers into a deep postseason run, Harris may have even more leeway to add in the upcoming offseason.