Tigers' reported Gleyber Torres plan exposes another failed trade opportunity

As the Detroit Tigers drift further and further away from the American League playoff picture, they are calling up some younger players like infielder John Peck, who should get a pretty extended look this final month of the season. According to manager AJ Hinch, that means some veterans could see less playing time.

This makes one wonder why the Tigers chose not to trade Torres at the trade deadline. Torres is going to be a free agent after the season, so it would have made sense to deal him, especially since the Tigers essentially waved the white flag by trading away both Tarik Skubal and Casey Mize.

Detroit’s perplexing strategy of sort of “half-selling” by gutting the rotation, while at the same time seeming to pretend that they could make a run at the playoffs without two of their best pitchers, was always a head-scratcher. If they were going to sell, why not sell all the way?

Now, they are left in this weird sort of limbo where they are giving the young guys a shot and benching the veterans. While this is certainly the right decision, it makes one wish they could go back in time and make the right call by dealing more players away with how bad they’ve been since the trade deadline.

Tigers have no excuse for not trading Gleyber Torres

One would imagine Torres probably at least had some suitors. Entering play on Friday, he's hitting .262/.367/.382 with eight home runs and 36 RBI on the year. He’s proven that he’s got quite a bit of pop in his bat, well above-average plate discipline, and could’ve been a decent upgrade for a contender.

Maybe teams didn’t want to take on the rest of his $22 million deal, but if the Tigers were smart they could have agreed to pay down some of that in order to make it less of a burden for another team and milk a better prospect out of them.

Now, the Tigers are just stuck with him the rest of this year as they slowly but surely fade out of contention, the most frustrating place to be. It’s just an example of president of baseball operations Scott Harris trying to thread the needle when he should have either gone all-in on selling and commit to playing the young guys, or all-in on buying and trying to make a run.

He got caught in the middle, and the fact that Torres is still on the roster is an annoying reminder of that fact. 

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