Detroit Tigers president of baseball operations Scott Harris made it clear on Monday, he doesn’t regret how he handled the 2024 MLB Trade Deadline.
Speaking at the team’s end-of-season press conference, Harris addressed questions about whether the front office should’ve been more aggressive as the Tigers pushed toward contention late in the season. His answer was direct, and confident.
“Do I regret not adding more performance to this team at the deadline?” Harris said. “I don’t think I’ve ever gone through a deadline completely satisfied with the results. It’s a really difficult challenge, and I think this deadline is another where I wasn’t completely satisfied with the results. However, do I regret not pulling the trigger on the deals we had access to at the deadline? I do not.”
Harris Explains the Tough Calls Behind the Scenes
While Harris didn’t share the specifics of the trades that were on the table, he made it clear that the Tigers passed on deals that would have hurt the club more than helped it, both short and long term.
“I think I’m even more confident now than I was then, that the deals we had access to, that we passed on, would’ve frustrated our fans more than not doing the deals,” Harris said.
According to Harris, some of the most talked-about trade targets in the media would have required Detroit to part with key players from its postseason roster or top prospects in exchange for rentals who didn’t end up performing well.
“Those players would have cost either a player on our postseason roster plus additional pieces, or one of our top prospects plus additional pieces,” Harris explained. “Some of them didn’t perform at all down the stretch, would’ve been a free agent in two months, and would have cost a player on our postseason roster that actually performed better than the player we acquired, and was controllable in the future.”
Staying True to the Long-Term Vision
Harris acknowledged that the front office could’ve easily won over fans and analysts in the short term by making a flashy move, but that kind of quick fix wouldn’t have served the organization’s long-term goals.
“We probably could have acquired a player who is going to be a pending free agent on the day of the deadline,” Harris said. “We probably would have gotten an ‘A’ on the trade grades on the day of the deadline and plenty of praise in the coverage, only to see that player not perform down the stretch while the player we kept performed better this year and will be controllable in the future.”
In the end, Harris made it clear that discipline, not desperation, guided his decisions.
“I don’t regret those deals at all,” he concluded.
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Plenty of Harris mistakes starting with 15 mill to Cobb when JV was available at the same price. None of the pitchers the tigers could have gotten/used at the trade deadline cost a team a top 100 prospect. Hinch and Harris said getting a bat at the deadline would have displaced a producing hitter on the team. Well, Hinch let the heart of the order go HITLESS in the final 15 inning game and never got his “producing “hitters off the bench. Hinch is too comfortable not taking resposibility when the majority of fans/analysts explain where certain failures have been. Same with Harris. We will see if his off season failures of missing out on bats they need, Bregman, and pitchers to sign, sadly continue.
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Plenty of Harris mistakes starting with 15 mill to Cobb when JV was available at the same price. None of the pitchers the tigers could have gotten/used at the trade deadline cost a team a top 100 prospect. Hinch and Harris said getting a bat at the deadline would have displaced a producing hitter on the team. Well, Hinch let the heart of the order go HITLESS in the final 15 inning game and never got his “producing “hitters off the bench. Hinch is too comfortable not taking resposibility when the majority of fans/analysts explain where certain failures have been. Same with Harris. We will see if his off season failures of missing out on bats they need, Bregman, and pitchers to sign, sadly continue.