Well, you can’t say the Tigers didn’t add pitching at the trade deadline.
Certainly there is quantity, but the quality can fairly be questioned. There is a Maybe here, a Perhaps there, an If or two over yonder. Take the two biggest so-called names the Tigers acquired, starting pitcher Charlie Morton and high-leverage reliever Kyle Finnegan.
Morton has had a decorated career, pitched for A.J. Hinch on great teams in the past and had thrown relatively well lately. Yet, he got off to a horrific start, is 41 years old and his body of work in 2025 isn’t good (5.42 ERA, including a WHIP of nearly 1.5 in June and July).
Finnegan is at the opposite end of the spectrum. He is close to his prime, having not yet turned 34, and gasses the ball regularly at more than 96 mph. He has 20 saves this year and had 38 in 2024. But over the last calendar year Finnegan’s WHIP has been above 1.4. It’s above 2.0 the last month. It’s why his trade value plummeted.
So which Charlie Morton or Kyle Finnegan are you going to see? It falls under the category of anybody’s guess.
Mason Miller (to the Padres), Jhoan Duran (Phillies), David Bednar (Yankees), Griffin Jax (Rays) and Ryan Helsley (Mets) all have the type of power arms the Tigers really needed for the late innings as a team with October aspirations. Only Miller was dealt at an outrageous cost.
A case can be made, and it’s true, that the Tigers sacrificed hardly anything at the deadline to hinder their highly-touted player development system, and improved their staff by not only adding Morton and Finnegan, but Chris Paddack, Rafael Montero and an injured Paul Sewald.
Paddack and Montero have shown some extended flashes as MLB pitchers, but there have been more downs than ups for both, especially in ’25. The Tigers' deadline strategy was a bit like throwing things against the wall with limited glue and hoping one or two will stick.
It was understood why the Tigers weren’t going to deal Kevin McGonigle, Max Clark, Bryce Rainer or Cris Rodriguez, but it’s possible president of baseball operations Scott Harris left too many cards on the table.
Thayron Liranzo and Josue Briceño are high-end power-hitting prospects. There are some organizations in which they'd be the top prospects. Certainly, they would have been in many years in the past for Detroit. They are different players and it’s difficult to discern who has the better upside. But they share the same modus operandi in the sense they are hit-first catchers who may not stick behind the plate.
Do you need two players like that, especially given Tigers' regular Dillon Dingler is young and gifted? Hao-Yu Lee, Jace Jung and Max Anderson are all second basemen. Lee and Jung are in Triple-A, Anderson should be. How many second basemen do you need?
Trade deadline deals are fickle. Some of the apparent good ones go bad, while some that seem underwhelming turn out perfectly.
This was the first excursion into being a buyer at the trade deadline for Harris, and his actions suggest he tried to have his cake by adding a lot of pitching, and eat it, too, by not giving up much in return.
As a result, it appears most other contenders improved more than the Tigers at the deadline.