You could hear the analyst in Scott Harris as he detailed his plan for the Tigers on Tuesday. You could hear the critical thinker with an economics degree from UCLA and the strategist with an MBA from Northwestern in the organization's new president of baseball operations. You could hear the sort of forward-thinking intelligence this franchise has been lacking almost as soon as Harris spoke into a microphone on a dais inside Comerica Park, home to maybe the most disappointing team in baseball this season.
Sitting next to Tigers owner Chris Ilitch, who hailed "a new era of Detroit Tigers baseball," the 35-year-old Harris said his vision for the Tigers can be distilled into "three main concepts" that he called a "combination of everyone I’ve worked for and every conversation I’ve had throughout my career," from his time with Theo Epstein and the Cubs to Farhan Zaidi and the Giants.
"One," said Harris, "we need to acquire, develop and retain young players. It’s not a unique strategy. Most organizations in baseball are trying to do that, but it is exceptionally important for us. We need to absolutely lean into that over the next few years."
The Tigers have had no trouble acquiring young talent in recent years, thanks to a slew of high picks in the draft. It's on the development side where they have floundered, one of the failures that led to the firing of former general manager Al Avila. Harris intends for that to change, which is the crux of his second organizational concept.
"The best organizations in baseball are not only acquiring that talent, they’re getting the absolute most out of that talent when it gets into the organization. For me, we need to create a culture of development here," he said.
To Harris, that means an environment in which players at every level of the organization are motivated to improve -- and equipped with the tools to do so.
"When I think of the Tigers over the next few years, I think of free agents who may look to go to different places across our game. And when they think of Detroit, they think of an environment where they are confident they can come and get better, they can perform at a higher level, they can lengthen their careers. They know that they are going to be surrounded by people that are going to get the absolute most out of them," Harris said.
He also wants the players already in the organization to feel the same way, especially those climbing the ladder to the big leagues. When the Tigers promote a prospect to Detroit, Harris doesn't "want him to take a breath or feel like he's made it."
"I want him to be excited about the next level of development," Harris said. "When he walks into the clubhouse, I want him to know that A.J. (Hinch) and his staff will know everything about him. They’re going to know how to support him, how to prepare him for the game, how to prepare him for the adjustments that the league is already making back to him.
"That’s going to be really important if we’re going to build the type of organization that we want to build here. That culture of development has to permeate all levels of our organization."
Lastly, and it was here that he sounded like the Ivy League-educated player analyst for the Indians who tells A's GM Billy Beane in the movie 'Moneyball' that "there is an epidemic failure within the game to understand what is really happening," Harris said clearly and confidently, "I believe the strike zone disproportionately influences just about everything you see on the baseball field." And then he sounded a lot like A.J. Hinch.
"It dictates pitch counts, count leverage, length of inning, it dictates the load you’re putting on the pitchers’ bodies and how many pitchers you’re going to have to use throughout a series," Harris said. "It also dictates the quality of contact you’re giving up and how much contact you’re giving up, which therefore influences the quality of defense you can build and execute behind the pitcher.
"It touches essentially every part of our game, so we’re going to start there. We’re going to start with the strike zone. We want to dominate the strike zone on both sides of the ball and we want to acquire, develop and retain players that can give us a chance to do that."
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