Not a trade deadline has passed for Scott Harris without the Tigers' president of baseball operations feeling like he could have done more to achieve his aims. This year's was no different, Harris said Monday after the Tigers' season came to an end in Game 5 of the ALDS last Friday for the second straight year, "another deadline where I wasn’t completely satisfied with the results."
"However, do I regret not pulling the trigger on the deals that we had access to at the deadline? I don’t," said Harris. "And I’ll tell you why. I think I’m even more confident now than I was then that the deals that we had access to that we passed on would have frustrated our fans more than not doing the deals."
While Harris can't name names in deals that didn't get across the finish line, he was adamant that the players that were most commonly linked to the Tigers in media reports "would have cost us either a player on our postseason roster plus additional pieces, or one of our top prospects plus additional pieces" and, "in some cases," the players they would have added cratered after the deadline.
"We could have acquired a player who was going to be a pending free agent on the day of the deadline, we probably would have gotten an A on the trade grades on the day of the deadline, and probably would have gotten plenty of praise in the coverage, only to see that player not perform well down the stretch and the player we traded perform better than that player this year and be controllable in the future," Harris said. "I don’t regret those deals at all."
It's very possible that Harris was referring here to Troy Melton, especially after noting that the Tigers opted to keep players who got "some really big outs for us in the postseason." Melton, 24, is one of the Tigers' top young arms. He posted a 2.76 ERA in his debut season with Detroit and pitched in four games in the playoffs, including Game 1 of the ALDS as a starter and Game 5 out of the bullpen, allowing one run in eight innings.
But Harris' conscience isn't completely clean over his conservative approach to the deadline, which precipitated the Tigers' late-season collapse in the AL Central.
For one, Harris wishes "we had added more productive innings to our rotation in the deals we did," despite a "shallow" market for starting pitchers. While he was pleased with the additions they made to their bullpen in Kyle Finnegan and Rafael Montero, and internally in Troy Melton, neither Chris Paddack nor Charlie Morton was close to a suitable replacement for injured starter Reese Olson.
"We needed more performance in our rotation and we weren’t able to do that. And that’s on me," Harris said. "I should have done better in the rotation, but I do think it is a reflection on the actual markets that existed and I’m proud of the efforts that our staff made."
That being said, the Tigers didn't plan for either Paddack or Morton "to play big roles for us in the postseason," said Harris. Rather, the Tigers figured "we were going to be dangerous (in the playoffs) once we lined up our pitching," said Harris, "and we were." They wound up posting a 2.98 ERA as a staff in eight postseason games and held a high-powered Mariners lineup to a .207 average in a nip-and-tuck series.
"So I’m pretty sure the pitching wasn’t necessarily the primary issue as to why we’re not in Toronto right now," Harris said.
Which brings him to his second and deeper misgiving: "I think the offensive performance we had down the stretch is a fair question on, could we have done more? The question that I often have found myself reflecting on is, should we have added a bat at the deadline? I think that’s a very common question that we hear from different people, like when I run into people on the street."
Through August, the Tigers were eighth in the majors in runs per game (4.8) and 11th in OPS (.740). They sunk to 24th in both categories in September: 4.0 runs per game, .672 OPS. Those struggles followed them into the playoffs where they averaged 3.6 runs per game and posted a .607 OPS. In the Tigers' season-ending loss last Friday, their 2-3-4-5 hitters -- Gleyber Torres, Riley Greene, Spencer Torkelson and Colt Keith -- went 0-for-23 with 10 strikeouts.
Harris gave himself some grace in standing pat with his lineup at the deadline, noting that "it’s important for us to remind ourselves of where we were at when we were making those decisions."
"In July, we just had four position players in the All-Star Game. On August 31, our offense had scored the eighth most runs of any team in baseball. And in order to add a bat, we would have had to displace a high-performing player who had helped us achieve a top-eight offense at that point. And maybe we should have. Maybe that is a fair question. I think the more pressing and fundamental question is, how does a top-eight offense for five months become a bottom-eight offense in September? That’s the question that really keeps me up at night," said Harris.
To Harris, the answer is mutli-pronged.
"I think it’s a function of our approach changes, it’s a function of the contact, it’s a function of the environment," he said. "That’s something we’re going to spend a lot of time digging on because that’s the question that really stood in the way of winning a World Series, in my opinion. I think if we had continued to produce at a really high level while continuing to pitch at a really high level and play the kind of clean, consistent baseballs that drove us to over 25 games over .500 at the end of August, that’s a team that we could really reasonably expect to be playing in Toronto right now with a great chance to win the World Series.
"So that’s the thing that I’m really going to obsess over this offseason: What changed with our offense going from the first five months to the last month? And is that a blip in the radar or is that predictive of the future? We have to get to the bottom of that question."
Harris acknowledged that it's his job to preempt slumps across the roster. He wasn't able to do that this year when it mattered for the Tigers most. He said that if he "could go back and do it all over again, I would focus on getting ahead of some of the changes that we may or may not have been able to see in August that created the September of underperformance."
"I think that’s the pressing question. Maybe the answer is both. Maybe we should have added a bat and we should have gotten ahead of some of the changes that our young hitters faced in difficult environments against better pitching in September and October," Harris said. "Those are the questions that are rattling around my head and the questions that I’m going to obsess over and try to get answers to so that we can fix it for next year."