Scott Harris and the Tigers took it down to the wire, but ultimately pulled the trigger on a Jack Flaherty trade. The club traded Flaherty to the Dodgers minutes before Tuesday's 6 p.m. deadline in exchange for position-playing prospects Thayron Liranzo and Trey Sweeney.
"Jack was a very popular name on my phone all week," Harris said. "We got a lot of calls about Jack. Our goal was to find young talent, especially position-playing talent that could help us at premium positions moving forward."
Liranzo is the prize of the return, a 21-year-old switch-hitting catcher who ranked third among the Dodgers' top prospects per Baseball America, eighth per MLB Pipeline. He smacked 24 homers last season in A-ball. He has seven homers and a .700 OPS in High-A this season and boasts "plus raw power."
Per MLB Pipeline, Liranzo "has become one of the best young catching prospects in baseball." Per Harris, he "has an advanced approach and hits the ball really, really hard and has a chance to project into a frontline catcher for us moving forward."
Liranzo played in the MLB Futures Game during All-Star weekend earlier this month, "which is sort of anointing him as one of the best young players in baseball," said Harris. "We’ve known about him for a while, we’ve been tracking him for a while. I think the profile alone is really good."
Sweeney is a 24-year-old shortstop in Triple-A. The former first-round pick of the Yankees is hitting .254 with 13 homers and a .764 OPS this year. He ranked No. 22 among the Dodgers' prospects per MLB Pipeline, No. 28 per Baseball America. He presents a potential solution to the Tigers' woes at shortstop, but he will start in Toledo.
"A area of need for us an an organization," said Harris, "and it fills a really important position."
A left-handed hitter, Sweeney is "hitting the ball considerably harder this year than he was in previous years," Harris said. "He’s still settling into Triple-A right now, so that's where he’s going to go for us. He needs a few more reps there before he can impact us up here.
"But in terms of the athlete, the swing, the ability to play a premium position as a left-handed hitter, those are hard to find and we were fortunate to find one in Trey."
Flaherty enjoyed a bounce-back season with the Tigers after they signed him to a one-year, $14 million deal with the club last winter. With the help of Detroit's pitching coaches, the 28-year-old right-hander recovered the form that made him a Cy Young candidate with the Cardinals early in his career.
Flaherty was one of the most valuable rental pitchers on the trade market, boasting a 2.95 ERA across 18 starts. Harris and the Tigers cashed him in before it was too late.