For the first time in a decade, the Tigers are poised to be buyers at the trade deadline.
"I hope so," Scott Harris said Wednesday on 97.1 The Ticket. "We’re 20 games over .500 right now, we’re playing really well. We’re preparing to add to this team in July, but we gotta keep playing well to put ourselves in position to do that."
With Tuesday's win over the Orioles, the Tigers moved to an MLB-best 44-24. They have an 8.0-game lead in the AL Central. It doesn't mean that they don't have holes. It means, rather, that they will aim to fill them ahead of the July 31 trade deadline.
"We’re going to be pragmatic at the deadline," Harris said. "We’re going to take a cold, hard look at our weaknesses and try to turn them into strengths. If we identify a specific weakness and the market has players available who we think can address that weakness, we’re going to chase those players aggressively."
Harris sold at his first two deadlines as the Tigers' president of baseball ops. Now he'll get a chance to buy. What he'll buy remains to be seen. He said the team's needs are still taking shape as the Tigers wait on a handful of important players to return from the injured list, including starting pitchers Reese Olson, Jackson Jobe and Alex Cobb and super utility-man Matt Vierling.
"It’s hard to believe that we’re in the position that we are and we still have had so many injuries," Harris said. "A player that I know the fans love and we love internally is Matt Vierling. He’s kind of a glue guy for our roster. He allows us to position our other players in different situations because he can play the infield, he can play the outfield, he mauls left-handed pitching, he hits right-handed pitching as well. I’m looking forward to getting him back and seeing how the roster takes shape offensively when he’s back.
"And pitching wise, we’re still down four starters plus Jose Urquidy. And then in the bullpen, Alex Lange is down, we lost Jason Foley (for the season). So I think there’s some time for us to get healthy and see what the roster looks like before we identify the specific weaknesses that we set out to address through the trade deadline."
The Tigers have the best record in the majors since Aug. 11 of last season when they launched a historic run to the playoffs that ended a game shy of the ALCS. Given their success, Harris said this winter that he's much more open to dealing prospects for proven players than he was in his first two years at the helm. He said Wednesday that "philosophically, I don’t consider anyone untouchable" in trade talks. The Tigers have five top-100 prospects, per MLB Pipeline, headlined by outfielder Max Clark and infielder Kevin McGonigle.
"But my job is to position this organization to win as much as we can, so I don’t think trading some players that have a chance to be impact big-leaguers for a long time in Detroit is the smartest thing to do," Harris said. "Again, we’re going to try to be pragmatic, we’re going to look at both sides of a potential deal and we’re going to try to make the ones that we think are going to help us get to the next level both this year and in the future."
Asked if the Tigers feel an urgency to capitalize on the opportunity in front of them, Harris said the organization isn't at a point where it needs to go all-in on "this specific year."
"This organization is about as healthy as it’s been, and we have this feeling that this team’s going to continue to get getter," he said. "We’re going to continue to add impact talent through our farm system to this group of players that’s already going to stay together and play together for a while. It doesn't feel like a moment in time where, hey, we gotta maximize our chances of winning the World Series in this specific year."
"We’re going to do everything we can to try to win the World Series this year," Harris went on. "But there’s a real feeling here that we’re going to keep doing our jobs, keep playing at really high level and have multiple opportunities to try to win the World Series, because anyone who’s followed an organization for a long time knows that the best way to win the World Series is to position yourself to be in the mix in October every single year.
"We haven’t done anything yet. We don’t have it all figured out. But there’s this feeling of momentum in this organization. I’ve seen it before in different organizations. I was in Chicago when I had a similar feeling of, we have some young talent that’s already performing in the big leagues and we got more on the way. And that’s a pretty good blueprint for making noise in October year over year."