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Tigers hire Giants GM Scott Harris as baseball team president


The Tigers’ search for a new office leader has come to an end, as they prepare to hire Giants general manager Scott Harris as the new president of their baseball operations, according to ESPN’s Jeff Passan. ESPN’s Passan (Twitter link). Tigers owner Chris Ilitch fired Al Avila from his position as general manager on August 10.

Harris spent three seasons as the Giants general manager, working in that role under San Francisco baseball executive president Farhan Zaidi. Prior to that, he spent eight seasons with the Cubs (2012-19), rising from director of baseball operations to assistant general manager. Prior to that, he worked for Major League Baseball as the league’s major league operations coordinator. Harris, who graduated from the College of Economics at UCLA in 2009 and earned an MBA from Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management in 2015, has also worked for the Nationals (2008) and the Reds (2010).

As a key lieutenant to baseball organization leaders Theo Epstein and Jed Hoyer during the Cubs’ most recent prominence, Harris was hired by San Francisco in November 2019 and played an even larger role. with the Giants when they were the authors of the MLB-best 107- champion of the 2021 season. However, The Giants fell to the arch-rival Dodgers in the National League Division Series, and the 2022 season caused a stir. a bit disappointed that the 2021 campaign is happening in San Francisco. This year’s Giants have hit a 69-77 record so far and have been out of the post-season picture for most of the summer. They will be looking to reload for the 2023 season, but they may be looking for a new general manager to work under Zaidi.

Harris will now become the focal point for an organization that has had an even worse 2022 season than the one he left behind. The Tigers, encouraged by a 69-66 performance after April 2021, expect 2022 to be a turning point at the end of a nearly half-decade-long rebuilding effort. Detroit has had to work hard to build up its research and analysis division, and hiring AJ Hinch as a manager before the 2021 season represents a clear win-now mindset. Towards 2022, top potential customers Spencer Torkelson and Riley Greene are on the cusp of joining the touted young pitchers Casey Mize, Tarik Skubal and Matt Manning on the list of major leagues, and Detroit has a strong performance in 2021 from Jeimer CandelarioRule 5 pick up Akil Baddoo and veteran second warrior Jonathan Schoopamong others.

An active season brings free agents Javier Baez, Eduardo Rodriguez and Andrew Chafin to Detroit, where they were involved in acquisitions Austin Meadows and Tucker Barnhart. Unfortunately, nearly every of those acquisitions (save for Chafin) to date have failed, due to a combination of ill health, off-field problems, and simply poor performance. Their lack of production combined with a series of injuries, most notably Mize requiring surgery on Tommy John and Skubal having plastic surgery. Manning is currently healthy but has missed most of the year due to shoulder problems. In addition, the key artists of 2021 such as Baddoo, Schoop and Candelario have struggled a lot.

It’s been a disastrous season that has cost Avila her job and now Harris is facing his own conundrum. The Tigers signed Rodriguez for an additional four years and Baez for another five, pending future rejection clauses that, for now, appear to be unfulfilled. Meanwhile, Torkelson and Greene, expected to be the key cogs driving the engines of a more competitive lineup, often looked too outnumbered on their first attempts. Mize will miss a significant portion of the 2023 season and the same could be true for Skubal. The young core seen as such a source of optimism is at least temporarily torn.

Mistaken enough in 2022 when the Tigers reportedly at least considered listening to offers from Skubal on the trade deadline before his injury troubles flared up. A swap always seems unlikely, but the fact that it happens even when given the right consideration is symbolic of stalled rebuilding efforts and the challenges Harris will now have to face. face to face.

It looks like ownership will give the green light to another arduous rebuilding attempt, but at the same time, there’s no easy fix in store. The Tigers don’t seem any more competitive than they were a year ago at this point – certainly more than just one or two acquisitions from the helm of the ship. Meanwhile, the additions of Baez and Rodriguez last winter added some notable strength to the future payrolls, and the injury has at least temporarily thinned the promising young core.

There are some similarities between the current Tigers and the 2020-22 Giants that Harris helped overhaul. No one judges the Giants to be anywhere close to the best baseball team heading into the 2021 season, and even the Giants’ 29-31 performance in 2020 exceeded some expectations after three proven seasons. ant the club played with a score of 214-272 speed. Both play in cavernous indoor parks that can appeal to pitchers looking to rebuild their stock after tough seasons and/or injuries.

The Giants, under Harris and Zaidi, have developed a reputation as one of the best (if not the best) baseball teams at revitalizing pitchers’ careers. Kevin Gausman, Anthony DeSclafani, Alex Wood, Drew Smyly, Tyler Anderson and Jakob Junis just a few of the names that have come to San Francisco over the past few years and dramatically improved their stock. They also show a knack for unearthing high-quality people in low-key moves (e.g.: Mike Yastrzemski, Donovan Solano, Darin Ruf). Sure, Ilitch hopes that Harris can bring some success to his new home in Detroit.

Harris is in a less common – though certainly not unprecedented – situation for newly hired baseball team leaders. Many owners have sought out a GM or president and offered new voices and perspectives to help guide the club’s rebuilding, but what was supposed to lift the weight of the rebuild was done. currently in Detroit. Now, Harris will be tasked with finding ways to build more of the organization’s infrastructure, add some new faces to the roster, and tap into more of the current underperformers (e.g. Baez, Torkelson). without completely tearing everything back to the studs .

If there’s a small silver pad, the Tigers are probably playing in a rather weak league in American League Central. There are no Dodgers-esque jugglers topping the charts. That bodes well for a return to contention sooner than some critics might expect, but a lot will need to go right for the Tigers to prevent the current eight-year playoff drought. Theirs grew to a decade.





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