Evaluate Scott Harris' first year

[Tigermojo]

3 hours ago, Motor City Sonics said:

Don't know that we can grade him until his first draft class has 2-3 years to develop.     Also, we don't know if Chris Illitch has put limitations on any kind of spending.        I'll give him an A on replacing the scouting department and I'll give him an A for Comerica Park changes.   The rest is wait-and-see.       

Feels like he botched the trade deadline, but E-Rod may have been telling him something and then backed out in the last minute.  

The pre-season Phillies trade is a wash.  I like Vierling and don't think they'll miss Soto or Clemens at all.   Maton is a total disappointment and it feels like they're kind of done with him already. 

The second Phillies trade is kind of a wash too.  Lorenzen was only here for a year and we got another team's Top 10 prospect.   Turned out better than I thought. 

I forgot about Comerica Park changes. I really like how they moved in and lowered the wall. Many dynamic plays at the wall already and some extra home runs. I'm not sure about other changes since I don't go to the park. I wonder if people who go have noticed any changes under Harris.

[chasfh]

20 hours ago, Tiger337 said:

He also got many other players that are being billed as parts of the team's future - Skubal, Manning, Mize, Parker Meadows, Keith, Rogers, Jung. Jobe, Madden, Flores.  

All of these guys could still stall and get (more) injured and end up going nowhere—some of them aren’t even in the majors yet! Then we can all say Avila was right the whole time and it was Harris who screwed the pooch! 😉😅

I’m not so sure Rogers has all that much future left.

[chasfh]

20 hours ago, RatkoVarda said:

Incomplete. It's very difficult to separate Avila successes and failures from any analysis of Harris. A vast majority of the major and minor league players and coaches and staff are Avila's guys.

Harris has a few clear, but not crippling, self-inflicted hits: Candelario let go to save $2M with no one lined up to replace him; losing Chafin over money and then downgrading to Schreve; bringing back an obviously cooked Schoop; whatever part of the ERod fail that falls to him.

The transactions he has actually made have all generally made sense, both from a big plan perspective and a talent perspective.  What I wanted from him was more moves. And that is what I want this Winter. Doing just a handful of transactions this Winter would be hugely disappointing.

But I suspect he is going to use 2024 to fold in Meadows, Keith, Malloy and others, and ignore acquiring establish hitters. And that will mean a lot of growing pains. Yet again.

We’re still a few years away from this being Harris’s organization and not Avila’s leftovers. That doesn’t get all solved in a year. Big ships take a long long time to turn around.

I wouldn’t doubt that it was someone else’s decision to let Candelario go. I don’t think anyone looking at Jeimer’s numbers, and I think that includes Scott Harris, could have concluded that Jeimer was done done, but fans were screaming for his head since the middle of last season, and there may be other people in the organization far more sensitive to that kind of fan feedback than the new guy would be.

I think we’ll be able to do more decent transactions this winter, but I also believe that we are still at the point where the Tigers are neither an organization on par with others in the bid for impact free agents, nor in a position to unlock impact major leaguers in trades with the assets we have at our disposal to offer—unless we’re willing offer up Parker Meadows, Colt Keith, Tarik Skubal, Matt Manning, guys like that, which, who knows, we might be, we’ll see.  But I’m guessing we’ll see more Lorenzen/Boyd-style free agents signings and more Soto/Jimenez-level trades during the 2023-24 offseason.

[chasfh]

[mtutiger]

10 minutes ago, chasfh said:

I think we’ll be able to do more decent transactions this winter, but I also believe that we are still at the point where the Tigers are neither an organization on par with others in the bid for impact free agents, nor in a position to unlock impact major leaguers in trades with the assets we have at our disposal to offer—unless we’re willing offer up Parker Meadows, Colt Keith, Tarik Skubal, Matt Manning, guys like that, which, who knows, we might be, we’ll see.  But I’m guessing we’ll see more Lorenzen/Boyd-style free agents signings and more Soto/Jimenez-level trades during the 2023-24 offseason.

Yeah, I think there's a middle area between the bargain bin offseason of 2022 and the shopping at the top of the market type of free agency experience that you see teams closer to contention generally occupy, and that's probably where the Tigers will be this offseason IMO.

[Tiger337]

1 hour ago, chasfh said:

All of these guys could still stall and get (more) injured and end up going nowhere—some of them aren’t even in the majors yet! Then we can all say Avila was right the whole time and it was Harris who screwed the pooch! 😉😅

I’m not so sure Rogers has all that much future left.

Then Avila needs to get some of the credit for whoever they get in return.  

[Tiger337]

1 hour ago, chasfh said:

All of these guys could still stall and get (more) injured and end up going nowhere—some of them aren’t even in the majors yet! Then we can all say Avila was right the whole time and it was Harris who screwed the pooch! 😉😅

 

That is correct.  It is like a political debate.  If you are a Harris supporter, you will give him credit for everything that goes well and if anything goes wrong, it's because the previous administration screwed up.  And the opposite is true of Avila supporters of which there are not many.  I am personally glad that Avila is no longer the GM amd am hopeful that Harris will do better.  However, many things that happen at the major league level in the next year or two will involve Avila acquisitions, so it's going to be difficult to parse out credit and blame.    

[Edman85]

I was a bit Devil's Advocatey with Avila, defending some things. For example, there is ample evidence the 2017 trades were ownership mandated salary dumps. And inheriting a non-existent analytics department at the time mountains of new data were becoming available was pretty bad timing. It is pretty clear he wasn't the person to lead a modern baseball organization, though. May have been an okay GM in the 80's/early 90's when a baseball front office was 10 people, tops. It is clear putting all the pieces together was not up his alley.

[chasfh]

16 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

That is correct.  It is like a political debate.  If you are a Harris supporter, you will give him credit for everything that goes well and if anything goes wrong, it's because the previous administration screwed up.  And the opposite is true of Avila supporters of which there are not many.  I am personally glad that Avila is no longer the GM amd am hopeful that Harris will do better.  However, many things that happen at the major league level in the next year or two will involve Avila acquisitions, so it's going to be difficult to parse out credit and blame.    

I don’t think Al Avila was the Michael Scott of GMs, a guy who doesn’t know anything about literally anything. Avila comes from scouting, so I’m sure his strength is in that area. And just because I’m not hammering Scott Harris for Eduardo backing out of the deal that based on reports was done to his specifications doesn’t mean I’m deifying Harris, either. I think I’ve been pretty circumspect in my assessment of his tenure so far, saying repeatedly that the jury is still out on him and it’s going to be a couple years before we can really assess him, because he needs that time to remake the organization from Avila’s image to his.

To the degree that Avila gets credit for getting players in house that the new management team figures out how to get acceptable performance out of, he deserves it.

[HeyAbbott]

I am late to the party on this one, but here goes.

I give Harris a guarded B overall.I think he has gotten development portion of the puzzle heading in the right direction.

Player acquisition during the last year is more than likely an ownership issue as I think that the cash commitments of the Illitch empire might be over extended due to the lagging effects of covid. I just don't think that the Illicth empire has as much maneuvering room on the cash front as many think.

There have been some wrong decisions on players such as Schoop. Those are largely the result of someone new to the scene

On the Erod episode, it looks like to me that ERod might have given them a go ahead on the trade, and his agent tried to leverage more bucks after the initial agreement.  I still view it as a Harris failure, as I am a solid proponent of the first rule of management, which states, "It's all your fault." Good management always has an alternate plan and always assumes the worst.

I think the next year will be better, and it will reveal what we really have in Harris.

[SoCalTiger]

2 hours ago, chasfh said:

Not even a little bit. 

[Tiger337]

11 minutes ago, chasfh said:

I don’t think Al Avila was the Michael Scott of GMs, a guy who doesn’t know anything about literally anything. Avila comes from scouting, so I’m sure his strength is in that area. And just because I’m not hammering Scott Harris for Eduardo backing out of the deal that based on reports was done to his specifications doesn’t mean I’m deifying Harris, either. I think I’ve been pretty circumspect in my assessment of his tenure so far, saying repeatedly that the jury is still out on him and it’s going to be a couple years before we can really assess him, because he needs that time to remake the organization from Avila’s image to his.

To the degree that Avila gets credit for getting players in house that the new management team figures out how to get acceptable performance out of, he deserves it.

I do remember you critiquing the Candelario move.  

[SoCalTiger]

42 minutes ago, Edman85 said:

I was a bit Devil's Advocatey with Avila, defending some things. For example, there is ample evidence the 2017 trades were ownership mandated salary dumps. And inheriting a non-existent analytics department at the time mountains of new data were becoming available was pretty bad timing. It is pretty clear he wasn't the person to lead a modern baseball organization, though. May have been an okay GM in the 80's/early 90's when a baseball front office was 10 people, tops. It is clear putting all the pieces together was not up his alley.

I think this an accurate and fair assessment. If someone is hired for a job they are not capable of performing is it their fault when they fail ?

[chasfh]

2 minutes ago, SoCalTiger said:

I think this an accurate and fair assessment. If someone is hired for a job they are not capable of performing is it their fault when they fail ?

It may or may not be their fault, meaning of their own doing, but it is 100% their responsibility. 

[Sports_Freak]

It must really bother all the Avila haters that many of his drafted players are coming of age and showing promise of contributing. As for Harris? Letting Candelario walk and replacing him with Maton clouds all of my other opinions of him. Yes, I like Vierling, at least in RF. I'm afraid he's the odd man out though, it's not like we can tolerate his weak play at 3rd base because we need his bat. And some of his relief pitchers don't belong in the majors...Cisnero and Vasquez. Yeah, Avila guys but Harris got rid of a few other Avila players. I still don't understand how a rebuilding team can keep a 34 year old Cisnero on the roster. 

We're stuck with Harris for a few years, at least. Hopefully, he won't make us wish for the better days of AL Avila...

[chasfh]

33 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

I do remember you critiquing the Candelario move.  

I spent practically every day of the first six weeks of the offseason advocating for his return!

[Sports_Freak]

On 9/3/2023 at 9:14 AM, Motor City Sonics said:

Don't know that we can grade him until his first draft class has 2-3 years to develop.     Also, we don't know if Chris Illitch has put limitations on any kind of spending.        I'll give him an A on replacing the scouting department and I'll give him an A for Comerica Park changes.   The rest is wait-and-see.       

Feels like he botched the trade deadline, but E-Rod may have been telling him something and then backed out in the last minute.  

The pre-season Phillies trade is a wash.  I like Vierling and don't think they'll miss Soto or Clemens at all.   Maton is a total disappointment and it feels like they're kind of done with him already. 

The second Phillies trade is kind of a wash too.  Lorenzen was only here for a year and we got another team's Top 10 prospect.   Turned out better than I thought. 

This is very accurate. People are happy with his draft choices? Get back to me in 2 or 3 years. I'm not sure Avila was the problem, it very well may be Chris' cheapness? Well see this off-season with Miggy's $30 million coming off the books. Will Chris just bank that money or invest it in the team? Stay tuned...

[mtutiger]

2 hours ago, Tiger337 said:

That is correct.  It is like a political debate.  If you are a Harris supporter, you will give him credit for everything that goes well and if anything goes wrong, it's because the previous administration screwed up.  And the opposite is true of Avila supporters of which there are not many.  I am personally glad that Avila is no longer the GM amd am hopeful that Harris will do better.  However, many things that happen at the major league level in the next year or two will involve Avila acquisitions, so it's going to be difficult to parse out credit and blame.    

I can tell you right now that if, for instance, the ERod thing had happened on Avila's watch, I probably would have had the same reaction. And I feel the record, much of it spent being lumped on with the hardcore Avila slappies, would back that up. 

Perhaps some of us just aren't hung up on "blame" more than trying to assess what actually happened, I don't know. I can't speak for others, but that's how I tried to approach the Avila era, and that is how I am trying to approach Harris.

Edited September 4, 2023 by mtutiger

[casimir]

Short and sweet, Harris had a lot of tasks ahead of him.  He hasn’t been perfect and there’s still a lot more to do.   Overall I think he has the organization going in the right direction, but time will tell.

I think this off-season needs to be a bit different than last season.  I think last year was about raising the floor of the 40 man depth chart.  I think this off-season is more about plugging holes at the major league level.

[mtutiger]

Whats weird about this Avila tangent to me is that it's not like they fired him after 1 year (ie. Scott Harris' current tenure)... they gave him 6 years.

He got plenty of rope and, while he did do some good things (and some of us have even said as much despite push back!), literally no one can argue that he didn't get a fair shot with this org.

Meanwhile, Harris is about a year in and a lot of the outward facing presences in this fanbase already seems done with him. Despite the team beating expectations so far and the farm system, by all accounts, experiencing a significant uptick. 

I dont get it, but it is what it is.

[casimir]

3 minutes ago, mtutiger said:

Whats weird about this Avila tangent to me is that it's not like they fired him after 1 year (ie. Scott Harris' current tenure)... they gave him 6 years.

He got plenty of rope and, while he did do some good things (and some of us have even said as much despite push back!), literally no one can argue that he didn't get a fair shot with this org.

Meanwhile, Harris is about a year in and a lot of the outward facing presences in this fanbase already seems done with him. Despite the team beating expectations so far and the farm system, by all accounts, experiencing a significant uptick. 

I dont get it, but it is what it is.

I think part of it is due to still being mired in a long stretch of mediocrity at the MLB level.  It’s not reasonable to expect a division title right away heading into this season.  As it turns out, it might have been more achievable than thought. Maybe the division winner being only a games above .500 is part of the angst, I don’t know.

[Tigermojo]

6 minutes ago, mtutiger said:

Whats weird about this Avila tangent to me is that it's not like they fired him after 1 year (ie. Scott Harris' current tenure)... they gave him 6 years.

He got plenty of rope and, while he did do some good things (and some of us have even said as much despite push back!), literally no one can argue that he didn't get a fair shot with this org.

Meanwhile, Harris is about a year in and a lot of the outward facing presences in this fanbase already seems done with him. Despite the team beating expectations so far and the farm system, by all accounts, experiencing a significant uptick. 

I dont get it, but it is what it is.

I haven't given up on Harris but I am skeptical after going through Avila's 5 year, 6 year, forever plan. I know it's probably going to take another few years for Harris to turn the team into contenders. He seems to be adding good young talent which I agree with. Those young players aren't going to reach their potential right away. Few rookies come up and become impact players in their first year or two. Some may take three or more years.

Harris will get his chance for the next few years and I will try to be patient but I will not put him on a pedestal.

[mtutiger]

5 minutes ago, casimir said:

I think part of it is due to still being mired in a long stretch of mediocrity at the MLB level.  It’s not reasonable to expect a division title right away heading into this season.  As it turns out, it might have been more achievable than thought. Maybe the division winner being only a games above .500 is part of the angst, I don’t know.

Sure, and barring some sort of miracle, this is year 7 in a row of being under .500. People aren't going to happy until it is fixed.

Hard not to sympathize but, as you suggest, it doesn't happen overnight. 

[Tiger337]

37 minutes ago, mtutiger said:

And I feel the record, much of it spent being lumped on with the hardcore Avila slappies, would back that up. 

 

You do seem to support what Tigers management does whether it be Avila or Harris.  It's a fair stance to take since they have a lot more information than us. 

Questioning them is more fun!  😀

Edited September 4, 2023 by Tiger337

[mtutiger]

2 minutes ago, Tigermojo said:

I haven't given up on Harris but I am skeptical after going through Avila's 5 year, 6 year, forever plan. 

Believe it or not, I'm skeptical too. 

But there really isn't an alternative, is there? From the spot the Tigers started in this time last year, there really weren't a ton of shortcuts that existed to make them big time contenders within a 12 or perhaps even 24 month time frame?

On that score, seeing where they are at 12 months later, it's hard not to be pleased with where they currently sit. It will take more time, but they appear to be on the right track.