Will Tigers Pony up for Skubal

[Shelton]

1 hour ago, buddha said:

how did adding paddack and morton NOT make the team worse?

what were the stats of the guys they replaced?  and what were the stats of the guys they could have traded for but didnt?  you'd have to know both of those.

it appears harris has set up an organization that has done well in creating an environment to develop young players.  that means a lot.  in the long run, that will be more important than short term success in qualifying for the wild card two years in a row.

but his trade deadline moves hurt the team.  youre straining credulity by saying paddack and morton didnt hurt the overall results.

As you said, you’d have to know what the internal/external alternatives were, as well as the cost of the external alternatives. No one knows this except Scott Harris and his team. But the comment about hurting the team implies that he took the current team and then made a move that reduced its effectiveness relative to what it was before the move. So, comments regarding whether he hurt the team or not, to me, can only be relative to existing team, not to hypothetical other moves that maybe could have been made instead that would have been better at similar or nominally higher cost. 
 

So, as for the internal options, that’s also hard to identify. And the knock-on effects of using those internal options in place of those two guys (ignoring finnegan) is also hard to identify. 
 

The easiest argument for the “hurt the team by the moves” position is that Montero and melton would have been better used in those slots. However, I don’t think melton was an option. Maybe that’s deserving of criticism but I think he had an innings cap and they needed to stretch that. But ignoring that, and just saying use melton, then you’ve got to replace melton innings with whatever worst bullpen/aaa arm wasn’t used. Same with Montero. And it’s not like melton and Montero would have been locks to perform better. To me, it’s a toss up. I can’t prove it either way, but neither can anyone else. In my opinion it is not as simple as pointing to poor performance by two specific guys and declaring that it hurt the team. 
 

To be clear, I am not disputing that these two guys performed poorly over the course of their short tigers tenure. 
 

There are a lot of other players you can point to that also failed during that period. But the tigers needed innings to get to the end of the season. I don’t think they had them in reserve. They didn’t need much more than that. Indeed, it turns out that all they needed was a tranch of fairly bad innings! 
 

Finally, both Paddack and Morton ultimately pitched worse for the tigers than they had for their prior team. I don’t think anyone really expects to get a substantially different performance over the final two months relative to the prior four months.  
 

Even then, Morton started off pretty strong for the tigers, following a couple strong months for the orioles. From June through August he threw 80 innings with a low 4 era. There was little evidence as we entered September that Scott Harris’s decision to add Morton a month earlier had made the team worse, especially given that we needed dem innings.
 

Similarly, Chris paddack was a 1 war pitcher for the twins at the time of the trade. Nothing amazing, but an easy 4/5 starter. He gave us 30 innings in his first 6 starts, gave up too many homers in a couple starts, but we did go 4-2 in those games.  
 

So, that’s why I take issue with the idea that Scott Harris made moves that hurt the team. I think it misses the point of those moves, and relies too heavily on hindsight and vibes due to the September collapse by almost everyone wearing the uniform.

This was a long explanation to your question. I regret the length. Short answer is that I don’t think it’s a given that the internal options would have been better and that we would have finished with more wins had we not made the trades. 
 

 

[gehringer_2]

54 minutes ago, Shelton said:

. Same with Montero. And it’s not like melton and Montero would have been locks to perform better. T

actually, I'm not sure who besides Melton is the right comparison because Keider was still pitching pretty regularly in a swing role after Morton arrived.  He still got 6 starts overall in Aug and Sept plus some long relief appearance.

Edited 1 hour ago by gehringer_2

[Edman85]

I think the Tigers caught some pitch design lightning in a bottle in 2024 and the league caught up a bit in 2025. So when they added some flawed pitchers in hope of a fix, they ended up throwing meat because the league was ready.

[chasfh]

5 hours ago, Sports_Freak said:

I give the players, manager and coaches credit for the comeback and blame for the collapse. I dont give Harris credit for the comeback because he did very little to help the team. The same way I blame him for the collapse, he did very little to prevent it. It was his job to give Hinch talented players for success. Harris failed, as has been discussed for months.

The Tigers were 20-16 immediately after the trade. That's a .556 winning pct, more than good enough to get us into the playoffs. Harris gets zero credit for that playoff-making-worthy performance.

Then the team went into a 3-13 tailspin in the final 16 games with the exact same team. Harris gets 100% of the blame for that collapse that led to nothing more than a wild card bid and series win.

Do I have that straight?

[chasfh]

5 hours ago, oblong said:

Do you realize that post is as much about Cleveland as it is Detroit?

They surged more than the Tigers collapsed.

Also Harris's fault, totes obvs ...

[chasfh]

4 hours ago, Tiger337 said:

Harris knew exactly what was going to happen in both cases.  He thinks outside the box.  He plays 3D chess.  The rest of the league is playing checkers.  

This post could not be more wrong if it were written by McCosky.

Harris plays 4D chess, not 3D. Yeesh.

[chasfh]

4 hours ago, CMRivdogs said:

At least they weren't the 1964 Phillies, blowing a 61/2 game lead with 12 games left. Of course there wasn't divisions or Wild Cards in those bad old days

How about those '87 Jays, too? Losing seven straight to cough up the division. Best collapse of my lifetime.

[Sports_Freak]

8 minutes ago, chasfh said:

The Tigers were 20-16 immediately after the trade. That's a .556 winning pct, more than good enough to get us into the playoffs. Harris gets zero credit for that playoff-making-worthy performance.

Then the team went into a 3-13 tailspin in the final 16 games with the exact same team. Harris gets 100% of the blame for that collapse that led to nothing more than a wild card bid and series win.

Do I have that straight?

Finally...correct. You're coming around. Bring back Al Avila? 😆😆

[Sports_Freak]

6 hours ago, Sports_Freak said:

I give the players, manager and coaches credit for the comeback and blame for the collapse. I dont give Harris credit for the comeback because he did very little to help the team. The same way I blame him for the collapse, he did very little to prevent it. It was his job to give Hinch talented players for success. Harris failed, as has been discussed for months.

 

12 minutes ago, chasfh said:

The Tigers were 20-16 immediately after the trade. That's a .556 winning pct, more than good enough to get us into the playoffs. Harris gets zero credit for that playoff-making-worthy performance.

Then the team went into a 3-13 tailspin in the final 16 games with the exact same team. Harris gets 100% of the blame for that collapse that led to nothing more than a wild card bid and series win.

Do I have that straight?

Did you even read my post you responded to? I give the players, coaches and manager credit for the comeback in '24 and blame for the '25 collapse. And Harris shares the blame, since he's responsible for getting talent for Hinch to use. He failed miserably. Sorry...

[chasfh]

3 hours ago, buddha said:

how did adding paddack and morton NOT make the team worse?

what were the stats of the guys they replaced?  and what were the stats of the guys they could have traded for but didnt?  you'd have to know both of those.

it appears harris has set up an organization that has done well in creating an environment to develop young players.  that means a lot.  in the long run, that will be more important than short term success in qualifying for the wild card two years in a row.

but his trade deadline moves hurt the team.  youre straining credulity by saying paddack and morton didnt hurt the overall results.

More coulda woulda shoulda here.

I mean, if we really want to be fair about Harris's deadline performance last year—I know I do—let's take a look at all seven guys he picked up at the deadline, by fWAR:

• Finnegan: +0.7
• Morton: 0.0
• R. Montero: 0.0
• Sewald: -0.1
• Heuer: -0.1
• Paddack: -0.5
• Dobnak: n/a
• Total: 0.0

So, going by this measure, meaning contributions to wins and losses, Harris's performance was a wash.

Sure, folks can hammer Harris now for not getting a basket of guys who netted out to a high positive WAR, and folks will. And folks can hammer him some more for getting six guys who did not achieve positive WAR and only one guy who did, and folks will. But I wouldn't agree that Harris's pickups were a collective disaster, because by this measure, they didn't lose us any more games than freely available options in house would have, theorietically.

I also wouldn't say that the pickups Harris made was the sole reason we collapsed, especially considering that the same group of hitters who slashed .252/.322.430/108 wRC+ in the first 36 games after the deadline then went on to "hit" .210/.282/.326/70 wRC+ during the final 16-game skid.