Good to be back, folks. I have to give credit to anyone in the media who covers the Detroit Tigers during the offseason. It’s not difficult in the sense that I find the culture in Detroit to be toxic. In fact, I view it to be the opposite. I think the culture is as good as it’s been in a long time, but talking about this team right now is like trying to hype up a race that refuses to start. It’s like turning your car on and just leaving it in neutral for hours on end. There’s no movement forward, and there’s been minimal movement backwards. At least in the last offseason, there was an attempt to bring in Alex Bregman. It obviously didn’t work, and Bregman has now found a home in Chicago, but at least that was a story worth following. For a team that is coming off of its second straight playoff appearance, it just feels like a huge dark cloud hangs over this organization right now, in large part because of the situation with Tarik Skubal.
I don’t really like it when mom and dad fight, and it feels like that’s the situation that we’re headed in with Skubal right now. Tarik wants to be here, but Detroit isn’t willing to give him $32 million over one year, let alone the 400+ that would be required to sign him long-term. I’ve watched a lot of bad Tiger baseball. For that reason, I’m not one of those people who think that if you don’t win a World Series this year with Tarik Skubal, you made a serious mistake by not trading him. Teams lose guys in free agency all the time. If you were to make a run at Tarik and he were to sign with a bigger-market squad, that’s unfortunately the way of the world in a non-salary-cap sport. Still, the fact that you have the Tigers just proverbially standing in the corner with their head turned like the character at the end of "The Blair Witch Project" has been maddening. What is frustrating fans is not that this isn’t going to work; it’s that it doesn’t appear the Tigers even want to make it work.
Scott Harris would benefit greatly from interviewing on my show, "Chris and Company." I say this not because I’m looking to pull in a big guest but because I think there’s a lot that he needs to learn about how to deal with this fan base. When you look at his resume and what he’s done here, the fans' opinion of him as the president of baseball operations should be much higher. Still, there’s something about his demeanor and his insistence that his way is the only way, which is souring him to a lot of fans. And that’s why this year is going to be so important.
Harris wholeheartedly believes in his guys, and if those guys emerge and we see an offense that doesn’t let down their pitching staff as they have over the last few years, then we could look back on this and say that Scott Harris knew what he was doing the whole time, and we were foolish ever to doubt. I think that’s a tough ask. Even Brad Holmes for the Lions, who accomplished way more in his time than Scott Harris ever has, fell victim to the overwhelming trust that he put in his guys, and it’s a big reason why the Lions missed the playoffs this year. Harris is banking on his people and his player development to put together a stable product built mostly of guys who have developed from within. I hope it works, but generally speaking, you need a bit of balance, and running it back with essentially the same crew isn’t exactly a recipe for success.