There are no two words in the English language more harmful than "good job," so I’m not going to say that to Scott Harris, but I definitely think that he’s had a pretty darn good 24 hours. You could argue that it’s an accident. If it were up to Detroit, Tarik Skubal would be making $19 million right now. Still, I think Scott Harris' ultimate vision for the long-term success of developing and retaining good young players is starting to take shape. As I said in the video, we won’t know how successful this whole venture is until we see what this offense looks like in 2026. Scott Harris is adamant that the offense they currently have with this young crop of players will be good enough to compete and win this season. That will require a massive shift from the team that we saw down the stretch last year, which clearly wasn’t good enough.
I think you’re putting a lot of pressure on these young guys. I think you’re essentially asking Kevin McGonigle to slide right into this lineup and hit right away. I don’t think that’s an easy thing to do. But I can’t tell the future, and just because I feel like there may be a miscalculation at some point, I can at least acknowledge that there is a calculation being made, which is more than I could say coming into this offseason.
I think I speak for every Tiger fan when I say that we’re sick of these aimless offseasons where it doesn’t feel like any sort of contender is being put in place. During the Al Avila era, he would discuss how the rebuild was taking shape, but we never saw what kind of shape it was taking on. This year‘s thesis statement is very simple. Build the offense from within and load up on the pitching. If it doesn’t work, I’ll be the first person to criticize it, but at the very least, I’m happy that we can finally spot a formula from Scotty H. He has a long way to go, but this is a major step in the right direction.