The Tigers Are Falling Apart, But the Scott Harris Debate Is Not That Simple

Tigers fans are upset, and rightfully so.

Entering Wednesday night, Detroit sat at 22-34, last in the American League Central and were tied with the Angels for one of the worst records in the American League. The Tigers were 1-9 over their previous 10 games.

That would be frustrating enough in a normal year. It is even worse for a team coming off back-to-back postseason appearances.

The calls to “fire Scott Harris” have grown louder with every quiet offensive night, every bullpen leak and every reminder that patience sounds different when a team expected to contend is buried in the standings before Memorial Day. The Tigers’ 10-6 loss to the Angels on Tuesday only added to it. Detroit actually snapped a few ugly offensive streaks that night, scoring more than four runs for the first time in 14 games and collecting more than seven hits for the first time in 12 games, but still lost after Vaughn Grissom’s eighth-inning grand slam off Will Vest. 

So, yes, the anger is fair.

The question is whether the conclusion is as simple as the anger makes it sound.

Harris has earned criticism. The offense is not good enough. The roster has too many players who are either limited defensively, streaky offensively or both. The front office has leaned heavily on internal growth, versatility and run prevention, and right now that formula looks exposed.

When the Tigers are losing games like they have been, phrases such as “we have enough versatility” or “internal improvement” are not going to land with a fan base that has spent most of the last decade waiting for the organization to act like a serious contender.

That is part of the problem for Harris. His public reputation has always been tied to process. He came in as the modern baseball executive — smart, measured, patient and careful. Those traits are attractive when an organization is broken. They become irritating when the big league roster is underperforming and the fan base wants urgency. Fair or not, that is where the “smartest guy in the room” label starts to stick.

But anger and evaluation are not always the same thing.

If the goal is to judge Harris against the Tigers’ recent front-office history, the conversation gets more complicated than “fire him” or “defend him.” Through his first three full seasons, Harris has a better on-field case than Al Avila, Randy Smith and even Dave Dombrowski did at the same point in their Detroit tenures.

That does not make him above criticism. It does mean the criticism has to be spot on

Harris was hired as Tigers president of baseball operations on Sept. 19, 2022, after coming over from the San Francisco Giants. His first three full seasons were 2023, 2024 and 2025. During that stretch, Detroit went 78-84, 86-76 and 87-75, a combined 251-235. The Tigers reached the postseason in consecutive seasons, winning Wild Card Series matchups in both 2024 and 2025 before losing in the Division Series.

That is not a championship resume. It is not even enough to erase the frustration of what is happening now. But compared to the first three full seasons of Avila, Dombrowski and Smith, it is the strongest opening run by record, run differential and postseason relevance. The comparison file shows Harris as the only one of the four with a winning record over his first three full seasons, while Avila went 214-271, Dombrowski went 170-315 and Smith went 197-289 over their first three-year windows.

That is the factual part that gets lost in the current noise.

The stronger criticism of Harris is not that he has done nothing. It is that he may have raised the floor faster than he has raised the ceiling.

His best moves have mostly been asset-conversion plays. Joe Jiménez became Justyn-Henry Malloy and Jake Higginbotham. Gregory Soto and Kody Clemens became Matt Vierling, Nick Maton and Donny Sands. Michael Lorenzen became Hao-Yu Lee. Jack Flaherty became Thayron Liranzo and Trey Sweeney. Mark Canha became Eric Silva. Tyler Holton, one of the better finds of the Harris era, was claimed off waivers from Arizona in February 2023.

Vierling is a mixed bag of results but hasnt been an average 2.0 WAR player. Holton was an excellent pickup. The Flaherty deal looks defensible given what Liranzo and Sweeney have meant to the system and roster. The Lorenzen-for-Lee move still has a chance to age well. But not every move has worked. Malloy did not become the kind of major league bat the Tigers needed. Maton did not work. Kenta Maeda was a huge miss. Several short-term veteran additions have either failed or been too limited to change the shape of the roster.

The fairest criticism is that Harris has been better at finding useful pieces than acquiring impact ones.

That is where fans have a legitimate gripe. It is one thing to win trades on the margins. It is another to build an offense that can survive cold stretches, injuries and the grind of a postseason race. The Tigers have too often looked like a team asking complementary players to carry more than they should. That is not only a player problem. That is a roster-construction problem.

And that is why Harris’ comments in the past have mattered, basically going internal. 

At the 2024 Winter Meetings, Harris said the Tigers wanted to improve the offense and that the roster had enough versatility to fit offensive performers in different ways. On paper, that is a reasonable front-office answer. In practice, when the lineup is struggling, it sounds like a team talking itself into flexibility instead of adding force.

Detroit fans have heard patience before. They have heard about plans, pipelines, payroll discipline and internal improvement. I have written about it at Tigers Minor League Report and the progress the system has made. 

Avila’s first three full seasons are the cleanest example of spending without direction. He inherited an aging but still talented roster after Dombrowski’s dismissal in 2015. His first off-season was not a rebuild. It was an expensive attempt to keep the window open, adding Jordan Zimmermann, Justin Upton, Mike Pelfrey and others to a roster still built around Miguel Cabrera, Justin Verlander, Victor Martinez, Ian Kinsler and J.D. Martinez. 

The 2016 Tigers were competitive, but they missed the playoffs. By 2017, the club was selling. Verlander went to Houston for Franklin Perez, Daz Cameron and Jake Rogers. Justin Wilson and Alex Avila went to the Cubs for Jeimer Candelario and Isaac Paredes. J.D. Martinez and Justin Upton were also moved as the organization finally admitted the old window had closed. 

Avila’s tenure is a reminder that action alone is not enough. The Tigers spent money, chased one more run and still ended up in a rebuild. Harris, by contrast, has generally avoided moving premium prospect capital or backing the club into that kind of forced reset. That is a point in his favor but also, that can be viewed as putting too much into your own prospects. Not like he didnt trade guys like Jim Jarvis and Micah Ashman last season for veterans, the problem was, they really did not do much. 

Dombrowski is the more difficult comparison because his first three years looked terrible by record but much better by direction. He was hired after the 2001 season and took over general manager duties six games into 2002, replacing Randy Smith after Detroit opened 0-6. The Tigers then went 55-106 in 2002 and 43-119 in 2003 before improving to 72-90 in 2004.

That is ugly. But the foundation was forming.

The Jeff Weaver trade brought back Carlos Peña, Franklyn German and eventually Jeremy Bonderman. Dombrowski added Carlos Guillén and Iván Rodríguez before the 2004 season. The Tigers drafted Justin Verlander second overall that same year. By the end of Dombrowski’s third season, the record was still bad, but the organization had actual direction.

That is the standard Harris has not reached yet. Dombrowski’s first three years were worse than Harris’ by record, but Dombrowski eventually built a team that reached two World Series and restored credibility to the franchise. Harris has built a better early product. He has not yet shown he can build the kind of high-end roster Dombrowski eventually built.

Randy Smith’s first three seasons are a different warning. Detroit jumped from 53 wins in 1996 to 79 wins in 1997, but the improvement did not hold. The Tigers fell back to 65-97 in 1998. The club had useful players, Travis Fryman, Bobby Higginson, Tony Clark, Justin Thompson and Damion Easley among them, but not enough structure to sustain the jump.  Easley was one of the better trades for Randy Smith, trading Greg Gohr for an All-Star second baseman. 

That is the danger for Harris now.

A couple playoff appearances are not the same thing as a finished build. A good farm system is not the same thing as a complete major league roster. A 2024 or 2025 October run does not excuse a 2026 team that looks overmatched for long stretches.

The evidence does not say Harris has failed in the way Avila failed. It does not say his first three years were empty. It does not say the Tigers are back to the same old dysfunctional behavior. What it says is that Harris has done the first part of the job better than most of the people Tigers fans have watched in this role.

The second part is where the debate should live among the fanbase. 

Can he identify the right bats? Can he be aggressive without being reckless? Can he add impact without gutting the farm? Can he stop treating roster flexibility like a substitute for offensive production? Can he turn a team that has been good enough to reach October into one that is good enough to control the division?

That is the fair standard now.

The anger toward Harris is not coming from nowhere. Tigers fans are not wrong to be tired of watching an offense disappear. They are not wrong to question a roster that entered the season with clear pressure to win and now sits near the bottom of the league. They are not wrong to wonder whether the front office misread its own team.

But “fire Scott Harris” is only one part of the conversation. The better question is whether Harris has reached the limit of his own model.

So far, his model has been strong at preserving assets, creating depth and finding useful pitching. It has been less convincing when it comes to building a complete offense or making the kind of aggressive move that changes expectations overnight. That is not a fireable failure by itself. It is a warning.

The Tigers are no longer in the stage where progress alone is enough. They are past the point where fans should be satisfied by simply being relevant. The organization has Skubal, Greene, Carpenter, Keith, Dingler, Mize, Torkelson and a farm system that still has high-end talent coming. That is exactly why the current slide feels so unacceptable.

Harris helped make the Tigers relevant again.

Now he has to prove he can make them more than that.

This is not an apology for Scott Harris. It is an attempt to judge his body of work with some objectivity instead of pure rage. He deserves criticism. He can be more daring. He has to win more trades that actually change the shape of the roster, not just the margins.

But the conversation cannot be only about how angry Tigers fans are right now. It also has to include what Harris has already done, where he has fallen short, and whether his front office is willing to take the next step before this season completely gets away from them.

Because history says Harris’ first three years were better than the anger suggests.

The standings say his fourth year has given that anger a reason to grow. 

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