I’ve shared beers with Chris and Roger, good guys and this article sums up my thoughts on this team and management moves.
A good way to take data from a spreadsheet and add nuance that those sheets miss in an article format.
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I love data. It helps create structure to any argument. But finally putting this into an article versus tweeting against some of the opinions I have been seeing as of late.
Scott Harris has made mistakes. The Tigers’ 2026 record is disappointing. Their bullpen construction deserves scrutiny, several free-agent investments have failed and trading Tarik Skubal and Casey Mize dramatically raises the stakes for what comes next. But none of that means Detroit has spent the last four years going nowhere.
There is a difference between being frustrated with the Detroit Tigers and accurately evaluating the Detroit Tigers.
…after Harris traded Tarik Skubal and Casey Mize at the deadline, the argument that Detroit is still simply accumulating talent has an expiration date.
But another argument has become increasingly common around the Tigers: that the organization itself is horrible, Harris has accomplished essentially nothing and Detroit is once again asking fans to wait indefinitely on prospects.
That argument does not hold up nearly as well when you examine the entire record.
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Brown’s calculation credited:
- Dombrowski acquisitions: 34.6 bWAR
- Avila acquisitions: 14.6 bWAR
- Harris acquisitions: 35.7 bWAR through Aug. 1
That number should not be used to declare Harris superior to Dombrowski.
Brown himself made that qualification clear. Every baseball executive inherits a different organization, different payroll circumstances, different existing talent and a different competitive window.
But the Harris total does challenge the idea that his front office has spent four years adding nothing.
Brown broke Harris’ 35.7 WAR down this way:
Free agents: 11.4 bWAR
Waiver claims: 10.6
Trades: 7.4
Drafted players: 6.3
Only 6.3 WAR came from the draft.
Nearly 30 WAR came from free agents, trades and waiver claims.
That is important because one of the most repeated criticisms of Harris is that the Tigers have done little besides draft highly rated prospects and wait.
Brown’s numbers suggest something considerably broader has happened.
And the waiver number might be the most revealing figure in the entire exercise.
Getting 10.6 WAR from waiver claims does not happen because an organization had a top-three draft pick. It requires identifying players other organizations were willing to expose and finding ways to make them useful.
Tyler Holton is the obvious example. Detroit claimed him from Arizona in February 2023 and turned him into an important part of its pitching staff.
Andy Ibáñez was another early waiver claim who became a useful major-league role player and eventually delivered one of the biggest hits of Detroit’s 2024 postseason run.
That is not superstar acquisition. It is organizational competence. There is an important caveat with Brown’s tweet. WAR accumulated by an acquisition is not a comprehensive front-office grade. It does not account for acquisition cost, payroll efficiency, postseason success, long-term contractual risk or the future value of prospects.
It also should not allow Harris to claim players he did not acquire.
Tarik Skubal, Riley Greene, Colt Keith, Dillon Dingler and Jackson Jobe were already Tigers properties before Harris arrived.
Acquisition credit belongs to the previous regime.
The development environment those players entered after Harris took over can be discussed separately.
That distinction matters. The point of Brown’s research is not that Harris has outperformed Dombrowski.
The point is much narrower. If the argument is that Scott Harris has spent four years, adding almost nothing of value to the Detroit Tigers, 35.7 WAR of acquired production presents a serious problem for that argument.
The organization Harris inherited matters
Detroit finished 66-96 in 2022.
The Tigers had not reached the postseason since 2014.
From 2019 through 2022, Detroit went:
2019: 47-114
2020: 23-35
2021: 77-85
2022: 66-96
Combined, that is 213-330, a .392 winning percentage.
Since Harris’ first season:
2023: 78-84
2024: 86-76
2025: 87-75
2026 through Aug. 23: 61-69
Combined, Detroit is 312-304, a .506 team.
Going from .392 baseball during the previous four seasons to .506 under Harris represents roughly an 18-win improvement over a 162-game schedule.
Detroit also reached the postseason in both 2024 and 2025.
That does not excuse 2026. It does make the description “historically bad and inconsistent every year” difficult to defend. The Tigers have unquestionably been better.
The question now is whether “better” is enough.
Where Harris deserves criticism: free agency
This is where the conversation should become more uncomfortable for Harris.
His free-agent record is not good enough to simply point at the 11.4 WAR in Brown’s table and declare victory.
There have been successes. Tyler Holton, a waiver claim, as an example. There have also been expensive failures. Let’s take a look.
Kenta Maeda
The clearest miss is Kenta Maeda. Detroit signed Maeda for two years and $24 million before the 2024 season, hoping he would stabilize the rotation.
Instead, Maeda posted a 6.09 ERA in 2024, lost his rotation spot and was eventually designated for assignment in May 2025 while guaranteed money remained on his contract.
There is no need to dress that transaction up as process. It failed.
Jack Flaherty
The original Jack Flaherty signing was almost the opposite.
Detroit signed Flaherty for one year and $14 million before 2024. In 18 Tigers starts he produced a 2.95 ERA. Detroit, then traded him to the Dodgers for Thayron Liranzo and Trey Sweeney.
That is exactly how a short-term free-agent signing can benefit a rebuilding organization twice.
First, the player helps the major-league club. Then, if circumstances dictate, the club converts that player into young organizational talent. It hasn’t turned into big league talent as of yet so it remains to be seen.
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The farm system did not improve by accident
Then there is the part of the argument that gets dismissed too casually.
Farm systems matter. They are not championships. They are not playoff victories. They did help build the core of the 1984 World Series team and the 1987 team that lost in the ALCS.
Eventually prospects must become major-league production. But if we are evaluating whether an organization is healthy or dysfunctional, amateur scouting and player development are absolutely part of that evaluation.
And Detroit’s improvement is dramatic.
MLB Pipeline ranked the Tigers:
25th entering 2023
13th at midseason 2023
5th entering 2024
6th at midseason 2024
No. 1 entering 2025
6th at midseason 2025
5th entering 2026
8th in August 2026 That means the Tigers went from one of baseball’s bottom-tier systems to spending multiple years among the sport’s better organizations for young talent.
Baseball America reached a similar conclusion.
Detroit ranked:
4th entering 2026
Baseball America specifically noted that Detroit had produced three consecutive top-five systems. That is not meaningless.
And it cannot all be dismissed as the product of losing enough games to draft high.
Max Clark becoming one of baseball’s top prospects is meaningful, but Clark was the No. 3 overall pick. Great things should be expected from that draft position.
Kevin McGonigle is a different example.
McGonigle was selected later in the 2023 draft and developed into one of the best prospects in baseball before reaching Detroit.
That tells us more about scouting and development than simply selecting an obvious top-three talent.
Thayron Liranzo provides another example. Detroit did not draft him.
The Tigers acquired him in the Flaherty deal, and he subsequently climbed into Top 100 prospect territory. Those are different acquisition paths producing talent. Granted, no one wins titles on prospect rankings, but I digress.
Then there are players inherited from Avila’s organization. Harris did not draft Dillon Dingler. He did not draft Colt Keith. He did not acquire Riley Greene. He did not acquire Jackson Jobe.
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The bullpen is where roster-construction criticism gets louder
If the farm system represents one of Harris’ strongest accomplishments, the 2026 bullpen represents one of the strongest criticisms.
Through Aug. 19, Detroit had suffered an MLB-high 19 losses in games it led in the seventh inning or later.
The Tigers were 12-22 in one-run games at that point.
That is a dramatic reversal from the previous two seasons, when Detroit went a combined 52-36 in one-run games.
Not every blown lead is a front-office failure. Relief pitching is volatile. Pitchers get hurt.
Players underperform. But when an identifiable roster weakness repeatedly costs games, roster construction has to enter the discussion