What we learned from the Tigers' trade deadline

Analyzing the pickups and sharing takes on the front office

Here’s the good news: it seems like the Detroit Tigers’ massive slump is over. After getting pelted for three more games against the Blue Jays after I wrote my last piece, the team ripped off four wins a row and then played a very competitive series against an elite Philadelphia team. They frustratingly only got one from the Phils but I exit that series pretty pleased overall. The funk appears in the rearview mirror now.

Here’s the bad news: much of the Tigers fanbase is ripping itself apart over a trade deadline that saw the team do lots of bargain bin buying but few surefire solutions acquired. In the aftermath of Thursday’s trade deadline, debate raged online about Scott Harris’ approach and what we learned about Detroit’s first time as buyers in a decade.

A lot of thoughts rattled around in my head, both about who the Tigers picked up and the ongoing discourse about the performance of Detroit’s front-office. The only proper format to express those thoughts is in a piece like this one, so today I will dig into the week that was in Tigers baseball. This includes takes on the acquisitions, what it means for the rest of 2025, and thoughts about the FO moving forward:

[Junfu Han/USA Today]

Looking at the new acquisitions

The prevailing theme of the players that the Tigers picked up at the deadline is the phrase “he used to be good”. Several of the players were high impact contributors in the MLB only a few seasons ago and were scooped up at a relatively low cost. A couple don’t fill that mold, which includes the first pickup, starting pitcher Chris Paddack from Minnesota. The reason Paddack doesn’t fit isn’t because he is good, but rather that he has never been good in any meaningful sense.

Paddack’s rookie year in 2019 was the closest he got to it, a very strong MLB debut, but since then he’s been consistently “meh”. He boasts a 4.86 ERA across the six ongoing seasons of the 2020s, with not much deviation. Paddack usually puts up an ERA between 4 and 5 and typically has a WHIP around 1.20 without a ton of difference in that. Paddack’s K-rate is down this season pretty significantly (6.8 K/9 vs. career 8.4), which is something worth seeing if the Tigers can fix.

It’s been an interesting season for Paddack, two disastrous starts to begin the year against the White Sox and Astros but a respectable 4.10 ERA, 3.88 FIP, and 1.15 WHIP since then. Paddack had an eleven-game stretch of starts from April 12 to June 7 in which he posted a 2.25 ERA and 3.62 FIP, before things got rocky for a month and then reversed in his last two starts, one excellent finale with Minnesota vs. the Dodgers and then his stellar debut for Detroit vs. Arizona.

I think the Tigers figure they are nabbing a pitcher who will go at least five innings every start (Paddack has hit that mark in 18/20 starts since the first two stinkers) and surrender 2-3 runs, getting it to your bullpen while the game is still up for grabs. With Reese Olson going down and consistent uncertainty around players like Sawyer Gibson-Long and Keider Montero, it’s not a crazy idea. As a whole, I don’t hate the Paddack pickup, as it feels like the Tigers can support him well with a pitcher’s park to swallow the loud outs he gives up. Paddack is a perfectly acceptable #5 starter.

What made it odd was acquiring Charlie Morton after having already picked up Paddack, who seems to fill the same role as a back-end innings eater. Morton is so old that he was in the playoff rotation for the 2013 Pittsburgh Pirates alongside AJ Burnett and at 41 years old he’s still kicking. Like Paddack, Morton had a disastrous start to the season, one where it seemed like it was the end for Uncle Charlie. Yet he got up off the mat and posted a 4.02 ERA with the Orioles from that point on.

That includes some time in the bullpen and after returning to the rotation for Baltimore, Morton had a 3.88 ERA and 4.13 FIP, going at least five innings in 10 of 11 starts and recording an out in the sixth in 7 of 11 starts. The WHIP remains high as walks are a problem but that’s been a component of Morton’s game his whole career. On the flip side Morton is still getting strikeouts, which was also a specialty of his game as a pitcher who once posted a 240 K season.

Tigers fans are already coming around to the Morton pickup after his excellent showing last night in Philadelphia, allowing one run in six innings, inducing a lot of whiffs against a strong offensive squad. I still wonder if Morton is a bit redundant with Paddack but they are pitchers you can trust to be healthy and should give you starts. For a Tigers team that is all too familiar with pitching injuries, that’s a plus. Morton doesn’t have to be as good as he was last night to be a worthwhile pickup; merely continuing what he did with the Orioles should be enough for the Tigers down the stretch.

[Bill Streicher-Imagn Images]

Moving on to the bullpen, the only acquisition that I know is a ready-made impact performer is Kyle Finnegan, who has already earned a save as a Tiger on Saturday. I didn’t list Finnegan in my deadline preview even though he was absolutely on the board because his low strikeout rate didn’t seem to be a fit for the Tigers and what they needed. Instead, Detroit decide to focus on K rate with their bargain bin guys and instead focused on scooping up the solid, if unsexy, Finnegan as their most impactful move.

While I would’ve liked someone more dominant than Finnegan as the headliner for the pen, I have no issue with Finnegan as a get. His ERA is misleading due to a couple horrific games that badly dented his ERA¹ but the the 3.61 FIP and 3.40 xERA reflect a satisfactory reliever. There’s reason for optimism with Finnegan as he’s coming from Washington, a team that has been dreadful at developing pitchers in recent years² and a team that boasts one of the worst defenses in the MLB.

The Tigers should be able to support him like Paddack, with a pitcher’s park and a solid defense. Additionally, Finnegan’s first appearance against Philly featured a very different pitch mix than what he had with the Nats, suggesting that Chris Fetter & Co. already have a plan to polish Finnegan up. The Tigers didn’t pay a terribly high price to get Finnegan either, so I’ve got zero problem with this one. A useful addition.

The rest of the bullpen adds are stabs in the dark. In the “he used to be good” category alongside Charlie Morton are Rafael Montero and Paul Sewald. Montero’s window of success was much shorter than Morton or Sewald’s, really just one year in 2022, but it’s hard to forget that season. Montero posted a 2.37 ERA, 2.64 FIP, 1.02 WHIP and 9.6 K/9 while serving as a leverage reliever on an Astros team that won the World Series. Montero appeared in ten playoff games and put up a 1.93 ERA in those outings.

Montero’s great season in Houston earned him a handsome three-year contract extension with the Astros but he hasn’t recaptured his 2022 success. His K rate rose but the results diminished in 2023 before his K rate collapsed in 2024, with little improvement in ERA. This year the K rate is back up to 9.2 but the results still haven’t budged much, with a 5.40 ERA and a salary-dump trade from Houston to Atlanta.

Like the other pickups, the peripherals are stronger than the ERA suggesting there’s something there to be unearthed, as Montero’s 3.88 FIP is decent. He also has a 3.63 xERA and his xBA, chase rate, and whiff rate are in the upper quartile of the league. The walks are a major problem to be dealt with but there is enough here to think the Tigers could unearth a strong 6th/7th inning reliever with good strikeout stuff. Not a guarantee, but not a hopeless flier.

Sewald seems more up in the air, as he is on the 60-day IL and cannot return to action until September. However, he has a better track record than Montero, with a three year window of strong play from 2021-2023 when he was a late inning reliever for Seattle and Arizona. Sewald had elite strikeout numbers in that time, though he wasn’t great in the playoffs for either of those teams.

Sewald’s play regressed last season on a DBacks team that has been a pitching graveyard recently and then landed on Cleveland in the offseason. In 18 games before injury, Sewald accrued a 4.70 ERA for the Guardians. Like everyone else the Tigers picked up, the underlyings are superior to the ERA, Sewald having a 4.08 FIP, a 3.58 xERA and very strong contact numbers, K rate, and whiff rate. IF Sewald gets healthy, I think he’s a better bet than Montero with a much longer track record of success and better numbers this year, but TBD on the health.

Finally, I should probably mention Codi Heuer, a AAA pickup who helps the pitching depth. Heuer was an okay reliever in 2020-21 with the Chicago teams before two separate elbow injuries limited him to just 12.2 minor league innings across three seasons from 2022-24. This year he’s re-appeared in the minors with Round Rock in the Texas system, posting elite strikeout numbers but also walk issues and an average ERA. He’s gotten into one game for the Rangers in the bigs, but I don’t anticipate seeing a ton of Heuer unless some injuries pop up. Still, it’s a plausible name to have in the system and see what you can get out of him.

[Chris Szagola/AP]

What it means for the rest of 2025

As Scott Harris pointed out in his post-deadline media availability, the Tigers remain in a very strong spot. They are still 8 games ahead in the AL Central with only ~50 games to go in the season, a virtual lock to win the division (Fangraphs has it at 96.2%). Detroit should feel very comfortable about making the playoffs, and their AL Central-heavy remaining schedule should allow the team to rack up wins against softer competition in the final 49 games. If I had to bet, I would still wager that the Tigers will get a top two seed in the AL and a bye to the ALDS.

As for how the additions fit in, right now it would appear the Tigers will run a Skubal, Flaherty, Mize, Paddack, Morton rotation. Mize has looked lackluster recently and perhaps banged up, so I am curious if they may sit him for a bit at some point to get his health in order. They could lean on this newfound pitching depth to do so, with Morton and Paddack + Keider Montero and Gipson-Long shouldering the load, not to mention Jose Urquidy and Alex Cobb possibly in September.

Looking ahead to the playoffs, I don’t love the possibility of Paddack or Morton having to start a Game 4 of a playoff series (though if Morton pitches like last night I love it!!!), but we’ll cross that bridge when we get there, I suppose. AJ Hinch can always go back to the ole pitching chaos well and starters get pulled quickly in the playoffs anyway. I wanted the Tigers to add starting pitching at the deadline and I think they did reasonably well here, though they need Mize to get back to his standard of performance (and Flaherty to stay be a groove) to go deep in the playoffs.

The bullpen remains unsettling to me. Evidence of the conundrum was on display on Friday against the Phillies when Brenan Hanifee was forced to pitch with a one-run lead in the 8th inning against a high-end offense. For me the whole point of the deadline was to acquire players so Hanifee wouldn’t have to be in that situation (Hinch was planning to use Finnegan in the 9th) but that isn’t what happened.

Of course, Sewald or Rafael Montero could plausibly turn into a player good enough to use in that situation, but we won’t know whether they transform into that for a few weeks at least and it’s a gamble to believe either will get there. As for now, Will Vest, Tyler Holton, and Finnegan are your later inning guys. Brant Hurter is a solid middle reliever with the ability to go longer, while Tommy Kahnle is in time-out until he re-finds his game, hoping to become a leverage guy again. I assume Hanifee would be on the playoff roster even though he’s back in AAA now, which gives you six names.

There are two remaining spots and that’s where you have an open competition, Montero and Sewald (at some point) against Luke Jackson (a recent waiver claim), Chase Lee (also back in AAA), and Troy Melton. It seems like the latter will be in the pen for the rest of the season with the starting pitchers the Tigers now have, necessary with an innings limit approaching. I can be convinced that Melton’s stuff could be a major weapon out of that bullpen, with a 9.0 K/9 clip and a high-90s fastball in his two starts. I’m intrigued to see what it looks like in a relief role.

The offense remains unchanged after the team did not pick up a bat. I don’t really care about that, as offense was never my focus at the deadline. I probably would’ve nibbled on a bench option but I’m not sure how much better what was available is compared to the platoon options AJ Hinch has at his disposal. The Tigers have been one of the better offenses in the MLB this season, with improved power. They got shut down yesterday by a tremendous pitcher in Christopher Sanchez, one day after pimping an outstanding pitcher in Zack Wheeler. That’s baseball. It’s fine to me, but will need Riley Greene and Spencer Torkelson to be at their best in October to make a run.

Overall, the front office fortified the pitching depth, opting for adding lots of options rather than frontline impactful players. It’s a strategy that rustled feathers (we’ll get to that momentarily) but the Tigers are now in much better place in the rotation and bullpen in terms of shouldering the innings load to get this team to the finish line of the season. With a softer schedule down the stretch, I assume they’ll finish reasonably well and then we all hold our breaths for playoff baseball.

[Imagn Images]

Thoughts on the front office, post-deadline 2025

This is the part you actually wanted to read: what do we make of Detroit’s tepid deadline approach? They didn’t push in any chips of note and instead hunted for a bunch of cheap pitchers with better peripherals than their actual results, mostly on teams with questionable pitching development where the Fetter Lab could provide an edge. To some, it was another example of how UNSERIOUS the Tigers are about winning a World Series. To others, they were mining for value in diamonds in the rough.

For starters, I will say that it’s not the strategy I would’ve taken, which you would’ve known if you read my deadline preview. But I’m also just a guy with a laptop and don’t work in a baseball front office, so what does that matter? I felt that the Tigers had the opportunity to do more without spending their top prospects and that their roster deserved more help given how well they’ve performed this season. I think Montero or Sewald could be good, but I think the team was owed another reliever besides Finnegan we know is good on top of any fliers.

Even if you weren’t interested in paying up for David Bednar, what the Blue Jays paid for Seranthony Domínguez or what the Rangers paid for Phil Maton was not all that high. The Tigers could’ve, and in my view, should’ve, done that even within the confines of a mild deadline posture. From that angle, I am disappointed that they didn’t do more to give this group a chance to succeed in October, as it could cost them in the biggest spots, like it did in Friday night’s game.

All that being said, I do not believe for one second that the Tigers took this approach because management “does not care” and generally the deadline chatter fits into an existing pattern of Tigers fans being unable to talk normally about Scott Harris. While Brad Holmes is beloved for turning the Lions around, Harris continues to be viewed somewhere between apathy and active dislike by much of the fanbase. That’s despite the journey from joke to playoff contender happening entirely under his watch.

I don’t want to go too deep into this because it’s a better topic for the offseason, but it’s just strange to me. When the Lions began their ascent in late 2022/2023, only the most cynical and burned fans were watching with a negative lens. But it feels like so many Tigers fans I see online watch this team with a built in negativity bias, waiting for one bad game at the plate to declare that the team is regressing into the bad squad we all know it is. Arrows trained ready for regression in Spencer Torkelson, Javier Báez, and Zach McKinstry, rather than cheering for them when they’re succeeding.

Again, I was disappointed by the deadline but I cannot go down the road many fans and talk radio hosts are. I will not believe that Scott Harris is a dummy when the organization is doing as well as it is. By all metrics, the Tigers are one of the healthiest organizations in baseball between current success and how they are situated for the future. They have a good MLB club, mostly young players with years of team control, immense financial flexibility, and a strong reservoir of minor league talent to stock the cupboards for the future with.

The guy overseeing all of that cannot be an imbecile. I’m sorry, he just can’t be. We saw what that looked like with Al Avila. Years of rebuilding with no end in sight, uncompetitive MLB rosters, shoddy minor league squads, and players failing to improve. Yes, most of the players on the Tigers’ roster were “Al Avila guys” in the sense that he drafted them (several as top 5 picks, which isn’t much of a scouting achievement) but none of them were good when Avila was here and now all of them are with Harris in charge. This franchise is doing right and the guy at the top of it all has to deserve some credit.

Which is where we reach the deadline philosophy. The line that stood out to me in Harris’ media availability was, “it’s my job to get to the postseason every single year”. Enraged fans and the aforementioned sports talk radio hosts ran to exclaim that Harris “DID’T SAY ANYTHING ABOUT WINNING A CHAMPIONSHIP!!!!” but it was an interesting line to me because it shows Harris tends to agree with my belief on how to win the World Series. Namely, that the best way to win the World Series is to make the playoffs a lot and hope one year the stars align.

I don’t know how you could argue otherwise after we watched the Dodgers win 106, 106, 111, and 100 games in 2019, 2021-23 and not even make the World Series once in those four seasons, just to enter the playoffs last year with a decimated pitching staff and somehow win the World Series. The Braves won the title in 2021 with their best player injured and only 88 wins to their name, while they got bounced quickly in 2022 and 2023 after winning 101 and 104 games as a seeming juggernaut. I still think the 2019 squad was Houston’s best team, yet that Astros team lost in the World Series on a Howie Kendrick homer in Game 7, while they won two separate titles in other years.

The playoffs are pretty random, but if you just keep making them with really good teams, chances are one will eventually go your way. The Detroit Tigers made the playoffs five times in the first 25 years of my life.³ I really want to see them make it more consistently because having a regularly strong baseball team is a lot of fun and putting all your eggs in the basket of one or two playoff runs is super risky. The last thing I want after a decade in the wilderness is for this team to get one or two cracks at it and then fade away again. So I am not going to be outraged about building for sustainability as Harris has implied.

Of course it’s not all or nothing, which I have stated. There was a way to have a stronger and bolder deadline while still building for sustainability and conserving top prospects. I am disappointed they didn’t do more but I also understand why they didn’t pay up for Jhoan Duran like the Phillies did. Philadelphia is near the peak of their window, with a roster loaded with age 30+ stars who may not have that many cracks at it left. The Tigers, with a very young roster and several star prospects on the way, are in a different point in their contention cycle and this deadline reflected that.

While it means that the Tigers aren’t the most serious team about winning THIS fall, it doesn’t mean that they aren’t intending to be in the fall hunt every season. By all accounts, it seems like they are. I understand where fans are coming from with the “Skubal Window” talk but one pitcher does not make or break a team, even the best in the world. I don’t know what will happen with Skubal but I also don’t think this team falls apart without Skubal. Even if you have him, we’re talking about a player likely to make two 6-7 inning starts in a seven game playoff series.

You need a lot more contributors than one ace to win a World Series, so I agree with not orienting your whole franchise around that. This isn’t basketball. If the Phillies’ only old guy was their ace, Zack Wheeler (age 35), I would also vouch for maybe not going all-in right now. But the Phillies also have 32 year old Bryce Harper, 32 year old Kyle Schwarber, 33 year old Nick Castellanos, 32 year old Trea Turner, and 34 year old JT Realmuto making up their batting order. Their clock is ticking. For the Tigers, a big Skubal decision looms but everyone else has a fresh clock, or even ones that are yet to begin running.

This, but on the diamond? [NHL.com]

I guess the way I’d tie up my mixed feelings, my general agreement with Scott Harris’ theory of building a team with my more negative thoughts about the deadline, is the following comparison: my biggest fear as I come away from the trade deadline is that the Tigers under Scott Harris are on the path to becoming the Carolina Hurricanes of the MLB.

For those who don’t follow the NHL that closely, the Hurricanes have been a perennial playoff team for over a half-decade now. They run a rigid system of hockey that produces excellent regular season results and gets them in the playoffs year after year. They usually win a round or two but then get bounced before the Stanley Cup Final. Carolina is one of the most sustainable franchises in the league, with no “window” to speak of as players shuffle in and out, but has failed to win the big prize.

The playoff shortcomings happen in large part because the Canes are resistant to breaking the mold, identifying very specific players who fit their high shot volume, forecheck/dump-in based system that other teams don’t bat an eye towards. Rather than chase the flashy signings, the Hurricanes hunt value and efficiency. They don’t make big time free agent signings because their analytics-based GM knows UFA contracts are inefficient.

They are frustrating to deal with in trades because they refuse to ever trade first round picks. It always feels like if the Canes would just stop being the Canes for a few seconds and loosen up to bring in outside-the-system players and one or two flashy overpayments in free agency, they could finally get over the hump and win it all. But they rarely do.

I see some Carolina Hurricanes in the Detroit Tigers. I see the desire to protect the farm system so that the next five years are secure and sustainable. I see the precarious negotiating style with hard-and-fast rules against overpayment that leave them finishing 2nd for a big name player in trades or free agency.⁴ I see the hunting for efficiency and identifying odd, bargain bin pickups who fit a mold rather than the names at the top of typical free agency or trade boards.

But part of being the Carolina Hurricanes is that as much as we criticize their refusal to take the big swing to get over the hump, they also win a ton of hockey games and are always in the playoffs. And because of their eternal refusal to push the chips in, they’ve made the playoffs seven straight seasons and seem to have no end to that streak in sight, with a reasonably young team signed to affordable long-term deals and an always solid prospect pool ready to pump out the next batch. That sounds a lot like the team Scott Harris has been trying to build.

I hope that when the Tigers encounter a peak roster year, perhaps in a few years’ time when McGonigle/Clark/Briceño are solidified in the MLB while the Keith, Torkelson, Greene, Dingler, etc. group are in their primes, Harris will loosen his collar and be a bit more willing to take on risk in trades and free agency. There does come a time to take a swing or two and even the Hurricanes have done that a few times now with Mikko Rantanen and Jake Guentzel. But if we have to settle for the good-but-not-best purgatory of the Tigers being the Baseball Carolina Hurricanes, I won’t be devastated. Only a few years ago they were the Baseball Buffalo Sabres. I’ll take that upgrade.

1. ERA is often deceiving for relievers because of the small sample of innings and its nature as an average. One horrific game can permanently destroy a reliever’s ERA for a full season.

2. This is also applicable to Morton because the Orioles are on #FraudWatch when it comes to pitching

3. If you were born in 1988, the five times thing was still true for the first 36 years of your life

4. Can anyone say Bregman?