It’s a tough look, no question. Scott Harris, the Detroit Tigers’ first-year president of baseball operations, took a swing at the trade deadline and missed … a chance to take another swing on a prospect.
But when you consider the math involved, the Tigers’ missed opportunity Tuesday isn’t quite the disaster it appears to be. Unless the prospects offered to Scott Harris for Eduardo Rodriguez before he settled on the Dodgers’ proposal turn out to be difference-makers, though we’ll never know, right?
And may never want to know. That’d just add to the pain.
What we can say for sure are these two things: Trading Rodriguez would’ve guaranteed nothing, and one missed opportunity isn’t going to submarine Harris’ tenure.
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Did it cause embarrassment? Maybe. But for who? And is anyone sure Harris is embarrassed? If he didn’t like the deals he was offered by other teams and felt he’d be getting nothing useful for Rodriguez, then what was he to do?
Rodriguez, who pitched Wednesday against Pittsburgh, said after the game that he invoked his no-trade clause because the move to Los Angeles wasn’t right for his family, and that it was nothing against the city itself.
He also said he’d like to stay in Detroit long-term. He may well mean that. Yet that doesn’t mean he won’t opt out of his contract this winter.
Harris may think his odds of re-signing Rodriguez on a still-reasonable deal were better than the odds of any old prospect making a difference here. Clearly, he thought the best odds were trading him to Los Angeles.
He wouldn’t have traveled so far down that road otherwise. For what it’s worth, the Dodgers thought they were going to make the deal, too.
Rodriguez nixed the trade with only a couple hours left before the trade deadline, and, at that point Harris was sunk; he had to have figured that keeping him, instead of accepting a lowball offer in the final minutes, was the better play.
“We were communicating with Eduardo in person, via text and on the phone and at the end of the day, we reached an agreement on Eduardo that he was not comfortable with,” Harris said on Tuesday. “He ultimately decided to stay in Detroit.”
“Stay” is an interesting word choice here for Harris. By contract, it was Rodriguez’s right to choose Detroit over Los Angeles (and nine other teams, for that matter). Yet outside of those 10 teams with which he had a right of refusal, he didn’t have a choice at all.
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Harris did. And he chose to keep Rodriguez in Detroit.
In fairness, Harris’s choices were limited as well, if you consider that Rodriguez had a right to say no to more than a third of the league, and that at least half of the remaining teams had no interest in acquiring him. At best, maybe 10 teams were in the market for Rodriguez, though that number is probably high.
Which means Harris didn’t have a lot of leverage, even as Rodriguez pitched well over his first 15 starts of 2023. He had even less leverage because of Rodriguez’s opt-out clause this winter, making him — practically speaking — a two-month rental.
Meanwhile, interested teams also knew that Rodriguez could opt in and finish the remaining three years on his contract: $18 million in 2024, $16 million in 2025 and $15 million in 2026.
Those are reasonable numbers for a pitcher of his quality. But if he were to get hurt, the trade partner would be on the hook for the whole chunk.
All of this made Rodriguez a tricky trade asset. Though according to at least one report, Harris didn’t act like it. The Tampa Bay Rays were reportedly interested last week but balked at the asking price, for example. (Though keep in mind, that report came from a Rays source, and front offices enjoy getting their side out to help their agendas.)
Obviously, any prospect is — mathematically, anyway — better than no prospect. In this way, Harris held his hand too long. Hopefully that’s a lesson learned.
Still, a prospect is a prospect, not a proven player. We forget that sometimes. It’s easy to do, and the “future” is powerful that way.
But a failed decision too often assumes a different decision would’ve been successful. And so, I ask:
What are the odds that whomever Harris may have gotten for Rodriguez would have succeeded?
75%? 50%? 25%?
Harris may turn out to be savvier — and more patient — than the previous regime in how he constructs a team. (He’s made a few nice little moves already, around the fringes of the roster). But he’s still subject to the whims of projection like everyone else. And the projection odds are low, we can safely and factually say.
The Tigers’ recent showing on the stars-for-prospects market should be proof enough.
Yeah, yeah, that was Al Avila and his questionable front office acumen making those deals. Yet many of the players who arrived as the Tigers sold off their veterans were rated highly by those outside Avila’s purview.
Those deals didn’t pay off.
This doesn’t mean they won’t pay off for Harris, who did manage to trade his second-best (tradeable) asset Tuesday when he shipped Michael Lorenzen to Philadelphia for infielder Hao-Yu Lee. All it means is that he faces long odds, too.
Sure, it’s generally better to take the swing than not, and for that Harris deserves the criticism coming his way. But calling it a disaster assumes he left a future winning player out there.
The odds are long that he did.
Contact Shawn Windsor: 313-222-6487 or swindsor@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @shawnwindsor.