DETROIT – The Detroit Tigers held their end-of-season press conference on Monday, with president Scott Harris and manager A.J. Hinch speaking and taking questions.
You can watch the entire press conference in the video above.
The Tigers’ season came to an end early Saturday morning after a 15-inning Game 5 against the Seattle Mariners in the ALDS.
It’s the second year in a row the Tigers have made it to Game 5 of the ALDS. They won one more game in 2025 than they did the previous season, finishing 87-75.
Despite the second-straight playoff appearance and the wildcard round win over the Cleveland Guardians, some fans are frustrated with the way the season ended in Detroit.
The Tigers blew what was once a 15.5-game lead over the Guardians to surrender the division crown, and the lack of offense in September and the postseason caused many to point back to the inactive trade deadline.
Here are my takeaways from the press conference:
‘Bitter taste in our mouths’
Harris opened the presser by saying he really wishes the Tigers were preparing for Game 2 of the ALCS in Toronto instead of doing the end-of-season checklist.
But he believes the way the year ended will make them even better in the future.
“I also expect that bitter taste in our mouths to drive us this offseason, to drive our players individually to make gains and to drive us as a group to make sure that we can build off of some of the good things that happened this year,” Harris said.
Ups and downs of 2025
Harris acknowledged that the 2025 season was full of “really big emotional swings.”
“There were times when this team looked like it was rolling, when we were executing at a really high level in all phases of the game, when we were putting a ton of pressure on opposing pitchers in the first inning, driving up pitch counts, holding the zone, coming through in big spots, and playing a brand of baseball that could beat opposing teams in a number of ways,” Harris said. “There were also times this year where we were fighting through adversity. We were not holding the zone, we were not executing in big spots, we were not playing clean and consistent baseball in all phases of the game, and we were struggling to recapture the momentum that really drove this team for the first five months.”
He said those emotional swings combined with the passion of fans created some “really high highs and some really low lows.”
He said he felt those highs and lows right along with the fans. He said in some ways, it felt like this season was multiple different seasons in one.
‘Another big step forward’
Harris said when he takes a step back and looks at the full season as a whole, it’s hard not to view 2025 as “another big step forward.”
He listed the following successes:
- Won more games than the previous season.
- Had six All-Stars, the most in MLB.
- Got to the postseason for a second-straight year.
- Won another postseason series.
- Earned the eighth postseason win in two years.
- Had many players take a step forward.
- Many of the team’s most important prospects had dominant seasons.
- The Tigers went a calendar year from August-August with the most wins in MLB.
- Finished 2025 with the best overall organization record in the sport (including MLB and minor league records).
Addressing the late-season collapse
After he listed all the reasons to be optimistic about 2025, Harris acknowledged that the specific arc of the season isn’t doing them any favors in terms of how it will be remembered.
“I understand the arc of our season is not doing us any favors here,” Harris said. “Anytime you have five dominant months and then you perform as poorly as we did in September, it raises questions.”
He said he knows he will be asked those questions and said the Tigers deserve the negative narratives that are swirling around the team.
But if the Tigers had gotten hot at the end of the season after initial struggles, he believes the thoughts about 2025 would be much different.
“Even if we had gotten to the same place, how we got to this place, I think is important, and I think that’s driving a lot of the conversation around this team right now,” Harris said.
‘Can’t be naive’
Harris said he can’t afford to be naive to what he saw while the Tigers were struggling in September.
“I can’t be naive to some of the struggles that we faced in the biggest moments,” Harris said. “I can’t be naive to the fact that we’ve got to get a whole lot better at a lot of things in this organization.”
He said he’s very proud of all the Tigers achieved this season, but there are areas for improvement.
4 main areas for improvement
Here are the areas Harris specifically outlined that the Tigers need to improve on this offseason.
NOTE: I will expand on Harris’ comments for each of these areas in the sections below.
- Approach at the plate.
- Make more contact at the plate.
- Improve health and consistency on the mound.
- Get better at breaking young players into the big leagues.
Approach at the plate
Harris said the approach at the plate began to “deteriorate” down the stretch at the big-league level.
He said the offense was high-powered for five months and then really stumbled down the stretch.
“We’ve got to figure out why,” Harris said. “We’ve got to understand why our approach seemed to deteriorate down the stretch, and we’ve got to understand the adjustments we need to make to put together an entire season.”
Make more contact at the plate
A major source of fan frustration in September and October was the number of strikeouts for the Tigers at the plate.
Harris shares the same concern.
“We need to make more contact as an organization,” Harris said. “We need to move the baseball more in the big leagues than we are. This has been a theme for the last two years. I think there are a lot of players on our team right now that have some swing-and-miss in their games.”
Harris believes there are ways they can improve, and he said that needs to start now so that the team can be more productive in 2026.
“The months in which we made more contact, we were one of the best offenses in baseball,” Harris said.
Improve health and consistency on the mound
Harris pointed back to the very beginning of the season when talking about the organization’s need to be healthier and more consistent on the mound.
“We had a steady stream of injuries throughout the entire season,” Harris said. “It affected us on both sides of the ball, but I think it affected us more on the pitching side. I think some of the injuries that we had in the big leagues and the minor leagues started to thin out or depth, and we weren’t able to produce that second wave of pitching this year in August and September that we needed to supplement this team.”
He said the lack of reinforcements were a major contributor to the struggles down the stretch.
Breaking young players into big leagues
Harris has said in the past that he wants the Tigers to be an environment that sets players up for success when they make the leap from the minors to the big leagues.
An example he uses: The environment for Colt Keith and Parker Meadows needed to be better than what Riley Greene and Spencer Torkelson walked into.
Harris believes the Tigers still need to improve in this area.
“We’ve got to keep making progress there, because it’s too important to our future,” Harris said.
Minor leaguers are ‘really close’
Some of the top prospects in the Tigers’ minor league system have come from the last three draft classes.
Fans have certainly heard about Kevin McGonigle, Max Clark, Josue Briceno, Thayron Liranzo, Bryce Rainer, Max Anderson, Hao-Yu Lee, and others.
“Those guys are really close,” Harris said of the prospect class in general. “A lot of them are going to help us next year, and we’ve got to make sure that the environment they’re jumping into is going to get the absolute most out of them.”
He said that work starts now so players can make the jump next year without struggling for several months.
Fans’ trade deadline frustration
The very first question for Harris was about the trade deadline, which has been a hot topic for Tigers fans after what they viewed as a lukewarm return.
At the time of the deadline, the Tigers were fighting for the best record in MLB. Their most notable additions were reliever Kyle Finnegan and starters Charlie Morton and Chris Paddack. Neither Morton nor Paddack were factors come playoff time, but Finnegan was the team’s second-most high leverage reliever, behind Will Vest.
“Do I regret not adding more performance to this team at the deadline?” Harris said. “I don’t think I’ve ever gone through a deadline completely satisfied with the results. It’s a really difficult challenge, and I think this deadline is another deadline when I wasn’t completely satisfied with the results.
“However, do I regret not pulling the trigger on the deals that we had access to at the deadline? I don’t. I’ll tell you why: I think I’m even more confident now than I was then that the deals we had access to that we passed on would have frustrated our fans more than not doing the deals.
“It’s really tough in my job right now because I can’t share the exact deals for obvious reasons. But I can share some details that hopefully are pretty illuminating.
“I would tell you that the players that were most closely connected to us via the media would have cost either a player on our postseason roster plus additional pieces or one of our top prospects plus additional pieces.
“In some cases, with those deals that were most closely connected to us, those players that were most closely connected to us, those players some of them didn’t perform at all down the stretch, would have been a free agent in two months, and would have cost a player on our postseason roster that actually performed better than the player we (would have) acquired, and was controllable in the future.
“So think about that for a second. We could have acquired a player who was going to be a pending free agent on the day of the deadline. We probably would have gotten an A on the trade grades on the day of the deadline and probably would have gotten plenty of praise in the coverage, only to see that player not perform well down the stretch and the player we traded performed better than that player this year and be controllable in the future.
“I don’t regret those deals at all. I actually am proud of our group for evaluating the players we had well and thinking, ‘Hey these players are going to help us this year and in the future and get some really big outs for us in the postseason.’
“So those are my feelings on whether there’s any sense of regret on the deals. I think the subtext of the point I’m trying to make here is in my job I’ve got to operate in actual markets. I can’t get caught up in hopes and wishes or theoretical markets.
“If there are players that anyone in this room thinks we had access to for a reasonable return and we should have pulled the trigger on, you should criticize me. I deserve that criticism and I should learn from that criticism. But criticizing us for not acquiring a top-of-the-rotation starter or a controllable middle-of-the-order bat when none were moved at the deadline, I don’t think is fair or constructive.”
Relief pitchers acquired at trade deadline
Harris said the Tigers went into the deadline viewing the market as thin on starting pitchers but deep with relievers. That’s certainly how it played out.
Harris pointed to Finnegan’s performance and said it was the second-best performance for any reliever acquired by a contending team. He said Rafael Montero was also a useful arm out of the bullpen.
Charlie Morton and Chris Paddack
The Tigers didn’t think the starters available at the deadline would have started playoff games for them, because they weren’t better than Tarik Skubal, Casey Mize, Jack Flaherty, or Reese Olson.
“We didn’t think that the players we could have acquired in the rotation would have made a big impact for us in the postseason so we didn’t think it was in the best interest of the organization to pay steep prospect cost or take a player off our postseason roster to get a starter that we didn’t think was going to factor in much into the postseason,” Harris said.
When Olson went down with an injury, that changed the starting pitching need, but it didn’t change the market, Harris said.
He said there was only one starter traded at the deadline who posted a sub-4.00 ERA afterward.
“Do I wish that we had added more productive innings to our rotation in the deals we did? Absolutely,” Harris said. “I definitely do. I thought Paddack and Morton gave us a boost right away. ... But they struggled to be able to reproduce that performance down the stretch, and we needed more performance in our rotation and we weren’t able to do that, and that’s on me. I should have done better in the rotation, but I do think it is a reflection on the actual markets that existed, and I’m proud of the efforts that our staff did.”
Tarik Skubal contract situation
Soon-to-be back-to-back Cy Young winner Tarik Skubal is entering the final year before free agency, and he’s likely to get the largest contract for a pitcher in MLB history.
Harris was asked about that situation and whether he’s prepared to go into 2026 without Skubal having an extension.
Harris said he understands that the question had to be asked, but said he can’t commend on players being traded, free agents, or other team’s players.
“So I’m going to respond by just not actually commenting on it,” Harris said. “Tarik is a Tiger. I hope he wins the Cy Young for the second consecutive year. He’s an incredible pitcher, and we’re lucky to have him. That’s all I can say on that.”
AJ Hinch extension
There were reports late in the season that manager A.J. Hinch was close to an extension, and Harris said that it actually happened earlier.
“I can share that that report was baseless, because we actually extended A.J. earlier in the year,” Harris said. “I absolutely love working with A.J. I think he’s one of the best managers in the game. We have now proactively extended him twice, because we want him to be here as long as he’s willing to be here, and I want to work with him as long as I can possibly work with him.
“It was one of the easier conversations I’ve had because, as he’ll share, he wants to be here, too, and I think we’re both bullish on our future in this organization and we’re both proud of what we’ve done in the three years together.”
Hinch also weighed in on his contract status.
“I’ve gotten asked a ton (over the years) about contracts and commitment and things like that,” Hinch said. “I’m so happy being in Detroit, and I’m so proud to be the manager here. I love working for Scott. It is the second time that I was approached and asked for more, and it’s an immediate yes for me. When you have an environment that both pushes you and satisfies you, you want to be in it. So I was honored. I was thrilled. It was one conversation with my wife and went back to Scott with an immediate yes, and off we went.”
Hinch said it’s hard to focus on his personal situation in the middle of the season, so he and Harris just wanted to get it done and move on without talking about it.
“But I can’t tell you how proud I am enough to be the manager of the Tigers,” Hinch said. “It’s a rewarding place to be. It’s somewhere -- I bought a home here. We live here the majority of the year and continue to be thrilled to become more and more Michiganders as a family. So very grateful from Chris (Ilitch) to Jeff (Greeburg) to Scott. All of us are on board to bring a World Series here, and that’s why I want to be here.”
There’s an organizational policy not to share terms of non-player contracts, so the length of Hinch’s deal was not disclosed.
Would ownership pay for Skubal contract?
When he was asked if ownership would give Harris the money it takes to sign Skubal beyond 2026, Harris said Ilitch has been supportive of anything he wants to do since he came over from the San Francisco Giants.
“I know that Chris is going to support us with everything we need, both in terms of player payroll but also non-player payroll,” Harris said. “All of the infrastructure investments. All of the investments in key staff members that can help us bring a World Series here. So I have no concerns.”
Free agent strategy this offseason
Harris was asked about whether he’ll be more aggressive this offseason with the Tigers coming off a second-straight playoff appearance.
“We’re focused on winning baseball games and trying to win a World Series, not winters or deadlines,” Harris said. “Sometimes that means that we’re going to go into the winter and we’re going to chase the flashiest name and we’re going to offer a lot of money, and sometimes that means we’re going to go into a winter and focus on more targeted needs.”
Harris said he doesn’t know exactly which way this winter will go.
Perspective
Harris said it’s important to remember where this organization was a few years ago and keep perspective about how far it has come.
“It’s important to not lose perspective here,” Harris said. “I was sitting in this building three years ago. I was on a stage and we were talking about a struggling major-league team. We were talking about the 30th-ranked farm system, and we’re talking about an organization that hadn’t been to the playoffs in a long time.
“Now, three years later, we’re talking about back-to-back postseason appearances. We’re talking about the No. 1 farm system in baseball, and we’re talking about a young core there that’s just entering their prime, continuing to get better.
“I think the trend line of this organization is really important and how we’ve done it is really important. We have been focused on a path of development, of getting more out of our players and supplementing our players with external additions that can help us get even better.
“That part’s not going to change. We’re going to stay on the development track and what excites me is we’ve done all of that without a single draft pick of the last three years getting to the big leagues. We’re entering a new era where some of these players that you guys have heard about and you’ve seen on clips on Twitter -- they’re going to get to the big leagues and you’re going to get to see them perform.
“I think there are a few things that are going to happen as that happens. One: We’re not replacing the guys in there. We’re adding to them, which is great. These guys have gotten to the postseason two consecutive years and we’re going to add to that because these guys are still young and entering their prime.”
He said he also thinks the contact problems on offense will improve with the young players coming up.
Profile of Tigers hitters
Harris talked about how the profile of a “Tigers hitter” has changed in terms of drafting and developing over the past couple of years.
He said the organization is targeting at-bat quality and bat-to-ball skills.
“As these players start to get to the big leagues, it’s going to nudge our big-league team toward more contact and better approaches, and it’s also going to improve our defense, because most of our players in the minor leagues are actually two-way players that can be assets on both sides of the ball,” Harris said. “They can be impact defenders and they can also swing at the right pitches and make a ton of contact at the plate.”
What happened to Tigers offense late in season?
What happened to the Tigers’ offense late in the season? Harris listed a few issues he saw that led to the struggles.
- Hitters getting a little too pull-happy toward the end of the year, creating holes in their swings.
- Switching off of the game plan early in at-bats, leaning toward an approach that covers every pitch type in every location.
- Some of the interaction between approach and contact started to hurt them, because the pitches they were facing exacerbated the contact issues.
- Bat path issues -- Harris said they’re going to work hard on some problems with the bat path that cropped up for certain players.
Harris said he thinks the experience of struggling in September will make the Tigers’ hitters better in the future.
The 1 thing hitting comes down to
Hinch spoke about the offensive struggles and said it best: It all comes down to getting a pitch to hit.
It’s not a sexy diagnosis. But it’s true.
Pitching has never been more dominant than it is right now. Everyone throws in the upper 90s. Starters have multiple swing-and-miss secondary offerings. As Hinch said, pitching development is ahead of the hitting reaction development right now.
So if hitters aren’t getting good pitches to hit, they’re not going to come out on top. And far too often (this is me saying this, not Hinch), the Tigers didn’t do damage on hittable pitches down the stretch and in the playoffs.
“Pitch recognition and choosing when to be aggressive, when to be patient against each pitcher is paramount,” Hinch said. “Over 162 it’s agonizing because there’s going to be peaks and valleys in everybody’s year.”
Should Tigers have added bat at deadline?
Harris was asked again about the trade deadline and said we have to put ourselves back in the mindset of where the Tigers were at that time, specifically in terms of adding a bat to the lineup.
He said the team had just put four hitters in the All-Star game -- Riley Greene, Gleyber Torres, Javier Baez, and Zach McKinstry.
On Aug. 31, the offense had scored the eighth-most runs in MLB up to that point, he said.
“In order to add a bat, we would have had to displace a high-performing player who had helped us achieve a top-eight offense at that point,” Harris said. “Maybe we should have. Maybe that is a fair question. I think the more pressing and fundamental question is how does a top-eight offense for five months become a bottom-eight offense in September? That’s the question that really keeps me up at night.”
He said it’s a function of approach changes and a lack of contact.
“That’s something that we’re going to spend a lot of time digging on,” Harris said. “That’s the question that really stood in the way of us winning the World Series, in my opinion.”
Harris said the important thing is to figure out what happened to the offense and determine whether that was a blip on the radar or predictive of the future.
Tigers coaching staff changes
From 2024 to 2025, Hinch welcomed back his entire coaching staff. He wouldn’t reveal whether that’s the plan heading into 2026.
“While I think our staff has answered a lot of the challenges and we’re doing a lot of the things that are pushing this major-league team forward and connecting to the minor leagues and creating an environment when young players come up to be comfortable yet pushed,” Hinch said. “All that I think is in a really good place, but we wouldn’t be doing our jobs if we didn’t debrief about our entire group, and we’re going to.”
He said the plan is to meet this week and make those staff decisions.
Troy Melton’s role moving forward
The plan for Troy Melton is to be a starting pitcher in 2026.
Melton was moved from the starting rotation to the bullpen in order to add more swing-and-miss to the bullpen and also to limit his mounting innings.
Harris applauded Melton’s performance in the bullpen during the playoffs, saying the Tigers wouldn’t have gotten as far as they got without him.
Gleyber Torres
Harris said the addition of Torres during the offseason helped power the offense when it was humming for the first five months.
He said Torres was up front and honest about the hernia he was dealing with at the end of the year.
Hinch jumped in to say it’s difficult to put a percentage on how any player is feeling at any given time.
September impact
Hinch said the struggles in the month of September definitely affected the Tigers physically, emotionally, and mentally.
“When you reflect back -- and September’s going to be the immediate thing that we all think about -- it’s things like that with Gleyber,” Hinch said. “Could I get him an extra day or two off? How do you think we would have all responded if I just gave Gleyber Torres a random day off in September when we went 7-17? And he would not have had it.”
He said adrenaline helped fuel the Tigers the final week of the season and during the playoffs.
“I’m proud of how we fought through things -- some that now are known and some that are still not known,” Hinch said.
Struggles for Parker Meadows
It was a very difficult season for Parker Meadows, who finished with a .215/.291/.330 slash line, four homers, and four stolen bases.
Health was the major issue. He played in just 58 games total, missing the first two months of the season and all of August during two separate IL stints.
He went just 4-for-29 with no extra-base hits, one walk, and 10 strikeouts in the postseason.
“He had one of the most random injuries I’ve ever been apart of in my career,” Hinch said. “I’ve never seen or heard of a nerve shutting down and him not being able to have a functioning part of his body and part of his game.
“That sent him on a path of playing catchup the entire season. And we did not see the best of him.”
Hinch said a healthy offseason will do Meadows a lot of good.
Harris said the same question could have been asked about Dillon Dingler after 2024, and he turned into one of the catalysts of the Tigers’ playoff run the following year.
Where does Colt Keith fit in?
Colt Keith was a second baseman when he came up with the Tigers, but then he was moved to first base in the offseason when it didn’t look like Spencer Torkelson was going to make the team.
Torkelson forced his way into the everyday lineup in 2025, so Keith played a variety of positions in 2025 -- 37 at third base, 26 at second base, and 18 at first base.
The plan for him moving forward is in flux. Harris said Keith’s perspective will be considered, because the Tigers believe he’s capable of playing all three positions.
“The opportunity to continue to get more work at all three, I think, is really important for us from a roster construction and usage standpoint,” Harris said.
Keith impressed the organization by performing well at third base when the Tigers put him out there last-minute.
“At no point do I think this winter he’s going to be able to say, ‘One position,’” Hinch said. “For the best use of our roster and our team, I think he’s a viable option at multiple.”
Injury updates to come
Harris was asked about several players who disappeared due to injuries organizationally, and he said the Tigers will release updates when the exit interviews are over.
Those mentioned included Beau Brieske, Jason Foley, Ty Madden, and Sean Guenther.
Riley Greene strikeouts
Even though Riley Greene had a strong season, with an .806 OPS and 36 home runs, strikeouts became a major issue.
Greene led the league with 201 strikeouts in the regular season and had a 30.7% strikeout rate. He did lower the strikeout rate in the postseason, with nine in 35 plate appearances.
Harris and Hinch were asked to assess Greene’s season considering both the good and the bad.
Hinch again pointed to swing decisions, saying players need to swing at the right pitches that they can do damage on.
“As players who are already good, how do we get them from good to great?” Hinch said. “It’s to shrink those stretches where it felt like we were swinging at a lot more pitches than we needed to in order to do the same amount of damage.”
‘Earning’ better pitches
In response to the Greene question, Harris made an interesting point about “earning” better pitches.
“There’s an interaction between the pitches you swing at and the pitches that you get,” Harris said. “When we talk about becoming more pitchable, it’s a lot easier for me to sit here at the microphone and say than it is for our players to do, so I don’t want this to come off as it being easy, at all. But sometimes spitting on tough pitchers’ pitches earns you a better pitch to hit later in the at-bat, and it earns you a better pitch through the advanced report of opponents coming in.
“So as we got more pitchable, I think we earned worse pitches to hit and then we continued to try to cover those pitches, so there’s a cascading effect to this. It’s why we pay so close attention to this. It’s why we’re trying to build an offense that has nudged closer toward better approaches and more contact skills, but we’ve got to earn better pitches as an organization.
“There were long stretches of this year and last year when we did earn better pitches, and then we punished those better pitches, and I think June’s a really good example of that. When we held the zone better, we earned better pitches, did more damage, and had the best offense in baseball. We’ve got to get to an offense that’s a lot closer to June than September.”
Interest in bringing back Gleyber Torres?
Torres finished the season with a .358 on-base percetnage, 16 homers, and 22 doubles while drawing 85 walks compared to 101 strikeouts.
For much of the year, he was the team’s most consistent hitter. Now he’s heading to free agency after completing the one-year deal in Detroit.
Harris was asked if there’s interest in bringing back Torres, even with infield prospects like Kevin McGonigle and Max Anderson knocking on the door.
“Gleyber was a huge addition to this team,” Harris said. “You guys saw it. Not only for his production, but for the presence that he had in the lineup. There were many nights this summer where he really got us going in the first inning. He’d have one of those grindy, really difficult, high-quality at-bats that both earn better pitches for himself and earn better pitches for the rest of the lineup and really set the tone.”
Harris said he’s not going to speculate about what types of opportunities Torres will have in free agency.
“This winter, he’s earned the right to be a free agent and we’ll approach that at the GM meetings,” Harris said.
He added that the prospect of young minor leaguers knocking on the door of the big leagues will absolutely factor into the team’s decision making in free agency.