DETROIT – Detroit Tigers president Scott Harris spoke Monday at the team’s end-of-season press conference following the loss to the Mariners in the ALDS.
It took 15 innings for the Mariners to end the Tigers’ playoff run in Game 5, and many fans were left frustrated by the lack of additions at the trade deadline.
The primary players added by the Tigers were starting pitchers Charlie Morton and Chris Paddack and relief pitchers Kyle Finnegan, Rafael Montero, and Paul Sewald.
Only Finnegan was a factor during the postseason.
The trade deadline was the very first topic brought up when Harris opened the press conference up to questions.
Here’s everything Harris said on the matter:
“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.”