DETROIT — The playing field at Comerica Park still features the MLB postseason logo in foul territory along each baseline, with the Olde English D behind home plate. The postseason signage from the AL Division Series still adorns hallways and concourses, including the area leading to the interview room where Tigers manager A.J. Hinch and president of baseball operations Scott Harris spoke Monday morning. Otherwise, the ballpark was quiet.
To watch from a quiet press box, it felt like a scene out of a science fiction movie, where some sort of disaster brought civilization to a sudden halt. In a way for the Tigers, it did.
“I wish we weren’t here right now,” Harris said. “I wish we were in Toronto preparing for Game 2 of the ALCS. We were really close to being in Toronto right now, but we’re not.”
Monday was the typical media session that the Tigers do at the end of each season. For the second consecutive year, it came a little later than usual thanks to a postseason run. But in many ways, Monday felt like part-celebration, part-autopsy, which says a lot about the season that the Tigers just finished.
“In some ways, it felt like this season was multiple seasons in one, multiple very different seasons in one,” Harris said. “And we’ve got to take a hard look at all of it. We got to take all the good and we got to take all the bad. We’ve got to learn from all of it.”
From a big-picture view – or 30,000-foot view as Harris put it – the 2025 season was a step forward, from another postseason berth to further development in the farm system. From where the Tigers stood less than three months ago with the American League’s best record, it was a Jekyll-and-Hyde season fitting of a Halloween thriller.
Here are five takeaways from Monday:
1. Strikeouts are a problem
For a front office that made dominating the strike zone a core tenet from the day Harris arrived, Detroit’s offensive struggles down the stretch were admittedly tough to watch, just like they were for fans. It wasn’t the sole reason for the late-season collapse, but it played a big part, because it made the team easier for opponents to break down.
“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 swing-and-miss in their games, but I think there are some things that we can do to improve upon it.”
Some of that, Harris said, came from hitters getting too pull-happy and abandoning their game plan too easily. The Tigers plan to address that in offseason work. More internal improvement should come with the eventual arrival of Kevin McGonigle (Detroit’s No. 1 prospect, No. 2 overall in MLB) and Max Clark (Tigers’ No. 2 prospect, No. 8 overall), both of whom drew more walks than strikeouts this year.
The clock on Tarik Skubal is ticking. He’s eligible for free agency after next season, and both sides have been mum on the potential for a contract extension. Skubal, asked about his situation after Game 5, said such questions should go to the front office.
The Tigers, for now, aren’t saying much about any of it, from any potential contract extension to trade consideration.
“I’ve kind of learned over time, especially with this question, that general questions tend to get chopped up and forced into narratives,” Harris said. “I can’t comment on our players being traded, I can’t comment on free agents and I can’t comment on other teams’ players. So I’m going to respond by just not actually commenting on it.
“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.”
3. Trade Deadline insufficient
The Tigers traded for a half-dozen pitchers leading up to the July 31 Trade Deadline. They released two of them by the end of the regular season. Two others were inactive for the Division Series. Another reliever went unused in a 15-inning game that featured eight Tigers pitchers. Kyle Finnegan was by far the most significant contributor of the group to the Tigers’ postseason run.
Even when the Tigers didn’t give up much, it was an inefficient return. And it was the first question that Harris received from reporters Monday.
“Do I regret not adding more performance to this team at the deadline? I don’t think I’ve ever gone through a deadline completely satisfied with the results,” Harris said. “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, and I’ll tell you why: I think I’m even more confident now than I was then, that the deals that we had access to, that we passed on, would have frustrated our fans more than not doing the deals.”
Harris didn’t delve into details, but said that the players they were most connected to in trade rumors would’ve cost them either a player who made their postseason roster or one of their top prospects, plus additional pieces. In some cases, he said, the players they held onto that made their postseason roster outperformed the potential trade targets.
In hindsight, Harris suggested, he might have taken a closer look at offensive options.
“I think if I could go back and do it all over again,” Harris said, “I would focus on getting ahead of some of the changes that we may or may not have been able to see in August that created the September of underperformance and challenges. Like, I think that’s the pressing question.”
Opportunities for up-and-coming prospects is a staple of any Tigers offseason media discussion under Harris. And with McGonigle, Clark and Josue Briceño (Tigers’ No. 3 prospect, No. 33 overall) likely knocking on Detroit’s door next year, Monday was no different. McGonigle is working at third base in the Arizona Fall League precisely to help his fit for a Detroit debut next season.
“I expect the players that posted dominant years in Double-A to factor into our big league team next year. They’ve earned it,” Harris said. “They posted incredible years as 20-year-olds, very young for the level. I expect their progress to continue, and I expect them to be in Detroit at some point next year.
“Does that affect what we do this winter? Absolutely. How could it not?”
In a general sense, Harris said, they need to continue to improve at breaking in prospects to the Major Leagues.
5. Pitching health is an issue
While the Tigers have built positional depth, pitching depth has become an issue, in part due to injuries that depleted Detroit’s rotation and left the farm system thin beyond Troy Melton.
“We need to improve our health and consistency on the mound,” Harris said. “I think if you go back and look at this season, we had a ton of injuries out of the gate, and we had a steady stream of injuries throughout the entire season. 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 our 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. …
“I think the injuries and the setbacks that we faced in both the big leagues and the Minor Leagues were a significant contributing factor to the struggles that we faced down the stretch. So we’ve got to find a way as an organization to make some adjustments to keep our players healthier and performing better, deeper into the season, because the expectations have changed around here. We’re trying to play a seven-month season instead of a six-month season.”
