DETROIT – The Detroit Tigers are once again so far out of contention that trade deadline day was supposed to be the highlight of the season, but as has been the norm, they couldn’t even get that right.
President Scott Harris’ top priority on Tuesday could not have been more clear-cut: trade Eduardo Rodriguez. He was one of the most attractive starting pitchers on the market, and a half dozen contenders desperately needed to add pitching.
Seems pretty straightforward, right?
Rodriguez probably isn’t quite as good as his 2.95 ERA suggests, but he’s certainly good enough to opt out of the final three years of his contract with the Tigers. That means by the end of the season, they’ll be left with nothing instead of adding a potential building block for the future.
READ: Tigers trade Michael Lorenzen to Philadelphia Phillies for prospect Hao-Yu Lee
Harris spoke to Bally Sports Detroit after the deadline and talked about how happy he is that Rodriguez will continue to take the mound for the Tigers every fifth game the rest of the season. He called it a nice consolation prize for not getting a deal done.
But why? So the Tigers can finish 72-90 instead of 70-92? And then Rodriguez can opt out and sign elsewhere for more money?
The inner workings of the trade deadline are rarely revealed to the public, but from the outside looking in, it looks like the Tigers’ young president misplayed his hand.
Based on several reports over the past few days, a handful of teams were very interested in Rodriguez, and some of them -- including the Baltimore Orioles and Cincinnati Reds -- have the type of high-end infield prospects the Tigers lack.
Harris played hardball with his price tag -- and sometimes that can work. But he must have priced everyone out of the bidding, because today, instead of pitching for a contender, Rodriguez will start in Pittsburgh for a team that’s 13 games below .500 and heading down the path to nowhere.
Sure, Rodriguez nixing a deal to the Los Angeles Dodgers was a complication -- one last parting shot from Al Avila. But how did Harris get to the point where, less than two hours before the deadline, he was wasting valuable time negotiating a deal that was never going to be approved anyway?
Did he talk to Rodriguez about going to the Dodgers? It seems like Rodriguez was pretty dead set on staying on the East Coast, so couldn’t that have been established before Harris spent all that time going back and forth with Los Angeles?
Again, nobody knows exactly how the last few hours went down except for Harris and his team, but all that really matters is the end result: Detroit missed a massive opportunity.
Starting pitchers were demanding some of the top prospects in baseball this deadline. Even a fellow rental like Lucas Giolito brought back a top-70 prospect for the division rival Chicago White Sox.
It sure would have helped the Tigers to have another quality bat in the minors alongside Colt Keith and Justyn-Henry Malloy, because two guys aren’t enough to fix this offense.
It’s not Scott Harris’ fault that the Tigers are so bad on the field -- that falls on Avila and Chris Ilitch. But now he has an offseason, a draft, and a trade deadline under his belt. Soon, we’ll need to see progress from the players he brought in.
The Michael Lorenzen signing was an obvious win. Matt Vierling sure looks like a worthy addition from the Gregory Soto trade, too. But the Tigers don’t have the luxury of wasting opportunities like this one.
As badly as Harris wants the Tigers to control the strike zone, he swung and missed Tuesday in a very high-leverage spot. In the midst of another disappointing season, the day after the trade deadline feels painfully familiar.
