BALTIMORE -- The main entrance for fans into Oriole Park is at the intersection of Eutaw and Camden Streets beyond left-center. But the Orioles currently sit at a famous figurative intersection as well, where a generation of young talent and prospects meet title aspirations and the potential final steps needed to get there.
It’s an intersection the Tigers are approaching.
Tigers president of baseball operations Scott Harris stated the obvious on Wednesday when he told 97.1 The Ticket that the Tigers would be looking to buy at next month’s Trade Deadline. He also acknowledged that they have a deep reservoir of young talent that teams could covet in trade talks, as evidenced by recent farm system and prospect rankings.
However, Harris had a very nuanced answer when asked about possibly dealing prospects for veteran talent to boost Detroit’s chances at a World Series title.
“This organization is about as healthy as it's been,” Harris told the morning show, “and we have this feeling that the team's going to continue to get better. We're going to continue to add impact talent through our farm system, through this group of players that's already going to stay together and play together for a while. So it doesn't feel like a moment in time where, hey, we've got to maximize our chances of winning the World Series in this specific year.
“We're going to do everything we can to try to win the World Series this year, but there's a real feeling here that we're hopefully going to keep doing our jobs, keep playing at a really high level and have multiple opportunities to try to win the World Series, because anyone who's followed an organization for a long time knows that the best way to win the World Series is to position yourself to be in the mix in October every single year. We haven’t done anything yet. We don't have it all figured out in this organization. But there's this feeling of momentum in this organization. I've seen it before in different organizations. I was in Chicago when I had a similar feeling of we have some young talent that's already performing in the big leagues and we have more on the way. And that's a pretty good blueprint for making noise in October year over year.”
Harris was in the Cubs front office under president of baseball operations Theo Epstein when the team ended its World Series drought in 2016 behind a core of young players that included Anthony Rizzo, Kris Bryant, Javier Báez, Willson Contreras, Addison Russell and Jorge Soler. They also had a top infield prospect at High-A in Gleyber Torres, who they traded at the 2016 Deadline in a four-player package to the Yankees for Aroldis Chapman.
The Cubs’ one big deal at that Trade Deadline hit big. The Cubs won the World Series with help from Chapman, who saved all three of their wins in the NL Division Series then picked up wins in the next two rounds, including Game 7 of the World Series after giving up Rajai Davis’ game-tying home run. He pitched in 13 of their 17 postseason games.
The Cubs traded other prospects in ensuing years, including Jeimer Candelario and Isaac Paredes to the Tigers the next summer for Alex Avila and Justin Wilson, and Eloy Jiménez and Dylan Cease to the White Sox for Jose Quintana. But the bulk of their system stayed intact for the next few years, including current Cubs Ian Happ and Justin Steele.
The Orioles have kept the vast majority of their prospects, preferring to focus on trades for short-term help such as Jack Flaherty a couple summers ago, Corbin Burnes last year and Trevor Rogers last year. Their only Top 10 prospects traded over the last few years were DL Hall and Joey Ortiz to Milwaukee for Burnes before last season and Connor Norby and Kyle Stowers last summer for Rogers, who still has at least another year of team control beyond this season but has made just five starts for Baltimore.
Harris will try to forge his own balance.
“I think philosophically, I don't consider anyone untouchable,” he told 97.1, “but my job is to position this organization to win as much as we can, and so I don't think trading some players that have a chance to be impact big leaguers for a long time in Detroit is the smartest thing to do. We're going to try to be pragmatic. We're going to look at both sides of a potential deal. We're going to try to make the ones that we think are going to help us get to the next level, both this year and in the future.”