Detroit Tigers 2025 End of Season Press Conference

Detroit Tigers 2025 End of Season Press Conference

I know it led to like really grueling travel, especially this week, but we appreciate you guys all showing up and we appreciate you guys bringing Tigers baseball to our fans all year long. Um, before I get into questions, I just want to talk generally about a few thoughts that are rattling in my head and that have been for the last few days. Um, I think first and foremost, like I I wish we weren’t here right now. I wish we were in Toronto uh preparing for for game two of the ALCS. We were really close to to being in Toronto right now. Uh but we’re not. We didn’t achieve our ultimate goal of of winning the World Series and and now we’re here at a press conference. And I think anytime you get to the playoffs and you fail to to win a World Series, it leaves a really bitter taste in your mouth. Um I very much feel that. I’ve felt it all weekend. I know AJ feels it. I know a bunch of our players and coaches feel that. Um, and I expect us to feel that for a while. Um, I also expect that bitter taste in our mouths to drive us this offseason, to drive our players individually to make gains, um, 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. Um, I think the other thing that really sticks in my head is this this season was full of emotional swings. uh 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 starters in the first inning, driving up pitch counts, uh holding the zone, coming through in big spots, um and playing a brand of baseball that could beat opposing teams in a number of ways. There were also times this year where we were fighting through 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. Um those emotional swings combined with the passion with which our fans follow and support this team created some really high highs and some really low lows. I felt those highs and I felt those lows and I was right there with our fans um in all of those moments. In some ways, it felt like this season was multiple seasons in one. Um, multiple very different seasons in one. And we got to we 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. And we got to learn from all of it. Um, however, I think in in our in my job, it is really important for me to step back and look at the entire season. It’s really important for me to look at it from a 30,000 foot view. And I think when you do that, it is hard to characterize this season as anything other than another big step forward for an organization that’s come a really long way in a short period of time. Among things that we did this year, we won more games than we did last year. We had six all-stars, the most in in all of baseball. We got to the postseason two consecutive years for the fifth time in over a hundred years in this organization. We won another postseason series and we earned our eighth postseason win in two years. Um I think that’s the third most in all of baseball. We had many players on on our big league team that took a big step forward. We entered the season with the number one overall farm system and many of our most important prospects had dominant seasons on their way to some of them reaching the postse or reaching the the the big leagues in 2026. Um, and I think the most important thing when I reflect on the entire season is we went a calendar year from late August to late August with the most major league wins of any organization in baseball. And we finished the 2025 season with the best overall organizational record of any organization in the sport. Those are really big deals. Those are really hard to do. Our players and our coaches in that clubhouse deserve a ton of credit for all that stuff. I’m really proud of them for all that stuff. That’s really hard to do and it’s in especially impressive for a young group that’s still entering their prime right now. So, we got a lot to be proud of from from this season. Now, I understand here like the arc of our season is not doing us any favors here. Anytime you have five dominant months and then you perform as poorly as we did in September, it raises questions. I’m sure you guys are going to ask me a lot of those questions. You deserve like I deserve to to get those questions and we deserve the negative narratives that are uh swirling around this team. However, I think it is important to have some perspective here. Like we if we had sequenced our season differently but got to the same place. Like by way of example, if we had stumbled out of the gate and had a really tough April and then posted five dominant months from May through September, I think the mood around this team is very different. I think the narratives around this team are very 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. And we deserve that because anytime you sequence this season the way we did, we deserve to have these questions. And me personally, I can’t be naive to what I saw in September. I can’t be naive to some of the struggles that we faced in the biggest moments. I can’t be naive to the fact that we got to get a whole lot better at a lot of things in this organization. We did all these things that I listed, all these achievements, which are really impressive and I’m really proud of, but we got to get a whole lot better in a lot of different areas. And some of those areas I wanted to share at the outset here. Like the first thing is our approach at the plate. In the big leagues, it seemed like our approach started to deteriorate down the stretch. We posted a really highpowered offense that performed in many of the most important categories for five months and then we really stumbled down the stretch. We got to figure out why. We got to understand why our approach seemed to deteriorate down the stretch. And we got to understand the adjustments that we need to make to put together an entire season of, you know, a high performing offense instead of just five months and then struggling down the stretch. I think the second area that we need to look into is contact. We need to make more contact as an organization. We need to move the baseball more in the big leagues than we are. This has been a theme from 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. Um, but I think there are some things that we can do to improve upon it. I’m sure we’ll talk about it today. Um, but the time for that is now. Like we need to start making those gains right now. Um, we need to make sure that we have a team next year that can consistently across six months make enough contact to be a productive offense. I think if you go back and you look at our season, the months in which we made more contact, we were one of the best offenses in baseball. If you take a look at June, which was the lowest strikeout rate month that we had this season, we also had the best offense in baseball. When this group does move the ball, we can do a lot of damage. We can score a lot of runs. We got to find a way to be able to do that more consistently. And there’s some ways that we have already talked about that we’re working on immediately. Um, I think the third thing that we need to get a lot better at is, uh, we need to improve our health and consistency on the mound. I think if you go back and look at this season, we had a ton of injuries out of the gate. We had a ton of injuries 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. We did it last year. We added some really important arms that helped us, you know, go 301 and 11 down the stretch. We weren’t able to do that and I think the injuries and the setbacks that we faced in both the big leagues and the minor leagues were a significant contributing factor um to to the struggles that we faced down the stretch. So, we 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, and we need to make those changes to to help make sure that we have reinforcements in August and September that could help us. And I think the last one is um something I’ve talked about a lot, but we got to continue to get better. We have to continue to get better at breaking young players into the big leagues. Um, I’ve talked about it since the day I got here and I’ve been very outspoken about trying to make sure that the environment that Cole Keith and Parker Meadows jump into is better than the environment that Riley Green and and Spencer Tolson jumped into. And then the environment that Dylan Dingler jumped into is better than the environment that Cole Keith and Parker Meadows jumped into. We got to keep making progress there because it’s too important to our future. We’ve talked a lot about our last three drafts. We’ve talked a lot about some of the players coming through the minor leagues. Those guys are really close. A lot of them are going to help help us next year. And we got to make sure that the environment that they’re jumping into is going to get the absolute most out of them. And that work starts right now. We got to prepare the environment for these guys to be able to jump on this team as soon as next year and make this team better, not struggle in the first two, three, four months to adjust to big league pitching and to help this team get better. It’s too important to our future and it’s something that we need to take very seriously as soon as today. So, some areas. Um, happy to take any any of your questions. AJ’s here to uh to take the questions from the manager seat, but um what do you guys got? Scott, you you you mentioned the lack of the zone and hitting and also the the pitching depth. you look back at the deadline and say, you know, I could have done more to make sure this wouldn’t happen without Nobody was ever suggesting trading Clark or or McDonald, without trading the top prospects to get help in those areas that you mentioned that declined. Yeah. Um, do I 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. Um it’s a really difficult challenge and you know I think this this deadline um is another deadline when I wasn’t completely satisfied with the results. Um 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. Um, 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. It’s really tough in my job right now because I can’t share the exact deal deals for obvious reasons, but I can share um some details that hopefully are are pretty illuminating. I would tell you that the 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 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 perform 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 our group for evaluating the players we had well and thinking, hey, these players are are going to help us this year and in the future and get some really big outs for us in in the postseason. Um, so those are those are my my feelings on like whether there’s any sense of regret on the deals. Um, I think you know the subtext of the point I’m trying to make here is in my job I got to operate in actual markets. I can’t get caught up in hopes and wishes or theoretical markets. If there are players that, you know, anyone in this room thinks that we had access to for a reasonable return and we should have pulled the trigger on, like, 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. Uh, Scott, just to build on that question with the trade deadline, um, were there pieces that maybe weren’t floated by the media that you feel like you guys could have went out and acquired or were you unable to, you know, make those kind of deals? We chased a lot of players that weren’t connected to us in the media. Um, we got close to on some players, we didn’t get close on on other deals. Um, I think what’s important is if you look at the how it all played out, like we went into the market thinking like, hey, we think the relief market’s pretty deep here at the deadline and we think the starter market is really shallow. Like we think it’s really thin and I think that largely uh played out. I think those evaluations aged pretty well. Um, I also think we dipped into the relief market at the deadline and we acquired the second best performing back-end reliever acquired by any any contender in Finnegan. We also added another useful arm in in Raphael Monto and we added Troy Melton to the back end of our rotation. I think those three additions stabilized the back of our our our um bullpen and got some really big outs for us. I think in the starter market um going into the deadline, we didn’t think that the starters that were we had access to would have started playoff games for us. We didn’t think they were better than our front four of at the time was Ree, TK, Jack, and Casey in no particular order. Um, so going into it, both as a reflection of our evaluation of the starters available and um, the starting pitching that we had, we didn’t think that the players that 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 costs or take a player off our postseason roster to get a starter that we didn’t think was going to factor in much in into the to the postseason. Now, when Reese went down, it did change our starting pitching need, but it didn’t change the market. And I think if you follow the starters that moved, I think there was only one starter that posted a sub4 RA after the deadline that got moved at the deadline. So, I do actually think our evaluations of those starters were right. Do I wish that we had added more productive innings to our rotation in the deals we did? Absolutely. I definitely do. I thought Paddock and Morton performed, gave us a boost right away. Paddock had a really good start against the Dbacks. Mortyn pitched really well in a tough environment in Philly, but they were struggled to be able to re 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 in the rotation, but I do think it is a reflection on the actual markets that existed. Um, and I’m proud of the efforts that our staff did. Trick is obviously going into the final year of his controllability. How much of a decision point is that this off season or are you just I mean you kind of prepared to go into the season with him and see how it kind of how it rolls that way? Yeah, I um listen, I totally understand the question and I I understand that you have to ask me. I’ve I’ve kind of learned over time, especially with this question, that uh general comments tend to get chopped up and forced into narratives. I 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 not actually commenting on it. Um, TK is a Tiger. I hope he wins the the Sai Young for the second consecutive year. He’s incredible pitcher and and we’re lucky to have him. Um, that’s all I can say say on that. Can I just ask one more that you probably won’t answer, but there was there was uh reports at toward the end of the season that AJ had had either been ex offered an extension or was close to signing an extension. Is there any news on that that you can share? Yeah, I I can share that that report was baseless uh because we extended AJ earlier in the year. Um I absolutely love working with AJ. I think he’s one of the best managers in the game. Um, we have now proactively extended him twice uh 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 um one of the easier conversations I’ve had because um 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 in the three years together. You want to comment on me to comment on? Yeah. Now, I um you know, I’ve been in this chair um for a long time, not just the managing chair in Detroit, but across the league, and I I’ve gotten asked a ton about about contracts and commitment and things like that. And I’ve I’m so happy being in Detroit, and I’m 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, you know, and and it’s an immediate yes for me. I mean, when you have an environment, and any of you guys can relate, when you have an environment that both pushes you and satisfies you, you want to you want to be in it. And so, um, you know, I was honored. I was thrilled. You know, it was a one conversation with my wife and and and went back to Scott with an immediate yes and and and off we went. And it was, you know, in the middle of the season, you know, it’s it it it’s hard to be to to to look at at personally at where you’re at. Um, which is why my one request and Scott’s one request was that we just do it and be done with it and not talk about it. This was about the players during the season. It was about um winning. We were we we wanted to chase down the division. we were um we had a lot of games left and so it you know we didn’t want to be a distraction but I um I I can’t tell you how proud I am enough to be to be the manager of the Tigers. I mean it’s um it’s a it’s a rewarding uh place to be. It’s somewhere, you know, I bought a home here. We we live here the majority of the year and continue to to be thrilled to be uh become more and more Michiganders as as as a family. And so um very grateful, you know, for from from Chris to Jeff to Scott to Scott. All of us are are on board to to bring a World Series here. And that’s why that’s why I want to be here. Uh can you tell us how many years he’s under contract? Um, so we have an organizational policy to not share terms for non-player contracts. We’ll share all the terms for player contracts, but um, we’re not going to share the terms for ours. One other due diligence question. Will ownership give you what it takes to sign Trick School long term? Um, Chris has been supportive with everything we want to do. It’s it was one of the key questions that I had when I interviewed for this job and considered leaving the Giants to come to this job. I know that Chris is going to support us with everything we need both in terms of, you know, player payroll, but also non-player payroll. All of the infrastructure investments, all the investments in key staff members that can help us bring a World Series here. So, I have um no concerns about that. Scott, um you mentioned expectations have changed around here. Two straight years, you’ve made it really close to the ALCS. So, um, do you view yourself as a World Series contender now going into next season? If that’s true, would your approach change anymore as far as being more aggressive um, in the offseason, getting, you know, key reagents, higher price free reagents, and being a little bit more aggressive at the trade deadline? Yeah, I um I hope that I’ve demonstrated since I’ve been here that we’re we’re focused on winning baseball games and trying to win a World Series, not winters or deadlines. Um sometimes that means that we’re going to go into a 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. I don’t know exactly what this winter is going to be. we have several weeks to devise our strategy and start executing on it. Um, but since the day I’ve been here, I’ve been trying to win a World Series. And I think it’s important to not lose perspective here. I was sitting in this building 3 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 a 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 uh per uh appearances. We’re talking about the number one 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 in 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 can help us get even better. Um, 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 see them perform. And I think there’s 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. The second thing is I think some of our approach and contact issues are going to uh improve just through development of the guys in that room, but also additions from our system. I think for for those of you who’ve been following our system, I think the profile of Tigers hitters is has changed over the last three years. We’ve been very intentional about targeting at bat quality and bat-toball skills. I think as these players start to get to the big leagues, it’s going to nudge our big league team towards more contact and better approaches. And it’s also going to improve our defense because most of our our players in the minor leagues are actually two-way players that can be assets on both sides of the ball. They can be impact defenders and they can also swing at the right pitches and make a ton of contact at at the plate. A lot of those gains are going to come from within. It’s why we’ve been so intentional about drafting, developing, and ultimately getting these guys to the big leagues. And what excites me is that we’re going to take a bunch of talented players in there, and we’re going to add to it externally, but we’re all going to add to it internally with some of these impact players that have earned their prospect status through the last three years and posted dominant years at really young ages. Scott, kind of off that, you talked about the need to reshape the lineup a little bit with more contact, less swing and miss. when you have a young core um and and some of those prospects that likely won’t be ready by 2026, where does that start? Yeah, so I think it starts um it starts in a few ways. You know, one thing that I noticed with our with our team is we started to get a little bit more pitchable late in the season. Um some of our contact issues and approach issues started to get exposed in September. Um, some of the things that I saw were we started to get a little bit pole happy towards the end of the year. Uh, I think that created some holes for us that got exploited in the in the playoffs. Um, I think sometimes we started to audible off the game plan a little bit quicker in at bats. Um, we started to audible towards an approach that tried to cover every pitch type in every location. That’s really hard to do at this level. Um, and I think that some of the interaction between approach and contact really started to hurt us. So, the pitches we were swinging were exacerbating our contact issues. I think a lot of that is going to improve through the experience that these guys had. Like, like it or not, it was hard to watch in September. I fully admit it. I felt that, too. These guys are going to be better off for it. They went through some deep struggles in September and they came out the other side getting really hot in the playoffs going into Cleveland, winning a really important series and then taking Seattle to the brink in 15 innings. That experience and reflecting on the things that o pay the power bill reflecting on the things that went well and helped them get out of those struggles will help them. This this team is going to show up in Lakeland and they’re going to be more battle tested. That’s two straight years in the postseason and they’ve seen high-end pitching. They’ve seen what works against high-end pitching and what doesn’t. So, some of that’s going to be through approach development this offseason that we’re we’re already working on. Some of that is going to be through um some path work, bad path work with our hitting coaches. I think some of the the paths on our on our team started to change late in the year. I think that started to create some of the issues that we had um through the year. I think there’s still some work that we can do this off season um in facilities here when they come here and then also in Lakeland to to fix some path issues. And then the last part is um through the additions that we we are going to add internally. Some of the players are not going to be ready for 26, but a lot of them are going to be ready for 26. And so when we add some of those players um with the skills, traits, and attributes that we have been prioritizing through the draft and development, I think those are the three main areas that we’re going to be able to improve both our approach and contact issues that I outlined. AJ, I’m I’m curious everything that he’s saying, how how is that from your point of view? Like do you have to meet with your hitting group? You have to refashion your hitting group or what what does that those changes look like from Yeah. So, I I’m glad you asked because I I I I have a lot of thoughts on the offensive side of the game in this era has never been harder. You know, what what is required out of a major league hitter is um it’s only getting harder and harder. Velocity up movement, um pitch shapes, you know, the pitching laboratories are are much further along than than the reaction side of the sport as as an offensive player. And so, um, it’s constantly the challenge is getting tougher and tougher and it’s and I watch all these games and I watch a high contact team like the Cubs get six base runners against the Brewers as they were going through their own version of pitching chaos and pitching somebody different every other inning. Or I see, you know, last night in the game, um, you know, the Blue Jays highpowered offense scored bazillion runs in the ALDS, you know, not be able to push a run a run across after the first swing of the of the night. um against a pitcher on short rest who’s on the back end of a rotation, albeit a really really talented rotation. So, it’s not an excuse as much as it’s perspective. And I think the, you know, I’ve spent the last couple of days, you know, in my office and players filtering through there and packing up lockers and and saying goodbye and and, you know, I I asked Karp, you know, what’s the difference between, you know, September for him and and a dominant October where he was in control of all of his bats and getting um hitting the ball of the ballpark, getting intentionally walked, you know, mixing in a few hits, drawing a few walks and it all centers around getting a good pitch to hit. I know that’s a a a comment that I’ve said over and over and over again and it’s way easier said than done, but um pitch recognition and and and choosing, you know, when to be aggressive, when to be patient against each pitcher is paramount. Over 162, it’s it’s agonizing, you know, because there’s going to be peaks and valleys in everybody’s year. And so, um, we’re going to continue to to push our players to, um, have an audible with the swing where it’s not always just trying to chase the pullside power. Although pullside air is getting rewarded more and more and more in our game, both in winning, you know, and in earning potential. So, um, playing the game seems to get exposed as you get deeper into the season and you get into playoff baseball and you see things that you don’t see over the course of 162. Um, how much of that can we bring, you know, sort of into our every every day is going to be important. So, we’re going to look at our messaging, we’re going to look at our prep, we’re going to look at our game planning, how are we implementing it, um, who is implementing it, all the above because it’s um, you got to be good at everything. So, it’s not pointing the finger at offense. It’s not pointing the finger at defense. It’s not pointing the finger at at pitching. U to be an elite team, and we were one of the elite teams. To be an elite team, you have to do it all. And you need it all. So, you can’t I can’t only focus this winter on contact. That’s not going to get us where we want to get to because somewhere we have other areas to get better at, but we are not going to be naive and and think that we’re going to run it back and and do this again. Like one of the one of the reasons I had such a hard time at the podium after game five is like it’s hard to get to where we’re at. It’s hard to get to run the whole race and get through the season and and and and have 87 wins be disappointing. Like that’s hard, you know, to have a series win in in in the wild card. Like we’re not going to think it’s not good enough. We won the series and against a really good team and then we get to 15 innings, one more run or one more pitch or one more defensive play and it feels like we would be, you know, reviewing game one decisions and game one, you know, offense, defensebased running, things like that and and instead we’re sitting at this podium. So it’s, you know, I have great appreciation for everything that we did, but we are not going to be we want more and we and we know that that we can do more and and achieve um you know, higher bars. And I’m I’m glad that at to some extent that I’m sitting here um talking about all that not being good enough. like what a great accomplishment for us to to reset the bar as to where we’re at and and know that that this city, this fan base, this organization, these players, these coaches um can do more and and we’re going to we’re going to work tirelessly to do it. We’re going to take a couple days off, you know, but we are going to get back up at it and try to run that same race and be however many wins more it takes u to win this division to advance past the ALDS and bring a World Series to Detroit. Hey Scott, uh you were talking about the deadline and you said no every deadline you’re probably a little dissatisfied. You talked about the high asking price, but considering how September looked and what AJ was just talking about, one pitch, one inning, one runaway, how do you not feel like it was a missed opportunity? I know you talk about the high asking prices, but this team hasn’t won a World Series in 41 years. You were nine games up. Like, how do you how was the answer Paddock and Morton? And maybe you say we got to give up a little more to get somebody that can actually help us win now instead of the future. Yeah, I mean, um, to be fair, I, um, when we acquired Paddock and Morton, um, the the goal wasn’t for them to play big roles for us in the postseason. So, um, we got to the postseason, we lined up our pitching. We thought we were going to be dangerous once we lined up our pitching, and we were. We pitched really well in the postseason. I think we had a sub3 erra over the course of the whole postseason. We faced a really highpowered offense in Seattle and we pitched them really tough and I think the aggregate numbers suggest, hey, we pitched really well in the postseason. So, um I’m I’m pretty sure the pitching wasn’t necessarily like the the primary issue as to why we’re not in Toronto right now. Um, I think the offensive performance we had down the stretch is is a um a fair question on could we have done more? I think the the question that I often have found myself reflecting on is like should we have added a bat at the deadline? I think that’s a very common question that we hear from um you know different people. I I run into people on on on the street and I think, you know, as I reflect on that decision, um I think it’s important for us to like remind ourselves of where we were at when we were making those decisions. And I think there’s a couple things that are really important here. Like in July, we just had four position players in the in the All-Star game. Um, on August 31st, we our offense scored the eighth most runs of any team in baseball across five months. So, we had the eighth best offense in in baseball across five months. Um, and in order to add a bat, we would have had to displace a high performing player who had helped us achieve like a top eight offense at that point. And maybe we should have like maybe that is a 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. I think it is a it’s a function of our approach changes. It’s a function of the contact. It’s a fun function of the environments. That’s something that we’re going to spend a lot of time digging on because you know that’s the question that really stood in in in the way of us winning the World Series in my opinion. Like I think if we had continued to produce at a really high level while continuing to pitch at a really high level and play the clean consistent baseball that drove us to 25 games over 500 at the end of August. Like I think that’s a team that like we could really reasonably expect to be playing in Toronto right now with a great chance to win the World Series. So that’s the thing I’m going to really obsess over this this offseason. Um I understand the question. I think it’s a totally fair question. Um, but I think the more fundamental question is what changed with our offense going from the first 5 months to the last month and is that a blip in the radar or is that predictive of the future? We got to get to the bottom of that question. Just a quick followup understanding like obviously you were really happy where you were, but isn’t that the job to maybe build a little support understanding that things could dip offensively like they did? Yeah. I mean, I think the So, that’s the job. The job and but the question I think and correct me if I’m wrong is like if I could go back and do it over again, like would I focus on adding a bat? Like, I think if I could go back and do it all over again, 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 the the pressing question. Maybe the answer is both. Maybe we should have added a bat and we should have gotten ahead of some of the changes that that our young hitters faced in difficult environments against better pitching in September and October. Um, those are the questions that are rattling around in my head and those are the questions that I’m going to obsess over and try to get answers to so that we can fix it for next year. AJ, uh, I believe you had your coaching staff come back fully intact uh, this year from last year going forward to 2026. Is that the plan or will there be some changes? Yeah. So, um first off, I we have a tremendous staff and and you know, we we stayed together um from 24 to 25 and fully and continued to try to push these players and and work tirelessly to do that. And so, um, I have to compliment the staff for everything that we did, you know, uh, to try to squeeze as many wins as we could and much performance as we could. Um, I knew that question is always asked at at at these pressers and I, you know, we we haven’t had a full discussion about the staff, you know, yet. We’re going to and like we do with everything, we evaluate every every possible way that we can get better. And um while I think our staff has has has answered a lot of the challenges and we’re doing a lot of the things that um that are that’s pushing this this major league team forward and connected to the minor leagues and in and creating an environment when young players come up to um to to be comfortable yet pushed. I mean that all that I think is in a really good place, but we wouldn’t be doing our jobs if we didn’t debrief about, you know, uh our entire group and we’re going to um it’s just, you know, I expected this coaching staff to be in in Toronto and so in order to have a clear mind and and a clear direction, we agreed to to wait a couple days and and meet um this week on on the direction of the staff. and we’ll have something to you when we when we make a decision either way. U but I am really proud of this group of of coaches and um the culture we’ve created and the and the and the work that goes into to to getting the players ready. Scott, it feels like a lot of well a significant part of the trade deadline strategy revolved around moving Troy Melton from the rotation to the bullpen. How do you look back on that decision and how do you see his role moving forward? Yeah. Um, I’m really impressed by Troy Melton. I thought he pitched really well for us. Uh, he got really big outs for us and he handled the transition from the rotation to the pen as seamlessly as any young player we have seen since I’ve been here. Um, we moved him to the to the pen for two reasons. One, because we thought, you know, it was a big need for us to add more swing and miss to our pen. We had, you know, a young player with high octane stuff that could um pitch in a multi-ining role as we’ve seen get really big outs for us and add a new dynamic to his pen so that when he looked down on the card, he had multiple paths to get to the finish line. The other reason why we focused more on the pen is due to innings concerns for him. He’s a young pitcher. Um, you know, injuries are so prevalent in our game. we have a duty to protect the players in our organization and we try really hard to to take that seriously. And so with the number of innings that Troy threw last year compared to the ones that he was on pace for this year, we didn’t think it was fair or reasonable to just plug him into the rotation and start him every 5 days. And we didn’t think we were going to get the best out of him in October if we just threw him into that role. So we chose to put him in the pen. Um, and for a young pitcher with as little experience as he has, like you can’t ask for anything more than what Troy gave us in the postseason. Um, and I’m really proud of him um for for stepping up and answering the bell and and being a huge addition to this to this team. I don’t think we get as far as we did without him. And he’s a starter, Chase. He’s a starter. Yeah, he’ll be he’ll be a starter next year. Don’t worry. Question for Scott on on Teroo. I know you didn’t want to talk too much about his immediate future, but looking back at what he’s done, you guys got to the ALDS game five back-to-back seasons. Do you think you could have gotten there without him? And then looking ahead, whether it’s 2026 or 2027 and beyond, do you think you can get back to that point without Scubble? Um, I mean, listen, it’s that’s a really difficult question to to answer because it’s a total hypothetical. He’s the best pitcher in baseball. like he’s going to hopefully win a second Sai Young. Like it would be arrogant and tonedeaf for me to claim that we could do all this stuff without him. Um but on the other hand, it’s also offensive to the other players in the in the clubhouse to treat us as like a oneplayer team. So, the fact is we’ve had TK and he’s made incredible comp contributions for the duration of his tenure with the Tigers, but especially the last two years, he’s gotten a lot better and he’s pitched huge games for us and this guy’s done a really good job of keeping him healthy and performing at a really high level with how he has managed him early in the season. Um, he’s been a huge part of what what we’ve we’ve done here and um it’s a blast to watch him pitch. I I don’t really think I can engage in hypotheticals of what would happen in past years if he wasn’t here and what would happen if he’s not here in the future. Like he’s here and we’re glad he’s here. Yeah. When did you guys know that uh Torres was playing with Hernia? And was there discussions about shutting him down? Because obviously he’s one of the ones who was such a high level player earlier and maybe the injury was the reason why he struggled towards the end and you better off playing somebody at I don’t know 60% than having somebody come up or finding somebody who’s at 100%. Yeah. I mean the quick answer to the last part of the question is no. Like uh we added Glaver to this team because we forecasted some approach and contact challenges with this group. Like nobody has a better approach than Glaver Torres and nobody has better bat- ball skills than Glabber Torres. His addition to this team in many ways powered a lot of the offensive performance that we saw for the first five months. Um, I think one thing that is like less obvious to fans that watch us is there are a lot of guys dealing with a lot of things in that clubhouse. And our guys deserve a ton of credit for powering through a lot of the things that they were dealing with that never got reported because they didn’t, you know, meet the bar for an injury report or something like that. Pretty much everyone in that clubhouse was banged up by the end. It was a long season. It was really grueling. It was really difficult. Um, Glabber was, you know, upfront and honest about us about reporting that to us. We felt like he still was capable of being a a solid addition to our to our team and you saw him go oppo at home, which is really hard to do. Um, so he’s a big part of of what we did this year. We’re we’re really happy with his performance. he started the All-Star game as the second baseman for the AL team and we we think that um you know we wish he wasn’t banged up in the in the second half. Um but we thought that he was still a big part of our team even though he was banged up. I’m going to add one thing cuz I and it’s not a knock on how you asked it but I think it’s really difficult to just put a percentage on there for free. Like I don’t know what percentage any of our guys are any given day other than I know they’re all under 100%. And so I I just want to caution like when you say like replace him when somebody’s playing at 60%, that’s a total guess. So just you know for us I think we were communicating every day with Glabber and I I think it brings up this is a free comment. So this because I didn’t get asked a question but September September really did it’s it I mean it it’s it relates to to this topic. September, I think, really did impact us physically, emotionally, and mentally. And I think if we talk about the season, and and I’m going to need a few more minutes before I can really grasp my my total feelings on the season. Um, what was the phrase? I’m only here so I don’t get fined, you know. Um, I I think September really did did push those decisions to to be a lot more urgent. um whether it’s resting a guy, whether it’s pitching a guy, whether it’s um you know going all in on a bullpen game, or whether it’s you know how we use Troy Melton. And so I I think when when you reflect back, you know, in September is going to to be the immediate thing that we all think about. It is things like that with could I got him an extra day or two off? Like how do you think we would have all responded if I just gave Glaver Tour as a random day off in September where we went seven and 17 and he would not have had it. Like that dude would have been right in my office asking me what the hell’s wrong with me. So it was a a an area of concern for us physically as we were asking so much out of all of our guys. Um, adrenaline really helped these guys in Cleveland, in Boston, in Cleveland again, and then um, all the way through the 15th inning in Seattle. And I’m I’m proud of how we fought through things. Some that now are known and and some that are still not known because of the nature of what we had to do the last 30, 40 games. I don’t know if he has an injury or anything like that, but people seem to be worried about Parker Meadows the last, you know, month this season. How do you fix him at the plate? Yeah. So, I think Parker was was um consistently trying to get himself back. I mean, he had one of the most random injuries I’ve ever been a part of in in my career of where we couldn’t I’ve never seen or heard of a of a nerve shutting down and in and him not being able to have a a functioning part of his body and part of his game. And um that set him on a path of playing catchup the entire season and we did not see um the best of him the most consistent that we’ve seen and we know that we’re going to get and so one is having a healthy offseason is going to be really good for him. two, I think it’s one of the one of the few times he’s had to play through a lot of things throughout the year. And uh we did miss him. We missed his defense. We missed his presence. When we got him back and he started to get off to a really good start, I moved him to the top of the order. And then I I I reversed course and started putting him at the bottom of the order because I recognized that he was sort of battling mechanics, battling approach, battling uh pulling the trigger a little bit and but but offered such good defense that kept him in the lineup. So, um I think I think we’re going to attack all those player plans. going to have our debrief with our guys and and you know our version of exit interviews to get some feedback from them and we’ll give them some feedback to because it’s a really important offseason for our players. I said that to them in Seattle that we’re not just going to run it back. We’re we’re not just going to try again. we have to to address um you know it might be something different for every player but it’s with every player and every coach and and every executive on how we can can get incrementally better to um you know to to get back into the competition you know come come Lakeland. Also, just to um to add to that and sort of humanize it for a second, like that question you asked, like you could have asked the exact same question with the same terminology for Dylan Dingler a year ago. You know, we saw him perform down the stretch, could have asked like, hey, how do you fix him? And now we look at Dylan Dingler, look at the year he just put together on both sides of the ball and managing a pitching staff and some of the game calling um attributes and it’s like, wow, like what a difference a year can make. that starts this offseason. It starts this offseason for all of our players, all of our coaches, all of our staff. Um, and it’s not just Parker. We got to get more out of our players. We got to create more um Dylan Dingler type stories where guys can fundamentally change um their sort of standing trajectory, value, performance um over the course of a year. It’s it’s something that we spend every day on like we’re not going to just take like six weeks off and then like see you guys at the GM meetings. Like it it starts right now. He talked about taking some days off. I don’t think we’re actually going to take days off. I think we’re going to start working on it immediately. Um Colt Keith, he started the year at uh first base in spring training. Where do you guys see him moving forward? Where will he focus on a position this winter? What where do you see his future? Yeah, I mean I can start with that. Um so we’re going to do exit interviews with all of our players. um a significant input into those decisions is is their perspective, how they feel about positions, how comfortable they feel about positions. You know, um with Colt, he’s capable of playing first, second, and third, which is a significant advantage for us from a roster construction standpoint and a roster usage standpoint. the ability to add an impact uh left-handed bat like that at a number of different positions gives us a number of different avenues to build this team and a number of different options in game there. Um we feel as an organization that he can play all three. We’re going to talk to him about his priorities and how he feels about playing all three. Um, but 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. And also like what he just did is really impressive. Like we just threw him at third. I know he played some third in the minor leagues, but he hadn’t played third in a while. And we started started throwing him at third midseason and he performed really well. Made some plays that, you know, I found very impressive. And that’s without like a full off seasonason of focusing on it. It’s without a full spring training of working on um some of the plays that may happen a couple times a year. He just kind of got thrown into the fire and was able to um really play the position, which is something that I find really impressive and I think it’s really impressive um to have a coaching staff that can help a player do that mid-season. Um we’re going to try not to do that to him again. Um that was more based on need, but the fact that he can play all three positions give us a real advantage as a as a team. Yeah, my my take on it is is at at this time last year, we had the first discussion, I think Scott and I did u shortly after this this a press conference like this where we we pushed him to first base and he spent a all winter working on first base and there was a lot of talk on whether Spencer Tolson was going to be playing much first base DH we put him in the outfield in spring like think about all that happened over the course of a year which is why it’s hard to capture the entirety of the of the topic. And then um I think his adjustments at third base was on the right track. I think it was a little unfair to him as Scott mentioned that it it was hard for him, but he he got better and better the more that he that he did it. And what I learned was we need a full commitment to to to the to the basics of these positions and not just put the glove on him and put him over there and think that that he’ll figure it out. And he’s he’s done a good job, but it it he’s a perfect example and and he’s really good at all these areas. good at nutrition, he’s good at his work ethic, he’s good in the gym. Um, you know, we need our strength and conditioning group to get the the the first step faster. We need the the infield group u Joey’s constantly talking about presentation of glove. You talk about um strength and conditioning like this is a guy who can put on lean mass and be super strong um quickly and and we’ve got to kind of honor that with based on what position he’s going to play. You you have, by the way, there’s the offensive side. So, it’s a when we say like comprehensive like development and comprehensive use of our of our staff, everybody needs to sprinkle a little bit of that in for Colt and and every other player, but the fact that that he’s now he’s probably more comfortable at third than second, which is amazing. Um, he’ll tell you that he’s comfortable at second and he should because he played there a long time. But we’re starting to get, you know, break through with his his comfort level with these positions and and based on how our winner goes, we’ll we’ll adapt accordingly. But at no point do I think this winter he’s going to be able to say one position for the for the best use of our roster and our team. I think he’s he’s a viable option at at multiple. Just housekeeping stuff going into the winter. Talked about glabber surgery. Is there anybody else that’s kind of slated for surgery? And I wanted to ask too about some guys that kind of disappeared this year with injuries like Brisky and Madden and even Foley and Gunther to some. We kind of know what happened to them, but yeah, what’s the future for for those kind of guys? Yeah, we owe you some medical news. Um, give us a a chance to get through the the exit physicals. Our medical staff does a good job of of um going through guy by um we’ll produce a report for you with all of that that information. Um, but yeah, I mean, I think we were one of the most injured teams in all of baseball this year. Um, which sometimes is is the luck of the draw because injuries are are so unpredictable. Um, but I think the subtext of many of our our um answers here is this group deserves a lot of credit for fighting through a lot of things this this summer and getting to a place where where we could get to the postseason and backto-back years. Um, injuries were certainly one of them. Um, and AJ and his staff deserve a lot of credit for um, constantly adapting to the the roster that we actually had available as as a result of some of the injuries. And some of the injuries weren’t actually like ILIL worthy. Like some of them were like, hey, we got to stay away from this guy today or we got to stay away from this guy for two days or something like that. Um, it was a really hard year on on that front. Um, and uh, you know, we’re hopeful that the years ahead are going to be less injury-prone than this one for either of you guys. uh when you emphasize the need for more contact, how do you assess the season that Riley had and how do you weigh the home runs versus the strikeouts? And I know these things don’t happen overnight, but is there a need for him to consider a tweak to his swing, a tweak to his approach in pursuit of higher contact, fewer whiffs, even if that comes at the expense of less power? So, yeah, I don’t think it has to come at the expense of anything. You know, I I think the topic of strikeouts is is sort of leaguewide. Um pitchers are chasing them, hitters are um they don’t like them, but they they you know, I always joke with guys, you might not dislike them enough, you know, because I think it’s important that that that it’s an, you know, it can be an empty out, but you want your guys to take their a swing as much as possible. So, it there is a give and take with Riley. You know, I I you know, I’ve talked to him about his approach. I’ve talked to him about his thought process. I’ve talked to him about, you know, when you’re in the middle of the fight and and guys are throwing 98 to 104. Now, the kid in Milwaukee, like it, you can’t be in the box and mentally be defensive about strikeouts. What you can do is is have sort of plan A and plan B and and have to adapt accordingly to the game. the what never changes is you need to swing at the right pitches. And so, you know, I not that I want to like rank strikeouts, but the strikeouts in the zone, you know, they’re trying to hit it. Like when they swing and the ball’s in the zone, they miss it. Like I always I kind of joke with him, but I’m half not joking. Like they’re trying to hit it. Like when they they make a pass at the ball. So you can’t just tell him, “You need to hit that.” He’d be like, “No shit.” Like I’m trying I’m trying to make contact with the ball. So that’s not the way to coach him. the the the getting somebody in a in a in to maximize their game planning is that I think we can get a lot better at that. I think we can concede certain parts of the competition, but not overall power. Nobody wants Riley to hit for less power. Nobody wants Torque to hit for less power. Nobody wants carp to hit for less power. We want them to to continue to nudge at progress in swinging at the right pitches that they can do damage on. And then, you know, when the game suggests that that that it’s you don’t feel right, you’re not picking up the ball, you can’t see it, Gavin Williams breaking ball, super nasty. Like, all those things are going to tell you that you need a plan B at some point during your approach. Easier said than done. Super easy to see the box on TV and tell them to stay inside that box. U very easy for us to see the result of the bat and ask you, why are you swinging at that? Um, but as as players who are already good, how do we get them good to great is to shrink those those 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. And some of that is confidence, some of that is approach, some of that is is feedback after the fact. Um, but we can be better at that and Riley’s going to be better at that. And across the the board, I’ve watched player after player, you know, address some of the um frustration with strikeouts with more contact and not concede that I’m still going to put up the scoreboard numbers that that we all love. You’re just getting riled up. I am. I know. Uh the only thing to add there is um we talk about this a lot internally, earning better pitches. you know, there’s an interaction between um the pitches you swing at and the pitches that you get. So, when we talk about becoming, you know, more pitchable, it’s it’s a 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, and I think we did this a lot in the summer, sometimes spitting on tough pitchers pitches earns you a better pitch to hit later in that bat. And it earns you a better pitch through the advance report of opponents coming in. And 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, um, 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 is nudged closer towards better approaches and more contact skills. But we got to earn better pitches as as an organization. And there are long stretches of this year and last year where we did earn better pitches and then we punished those better pitches. And I think June’s a really good example of that. Like when we held the zone better, we earned better pitches, did more damage, and had the best offense in baseball. And we got to get to an offense that’s a lot closer to June than September. And then on the note of contact, it felt like Labor was probably your best hitter in that regard from almost start to finish. Just what’s your level of interest in bringing him back? And how does the expected or imminent arrival of McGonagal affect that decision? Yeah, I um Glaver was a huge addition to this to this team. You guys saw it. um not only for his production but the presence that he had in in the lineup. Like in there were many nights this summer where um he really got us going in the first inning. He had one of those like grindy really difficult highquality at bats that both earned better pitches for himself but earned better pitches for the rest of the lineup. Um and really set the tone. I mean how many times this summer did we push a pitch count for a starter in the first inning up to like 28 29 30? I mean, you want to talk about setting the tone for the rest of the game. Like, we did a great job of that and Glabber was right in the middle of that. Um, I can’t really speculate on, you know, what opportunities he’s going to have. Um, this winner, he’s earned the right to be a free agent. Um, and we’re going to we’ll we’ll approach that at the at the GM meetings. Kind of more of a GM meetings topic than than right now. To to follow up on that, he mentioned McGonog. I mean, you talked about the top prospects being closer. How realistic is it a guy that a guy like him is in Detroit this spring? And I guess to Will’s question too, does that affect free agent decisions this winter for you, the prospect of those guys being here soon? Yeah. Um, so I expect um the players that posted dominant years in DA to factor into our big league team next year. Um, they’ve earned it. They they posted incredible years as 20 year olds. Um, very young for level. I expect their their progress to continue and I expect them to be in Detroit at some point next year. Um, does that affect what we do this winter? Absolutely. How could it not? I mean, these guys are are really exciting young players that can help us on both sides of the ball and we got to make sure that we are um preserving opportunity for them. We also have to compete. The expectations have changed around here. we have to thread that needle where whereby we are putting ourselves in a really good position to get off to a good start but also add to that team throughout the summer um internally with some of these players that that are coming. You know, Kevin is in um the fall league right now. He’s playing some shortstop. He’s playing some third base. He has played second short and now he’s going to having have experience at third base. Um, I’m not going to announce that he’s going to be in Major League Camp, so because I should probably tell him before I announce it. Um, but I think a lot of these guys are going to be in Major League Camp. You’re going to see them firsthand. And more importantly, they’re going to get a lot of experience being around the big league coaches and the big league players so that when they ultimately get to the big leagues, they’re more comfortable and we have an environment ready for them that allows them to jump onto this team and make this team better immediately. Um, I will say the only other thing is, um, they’ve already affected what we’ve done up to this point because how could they not? Like we we have invested so much in a lot of these players and we want to create opportunity for them to come here and get better just like we’ve done with guys like Dylan Dingler. Like creating opportunity for them to like ultimately get on this team and demonstrate they can be one of the better catchers in all of baseball. like um we got to continue to to create runway for these players because our future it’s too important to our future. We are in a position right now where the present is really bright and the future is really bright and we got to preserve that no matter what we do this winter. I I’ll just wait for him to go to the GM meetings. I’ll fly to Phoenix and I’ll tell Kevin myself. Do you guys remember when he announced that they were coming to the big league camp a year ago? Yeah. How’d that work? Talk about insubordination. Unbelievable. There’s obviously no guarantee of sustained success in this sport. I mean, it’s one thing to go back-to-back appearances in the postseason, but backto backto back, there aren’t many teams that are able to do that. Just a few years ago, it was only what, 47 wins for this organization. As you guys stare down everything that needs to be done to take it to the next level, do you get the sense that it’s harder to make a jump of four wins to make it to that next round in the postseason than it is over a relatively short period of time to make a jump of 20, 30, or 40 wins just to get to where you’re at now? Um, I mean, I think we could probably spend all day on that on that question. the the things that pop into mind immediately are um we have some things working for us and we have some things working against us. I think the things that are working for us are um we went from an entire organization with very little postseason experience at all last year to basically an entire team that has been in the postseason for two straight years, been in high pressure environments, hostile environments like Houston, Cleveland, Seattle, like they’ve experienced playing at a really high level when they couldn’t even hear themselves think and they found a way to perform. You can’t recreate that anywhere. you cannot like replicate that environment in spring training to prepare these guys for it. Um, experience really matters and this group just got a ton of experience for for the last two years. So, I think in some ways the experience that this group has now will make it easier for them to make that jump because I think, you know, there will always be butterflies and nerves and anxiety going into the postseason, but I think it’s different if you’ve been there two consecutive years and you’re you’re doing it again. Um, so I think that that’s one of the things that that’s working for us. Uh, one of the things that’s working against us, it’s really hard. There are um, what, four teams that got to the DS in back-to-back years over the last two years. Were one of the four. It’s really hard. Like, there are a ton of, you know, teams that had really high expectations going into this year who didn’t make the playoffs. There are some teams that went ultra aggressive at the trade deadline and didn’t even make the playoffs or got bounced in the first round. This whole thing is really hard. So, I think, you know, one of the subtexts of this this entire press conference is we should be really proud of those guys. Like, I however you cover this team, like please make sure that everyone, especially our fans, is really proud of what they did because what they just did is really hard, but we we want more than that. We want to continue to to improve. Um, and so I think to answer your question more directly, like I don’t know which one is harder. I just know what challenge we have right in front of us and this one’s really hard, but we are committed. We’re absolutely determined to get it right and and to bring a World Series to Detroit. All right, thank you everyone. Cool. Thank you guys. Appreciate it. Yep.

President of Baseball Operations Scott Harris and Manager A.J. Hinch wrap up the Tigers 2025 season.

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