Overall
Year one of the Harris experience in Detroit has seen almost literally everything go wrong. He routinely got fleeced in direct dealings with his fellow team execs, and the Tiger farm system callups proved inadequate to the demands of their jobs.
Here’s the first-half report card on the Tigers front office. Note that grades for players departing the organization are based on the reverse of those players’ WAAs with their new teams.
Mode WAA Grade
Acquired -3.1 F
Traded -0.5 C
Signed -1.0 D
FA Lost +0.7 C
Rookies -2.4 D
Overall -6.7 F
Harris made 28 personnel moves involving 2023 major leaguers, and by more than a 2-to-1 margin those moves backfired. Only eight of the 28 created positive value for the Detroit Tigers, 18 went negative and the final two were neutral.
At midseason, that leaves Harris with the second worst score of any of the 30 team executives, the only worse score being amassed by Billy Beane and David Forst in Oakland … but you knew that already.
And it goes against Harris’ established record. In each of the past two seasons he’s been a top 10 GM using the same calculations. Of course, he had Farhan Zaidi looking over his shoulder in San Francisco.