Harris wrong to prematurely sign Hinch to extension
Tigers exec was too quick to extend unproven manager
I hope one day soon Scott Harris approaches Javier Báez and tries to explain to his undisciplined hitter that he doesn’t have to lunge at a pitch he has no business swing at.
To which I would love for Baez to respond to the Detroit Tigers president: “Same to you, bud.”
Because for all of Harris’ proselytizing about dominating the strike zone with a disciplined approach, he just did the opposite, metaphorically taking the equivalent of Baez’s wild swing at a ball he should have let go by when he prematurely and unnecessarily signed manager A.J. Hinch to an extension.
Hinch was signed for two more seasons, through 2025. Yet, Harris decided it was imperative that he extend a manager who hasn’t won 80 games, let alone a division title, and has a worse winning percentage (.455) than Brad Ausmus (.516) did through his first three seasons with the Tigers.
The announcement came Monday at MLB’s winter meetings in Nashville, Tennessee. There was no information about the length of the extension, other than Harris telling MLB Network “we locked him up for a long time.”
“We're not going to share the term or details of the contracts for non-players,” Harris told reporters far away from Detroit, where he would have faced a larger and likely more critical contingent of reporters. “But we're pumped that A.J. is going to be the manager of the Tigers for a long time.”
Pumped? Sure. Yet the Tigers announced the extension almost a full month after the deal was completed. I don’t know about you, but whenever I have big, exciting news I’m proud of, I always a wait a month before I shout it to the world.
Hey, y'all! I cured cancer! I did it last month but didn’t tell anyone!
This isn’t an indictment of Hinch. He’s a good, capable manager who’s had to deal a
slew of injuries, especially to his pitching staff, while the team goes through a rebuild. But the jury is still out on whether he can take the Tigers to the postseason and make some noise when he gets there.
But at this point, no one’s convinced about Hinch, outside of Harris. There would have been absolutely no harm in letting Hinch manage next season, in a prove-it year. Harris really had the luxury of waiting an entire season before he had to decide whether or not to extend Hinch, or let him enter the 2025 season as a lame duck.
If you’re surprised by the extension, you’re not alone. So was Hinch.
“I didn't really see it coming,” he said. Harris said he and Hinch worked well in their one season together and he didn’t want Hinch to feel like an “inherited manager.”
Yet, that’s exactly what Hinch was and, frankly, still is. Because Hinch will never count as Harris’ hire. We see this all the time in sports when a GM inherits a coach. They love to keep them around because that keeps the clock from truly starting on their tenure.
Generally, GMs get to hire two coaches or managers before they’re shown the door. Al Avila inherited Brad Ausmus, but at least he had the good sense only to exercise Ausmus’ fourth-year option before letting him walk. Avila then hired Ron Gardenhire and Hinch before he was shown the door.
Of course, anything’s possible. This could work out well and Harris could prove to be prescient by locking up Hinch for a long time. It would make sense that they complement each other because of their similar nerdy, brainiac, analytic backgrounds. Hinch earned a
degree in psychology from Stanford and Harris studied at the London School of Economics and has an MBA from Northwestern. (By the way, I love that Harris still has a LinkedIn profile.)
Or prematurely extended Hinch might be a disaster in which the intention of locking him up does the opposite and instead shackles Harris to an ineffective manager for a needlessly long period.
So maybe Harris’ decision will be a home run. Or it could be a huge swing and miss. Nothing will be certain for a while. But what we know for sure is that Harris didn’t have to swing this early. Even Javier Baez could have told him that.