What do you do when you get a new boss?
You start asking questions, right?
You want to find out if you will be working with a know-it-all jerk or somebody cool. So Detroit Tigers manager A.J. Hinch called friends and colleagues in professional baseball to find out about Scott Harris, his new boss.
The 35-year-old brainiac who has taken over the Tigers.
“I was told how impressed I was going to be with how his mind works,” Hinch said.
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OK. Great. That sounds encouraging — wait a second, what the heck did that mean?
Hinch wasn’t sure.
But he has already gotten a strong impression in the short time since Tigers owner Christopher Ilitch announced Harris as the club’s president of baseball operations on Sept. 20.
“It’s the way he thinks about things, the way he responds to different things, the way he articulates his reactions,” Hinch said. “He’s a very intellectually curious person.”
Intellectually curious?
That’s how I would describe Hinch.
Harris has the education — an economics degree from UCLA and a master’s degree from Northwestern — of somebody who normally ends up on Wall Street, running a big firm and making boatloads of money.
“His intellectual curiosity is an 80 on a scouting scale,” Hinch said, slipping into scouting lingo and awarding the highest grade a scout can give a player. “It’s one of the best attributes that I’ve seen so far.”
If this is all starting to sound like an arranged marriage made in analytics heaven, you wouldn’t be too far off.
“We are synced up on so many levels,” Hinch said.
We don’t know how Harris is going to change the organization or who he will hire, although we started to get a clue on Saturday when he fired Scott Pleis, who ran the Tigers’ draft and scouting department for more than a decade. Clearly, Harris is starting with a massive broom.
We don’t know if Harris will have the magic touch when putting together a roster. We don’t know what he’ll stress in the draft. We don’t know if he will be able to pull off a trade. And we don’t know if he can create a plan to win a championship
But he has already formed a tight bond with Hinch, impressing him not just with his baseball acumen and his approach but his people skills.
“I was told by players and staff that he would make you feel really good about yourself and you would really enjoy it,” Hinch said. “It’s very true. There’s a little hidden motivator in there. It’s just his vibe. It’s the way he goes about it. It’s his demeanor. But his content is super impressive.”
Speaking the same language
This is such an unusual situation.
Normally, a team president or a general manager hires a manager. But this came about backwards.
Harris was put in charge of an organization with a World Series-winning manager already in place, and the arrangement appears to be working great.
So give Ilitch credit for that.
“I know that I’m gonna have a voice with him,” Hinch said. “He’s gonna push me and I’m gonna push him, and it’s been an incredible partnership in the early stages of this relationship.”
Harris formally took over the day-to-day operations of the Tigers on Thursday, so Hinch sent him a playful text. “How’s your first day going?” Hinch teased. “He’s been working tirelessly for the 10 days leading up to it, but I poked fun at him and I acted as if he was off the last 10 days. But it’s been good.”
Hinch and Harris are kindred souls. They are both ridiculously smart, great communicators and share a singular drive: To win championships.
“I’m super happy,” Hinch said. “He’s really good.”
By all accounts, Harris is doing exactly what he said he would do.
He’s studying the entire organization, looking at the big picture, talking to people and listening.
He’s trying to figure out what works — and some things do work, like how the Tigers have developed a long list of young pitchers.
But he’s also trying to figure out what hasn’t worked — and that list is long for a team that struggled so badly in 2022.
When the Tigers were on the road, Hinch and Harris would talk just about every night. “To download,” Hinch said.
When the Tigers had homestands, they met together with players, including Miguel Cabrera and Javier Baez.
Next week, Hinch, Harris and current assistant GMs Sam Menzin and Jay Sartori will study the training staff and medical department.
I’m guessing some of the questions will include: Why did so many guys get hurt? Is there any way to improve that? Do they need to upgrade facilities?
“It was a really rough year, and those guys work tirelessly to they were dealing with something every single day of the season,” Hinch said. “So we’re going to look at our processes, it’s behind our coaching decisions. In we’re going to look at our processes and see where where we can get better and what we what we do well what we do below average and try to address all of that. But we’re planning on meeting about that next week.”
Hitting it off
So welcome to a new era, a time of tremendous change.
Hinch has fired hitting coach Scott Coolbaugh and shuffled his coaching staff, being careful not to blame anybody while making it clear that this is a new time.
“We’ll look into building a hitting department,” Hinch said.
When building out his staff, Hinch wants diverse backgrounds and approaches.
Some who played, some who didn’t.
Some from the analytical side, some from the traditional side.
Which would describe the combination of Hinch and Harris.
Eventually, they will get around to creating a roster plan.
Which makes sense.
First, you have to build a foundation — you have to have a clear plan — before making any short-term moves to try to fix the disaster of the 2022 season.
But Hinch has seen so many good things, in such a short time, that he’s encouraged.
“It’s been very energizing for me to see that from my chair and know how he’s trying to impact the organization in a quick amount of time,” Hinch said.
So here’s my first impression: Hinch and Harris are completely aligned.
And that’s a pretty good place to start.
MORE FROM JEFF SEIDEL:Why I’m encouraged about the hiring of new Tigers president Scott Harris
Contact Jeff Seidel: jseidel@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @seideljeff.