Tigers to hire Shane Farrell as new farm director, per report

The Detroit Tigers front office made a significant new hire on Saturday as Bob Elliott of the Canadian Baseball Network broke the news that they are finalizing terms to hire Shane Farrell as their new farm director. Farrell has spent the last five years as the Toronto Blue Jays scouting director, so this is a move over to the player development side for him.

There’s no word of anyone leaving the Tigers front office. So this would appear to be a move to hire Farrell to work under VP/AGM Ryan Garko, presumably taking over some of the day-to-day responsibilities since Garko was promoted to a Vice-President, Assistant General Manager seat last May. This is a role at times held by long-time director of minor league operations, Dan Lunetta, but there’s no word as to whether Farrell will augment that role, or have a different set of responsibilities.

We’ll have to see if any other moves follow, but those promotions of Garko, along with Georgia Ghiblin in performance science, and Andrew Thomas in analytics, all to Vice-President roles, represented pay increases and efforts from President of Baseball Ops, Scott Harris to avoid having any of their talent poached by other organizations.

Garko predates Harris, as he took over from David Littlefield as director of player development for the Tigers as the end of the 2021 season, and the results have been very impressive. The farm system rapidly improved in developing pitchers in particular, but hitters like Parker Meadows, Wenceel Pérez, and others immediately began making tangible adjustments to their training and swing mechanics and showed big improvements after their progress had stagnated early in the pro careers. Obviously the Tigers have rapidly begun to develop pitching talent at a much better clip since that point as well.

The Blue Jays development pipeline has been rather abysmal in recent years, unable to support an expensive major league roster with much help. That may put some Tigers fans off this hire, but the Blue Jays’ problems seem far more systemic rather than the result of one person. Maybe Farrell isn’t that good on the scouting side, maybe he was undermined by team leadership, or maybe he did well and the Blue Jays player development leadership just isn’t good. Or, maybe he was just ill-cast in scouting there and is better suited to player development. There’s just no way to unpack that from outside their organization.

What we do know, is that Farrell worked as a scout for the Chicago Cubs when Scott Harris was the Cubs director of baseball operations. So Harris, and presumably GM Jeff Greenberg, know who they’re hiring here. It’s entirely possible that Farrell did well in evaluating amateur talent, but conflicts and poor alignment throughout the Blue Jays organization undermined those efforts. This is also usually described as more of an administrative role in general, and not so much hands on with the players.

Garko’s work with the Los Angeles Angels hadn’t really stood out in terms of final products when the Tigers hired him either. Alignment between scouting and player development is crucial, as is the whole front office having a unified plan and understanding their strengths and weaknesses. So hopefully Farrell will be more successful in Detroit working now on the player development side under Garko with a unified program all around him.

Farrell’s father John pitched for the Tigers in 1996, before going on to a lengthy managerial career, so there is a bit of a family tie to the organization as well. MLB Trade Rumors has more on the move from the Blue Jays side in this piece on the story.