Tigers president Scott Harris defends return in Skubal trade - ESPN

Detroit Tigers president of baseball operations Scott Harris blamed himself for putting the team in a position to trade generational ace Tarik Skubal but lauded the prospects he received from the Los Angeles Dodgers in exchange.

Harris also took exception to the notion that he should've waited until closer to the trade deadline to maximize Skubal's return.

«We came into this very well prepared,» Harris said in a videoconference shortly after Monday's deadline. «We came into this with a firm idea of the type of deal that we wanted to ultimately land. And we had a deep understanding of what every organization had to offer.

»I think there is a unique dynamic with a player like Tarik Skubal. Markets at the deadline for the top players are just different than the rest of the market. So, I understand the intuition that, 'Hey, you're supposed to wait until the very last second on a deal and then pull a trigger at the very last second to maximize a return.' That's not how markets for the top players work."

Harris praised outfield prospect Zyhir Hope for his combination of power and speed, his knack for putting together big league at-bats and his overall bat-to-ball skills. Harris identified River Ryan as a potential front-of-the-rotation starter, adding that he expects Ryan to join the major league roster in September. And he described Brady Smith as a projectable starter with an elite changeup.

But the Dodgers have as many as four outfield prospects graded higher in their system than Hope, and the Tampa Bay Rays and the Milwaukee Brewers, who were both deep in conversations for Skubal, possess some of the industry's deepest minor league systems. It prompted executives and scouts throughout the industry to wonder why Skubal, the