President of Baseball Operations, Scott Harris, along with manager AJ Hinch, sat down with the media for their end of the year press conference on Monday morning. One key piece of news revealed was a long-term extension for Hinch that was signed sometime during the 2025 season. Specifics weren’t provided, but presumably a deal characterized as “long-term” is at least three years, keeping Hinch in charge through 2028.
There’s no surprise in that. Hinch has been one of, if not the biggest factors in taking
the Tigers from a 70 win rebuilding club to back-to-back postseason appearances, each including a Wild Card round victory and a Game 5 ALDS defeat. Considering that the club has added very little from outside their own system, most of that growth has been the result of homegrown players being developed by Hinch and his coaching staff. Without an extension, and with a ton of managerial vacancies open at season’s end, Hinch would have his pick of prime jobs around the league if not locked up long-term.
Scott Harris talked at length about what a rollercoaster of success, failure and emotions the 2025 season. He referenced the struggle to control the strike zone by Tigers’ hitters down the stretch after doing such a good job of it in the first half of the season. He characterized the season as “another big step forward” because they won a couple more games, put six players into the All-Star game, winning eight postseason games in two seasons, and holding one of the top farm system in baseball, among other notes. He also referred to the club being the best in baseball from August 2024 through July 2025, a calendar year.
He then talked about how he understands that the arc of the season raises a lot of tough questions, and expects to be answering those questions all offseason. But he also emphasized not letting the last month and the ALDS loss overwrite the positives of the season either, and the value in stepping back and seeing the whole picture.
We’ll have a lot more thoughts on Harris and Hinch’s comments shortly. It’s an hour long presser and needs a bit of digesting to unpack the whole thing. You can check the whole presser out below.
For now, the Tigers are not changing course in the front office nor the managerial seat. This is no surprise at all, but the Hinch extension was worth dropping a short post to cover. There’s just only so much to say without any terms available for the contact. Losing Hinch would be a disaster for them in my opinion, so good to know that’s not going to be a question anytime soon.
All focus now is on getting the roster in position to take the next step.
