Short or long term: Which path will Tigers take?

This story was excerpted from Jason Beck’s Tigers Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

Scott Harris joined the Tigers as president of baseball operations two years ago with a track record of getting value out of shorter-term, lower-risk deals -- particularly on the pitching side -- during his time as Giants general manager. He combined that experience with a Tigers pitching department stocked with great coaching and instruction and leveraged it, helping undervalued free agents Michael Lorenzen and Jack Flaherty recapture their stuff and rebuild their value while improving the Tigers’ success on one-year contracts.

As Harris looks to push the Tigers to the next level -- building off of their first postseason berth since 2014 and their first playoff series win since ‘13 -- he might be reaching a fork in the road: Can the Tigers continue their trajectory on year-to-year signings, or have they reached the point where a longer-term deal is the better course?

Harris, at least publicly, is trying not to restrict the club to one path.

“We had success here with Lorenzen and Flaherty,” Harris told reporters this week at Major League Baseball’s General Managers Meetings in San Antonio. “In San Francisco, we had success with [Kevin] Gausman, [Anthony] DeSclafani, [Alex] Cobb. We’re just trying to find a way to get better.

“If we can get the level of performance that Jack Flaherty produced for us on a one-year deal, like, of course we’re interested in that. If we see opportunities to do that on a longer-term deal that makes sense for us, we’re open-minded to that, too. I don’t think we’re just focused on one approach no matter what. We’re going to try to be responsive to the market and what opportunities exist.”

The Tigers have explored this area before. They signed Kenta Maeda last November to a two-year, $24 million contract, but his struggles have left them hoping for a Maeda bounce back next year.

The free-agent starting pitching market is deep and multi-tiered, with Corbin Burnes, Max Fried and Blake Snell at the top, and several front-line starters close behind. But as appealing as the notion of pairing an ace like Burnes with Tarik Skubal might be, the Tigers have Skubal’s situation to think about, too. He’s two years away from free agency, a point where teams usually decide whether to pursue a long-term extension. Skubal’s agent, Scott Boras, sounded open to exploring an extension when talking with reporters this week, and Harris -- without mentioning specific players -- acknowledged last month that they could pursue contract extensions to prolong their window of contention.

There’s a middle tier between those top starters and one-year pillow contracts. The Royals navigated that part of the market skillfully last offseason, signing Seth Lugo to a two-year deal with a player option for a third season and Michael Wacha to a one-plus deal that they turned into a three-year extension earlier this month.

With some intriguing pitchers this offseason carrying qualifying offers, such as Cincinnati swingman Nick Martinez and Boston’s Nick Pivetta, the Tigers -- who value their Draft picks highly -- could have a choice whether to pursue that part of the market at all. They could be more motivated to sign such a player for multiple seasons, rather than give up their third-highest Draft pick for a mere one-year deal.

Then again, the Tigers’ wealth of young pitching -- led by Reese Olson and Jackson Jobe, but including Ty Madden and Brant Hurter -- could steer them back towards one-year deals.

“We’re in the best position we’ve been in in a long time in this organization in terms of the amount of innings we have, because this whole group of young starters has come up and demonstrated that they can perform,” Harris said. “Look at our postseason pitching staff: There’s some really young guys in some really big spots and they really performed, and that’s often a sign of positive things to come. I think we’re going to be much more open-minded to giving them traditional starter roles moving forward, but we’re also going to always try to find the strategy that helps us win the most games.”