Overlooked due to draft week’s usual commotion was a June personnel move affecting the Tigers’ Single A, short-season farm team at Connecticut.
Gerald Laird no longer was the team’s manager. Gary Cathcart was instead promoted from Detroit’s rookie Gulf Coast League West team, based at Detroit’s minor-league headquarters in Lakeland, Fla.
The move was Laird’s call completely, he said Tuesday, mostly because of his family’s residence in Arizona.
“It just wasn’t working out,” said Laird, who had two catching stints with the Tigers before he was hired ahead of the 2017 season to run Detroit’s lowest-end Single A club.