Jeff Greenberg has spent the last few years turning around the Tigers' baseball operations department. Now his name is popping up in a conversation that has nothing to do with balls and strikes: who replaces Steve Yzerman as Red Wings general manager.
The Red Wings have been searching for a new head of hockey operations since Yzerman stepped down as GM on July 15 and shifted into a senior adviser role under owner Chris Ilitch, who is personally overseeing the search. Greenberg being floated as a candidate sounds odd on the surface — he runs a baseball front office — but it's not as far-fetched as it looks once you check his resume.
Greenberg actually started in hockey before he ever ran a baseball department. He came up through the Pirates and Diamondbacks systems, then spent nearly a decade with the Cubs, rising to assistant GM by 2020. In 2022 he jumped to the Chicago Blackhawks as associate general manager, gaining real NHL front-office experience, before Detroit lured him back to baseball as Tigers GM in 2023. He also played club hockey at Penn, so this isn't some executive dabbling in a sport he's never touched.
The other piece that makes this rumor stick: ownership. The Tigers and Red Wings are both run under Ilitch Holdings, the family business that's owned the Wings since 1982 and the Tigers since 1992. That shared ownership structure means Chris Ilitch already knows exactly what Greenberg's Tigers front office looks like day to day, and it makes an in-house crossover hire far more plausible than it would be for an outside team.
None of this means Greenberg is leaving Comerica Park anytime soon — he's one name among several reportedly in the mix for the Red Wings job. But if Detroit's hockey side does come calling, it would leave the Tigers needing to replace the GM who's been steering their rebuild, all while their sister franchise tries to restart its own.