Three offseason moves the Detroit Tigers need to make

Bless You Boys

After a decade in the wilderness, the Detroit Tigers finally burst back on the scene in 2024. Given up for dead in July after selling at the trade deadline, the young Tigers’ roster put together a stunning stretch drive that saw them close with a 31-13 run to a wild card berth. They went on to knock out the Houston Astros in the AL Wild Card round before a crushing Game 5 loss to Cleveland in the ALCS ended the Cinderella story.

That success has left an already hungry fanbase very eager for a return to October in 2025. While that stretch drive is unlikely to be replicated anytime soon, the Detroit Tigers are clearly a team entering a competitive window. The trick this offseason is to seriously address the roster’s main weaknesses, without mortgaging the future too much.

The goal is to build the organization into sustained success and a long period of competitive baseball with opportunities to finally end a 40-year World Series drought. The reality is that the roster has some problems, and getting back to the postseason is in no way guaranteed in 2025. President of Baseball Ops Scott Harris will have to navigate through a few thorny issues to get them back to October.

On the plus side, the Tigers have the presumed AL Cy Young winner in Tarik Skubal, a good bullpen and plenty of pitching depth, as well as a core group of position players in Kerry Carpenter, Riley Greene, Parker Meadows, and Colt Keith to build around. They also have excellent leadership in manager A.J. Hinch and his coaching staff, who did outstanding work in 2024, particularly on the pitching side under Chris Fetter’s guidance.

In terms of assets, the Tigers have one of the better farm systems in the game, but most of their top talent is still more than a year away. That prospect talent was bolstered by several Harris trades and good drafts in his two years at the helm. They also have one of the lowest payrolls in the game, and room to spend on free agents and/or extensions to their homegrown talent. Considering they’ve already made the playoffs and it’s a very young roster, the Tigers are in an optimal situation right now. There isn’t going to be much grace granted from the fanbase should they fail.

There are three key issues on the roster that need to be addressed this offseason to take advantage of the situation.

Sign Tyler O’Neill or a similar lefty masher

The heart of the Tigers’ lineup is heavily left-handed, and this is a positive development for an organization which never really emphasized southpaw bats in the Dombrowski or Avila eras. That fits Comerica Park better than most of the team’s lineups over the past quarter century. However, a lack of right-handed power has left them rather unbalanced and vulnerable to left-handed pitching.

By wRC+, the Tigers were the 18th best against right-handed pitching overall, and 15th best in isolated power against right-handers. This despite Kerry Carpenter missing more than half the season and Parker Meadows struggling until the final two months of the year. Colt Keith was a fairly young rookie at 22 years of age, while Riley Greene came into his own as one of the better all-around outfielders in the game.

What they need is right-handed thump to balance things out and give A.J. Hinch more offensive versatility to work with. The Tigers were 23rd best against southpaws by wRC+ and 26th in terms of their isolated power mark of .133 and lowly .298 on-base percentage.

If the Tigers can keep Carpenter healthy, get a full solid season from Meadows, and Keith breaks out a little more in the power department, they’re going to be in very good shape to improve on their 2024 marks against right-handed pitching without any additions.

Some of their best work against southpaws came from Mark Canha, who is no longer on the roster. Utility infielder Andy Ibáñez was outstanding against southpaws in the first half of the season but struggled in that role throughout most of the second half until beating Josh Hader in the Wild Card round. Prospect Justyn-Henry Malloy came up for the stretch drive and did a nice job against left-handers, but that was a pretty small sample and Malloy is a fringy corner outfielder who really doesn’t fit the Tigers roster that well.

Likewise, Spencer Torkelson had only a couple good weeks the entire season, but did post a 122 wRC+ against left-handers. He too is a tough fit on the roster unless his overall offensive game finally takes the big step everyone has been waiting for in his fourth season in the league. The Tigers are sticking with him for now it seems, so finding another bat that can do what Torkelson was supposed to do, is the key goal of the offseason. If Torkelson finally puts it together as well? Voila, the Tigers should have a pretty potent offense.

There isn’t a whole lot to depend on internally in terms of right-handed bats and the roster issues don’t make it a simple matter of plugging in the best hitter they can get. The Tigers have no regular third baseman, but they don’t seem likely to land one of top options on the left side of the infield like Alex Bregman or Willy Adames. They should certainly have interest in those players, but getting either to sign in Detroit is a longshot even if they’re willing to spend the money.

Torkelson’s hold on the first base position remains tenuous at best, locking up that spot with a big question mark headed into 2025. And finally, the shortstop platoon of Javier Báez and Trey Sweeney is entirely dependent on labrum surgery for Báez restoring him to some degree of effectiveness at the plate and rejuvenating his defense. That’s a heck of a lot to ask, and while Sweeney was solid defensively for two months and solidified the shortstop position down the stretch, his bat remains a work in progress.

So, not only do the Tigers need a good right-handed bat with some lefty mashing ability, they need to fit a roster that is already carrying some self-imposed liabilities. Tyler O’Neill as one of the most dangerous hitters in the game against left-handed pitching makes plenty of sense as a free agent target. Corner outfielders like Teoscar Hernandez or Anthony Santander might be even better options. Ideally, the Tigers would find the bat they need at a real position of need like third base or first base, but the options aren’t plentiful at the former, and they seem set on rolling with Spencer Torkelson again at first base.

If the Tigers can land a lefty mashing outfielder, and then pursue a trade for a right-handed hitting infielder with the ability to play both corner spots, they’d be in great shape heading into 2025. That would be a pretty successful offseason on the positional side of things.

Sign Walker Buehler or another good starter

Throughout the second half of the season, much was made of the Tigers blend of openers and long relievers, or “bulk guys” as A.J. Hinch liked to refer to them. The Tigers outpitched everyone in the game for months with Tarik Skubal as the only established starting pitcher and a squad of relative unknowns working in Hinch’s heavily matchup based pitching matrix. However, even the Tigers concede that this is a difficult strategy to pull off for a few months, let alone a whole season. They go into the offseason with Tarik Skubal and RHP Reese Olson as their only two locks for the starting rotation next year. They need another good starting pitcher.

Top prospect Jackson Jobe is ready for the show, but probably not ready to go out and throw 150+ innings in his first full season. He’s certainly the front runner here beyond Skubal and Olson, but there is still a need for the Tigers to add the best starter they can find if they want to be as good for a full season as they were in the last two months.

They actually have a whole host of quality depth options and can deploy guys like Casey Mize, Keider Montero, Kenta Maeda, Brant Hurter, and several more as they see fit in the bullpen while stashing a couple in Toledo to stay stretched out in a starting role. What they could really use is a replacement for Flaherty’s production. At a minimum they need a strong mid-rotation arm. Sure, they went on their wild late season run without Flaherty, but they also would’ve missed the playoffs by several games without him there alongside Skubal to stabilize a pretty shaky bullpen and backend starters through the first four months of the season. There’s no guarantee that Jobe hits the ground running the way Paul Skenes did in 2024.

Walker Buehler is a name that has been heavily discussed in Tigers circles. The long-time Dodgers right-hander is now a free agent after a good postseason. Buehler worked with Fetter and Tigers’ director of pitching Gabe Ribas during their years in the Dodgers player development system, so there’s plenty of familiarity there. The Tigers are are good match for Buehler as well, and as likely as any club to keep him healthy and effective for a few seasons.

Skubal, Olson, Jobe is a good starting point, but a bit of a fragile one for a team that seems set on winning with pitching and defense rather than aggressively pursuing top position players to add. The Tigers have stated that acquiring a starting pitcher is a must this offseason. We just can’t say that they’ll compete with the big boys in the league for top free agents until they actually do it. Even the five year deal at $115M projected by MLB Trade Rumors for Jack Flaherty seems unlikely, though they could comfortably afford it and the fit in terms of both talent and personality seemed pretty great for him in Detroit.

Southpaw free agents like Sean Manaea, Yusei Kikuchi, or even yet another reunion between Scott Harris and Matthew Boyd could be in order. Oft-injured starters like Nathan Eovaldi or Andrew Heaney also make some sense. The Tigers don’t need innings eaters or durability so much as some good stretches of dominant starting pitching. Walker Buehler is a pretty good fit for them right now.

The Tigers need to fill a gap in their prospect pipeline

This last point is a simple one, but could be as important than any of the rest. The Tigers have an excellent farm system, but most of that high end talent is still at the A-ball levels. They don’t have much support available at key positions at the Triple-A level in 2025.

The scariest vacancy is at the catcher position, and it’s highly likely the Tigers acquire a decent third option in case of injury to Jake Rogers or backup Dillon Dingler. The latter made his debut in August after the Tigers traded away Carson Kelly. The 26-year-old rookie is developing into a fine defensive catcher, but things went quite poorly with the bat. If Rogers goes down for any length of time, the Tigers could be in real trouble as Dingler adapts to the grind of his first full major league season on both sides of the ball.

The Tigers also lack a Triple-A level shortstop who could credibly handle the position in the event of struggles or injury from Trey Sweeney. Meanwhile, Báez is at best a complete question mark, at worse, a pipe dream. Utilityman Zach McKinstry is a decent stopgap, but there’s a real hole at the Triple-A level not just at shortstop but across most of the infield. They don’t even have a legit first base prospect in the upper minors just yet.

What they do have, is a trio of solid hitting prospects who are ill-fitted for the roster for a variety of reasons. Jace Jung might hit, but just on arm strength alone seems overmatched at third base and is blocked at second base, his more natural position. Justyn-Henry Malloy is an even better bet to hit in our view, but he’s a mediocre corner outfielder on a team that heavily emphasizes outfield defense as part of their core philosophy. And finally prospect Hao-Yu Lee is a good young hitter on the fast track, but he hasn’t been tested at the Triple-A level yet. We have confidence in the bat, but Lee’s move from second to third base in 2024 didn’t go any better than Jung’s.

Both Jung and Lee would be better served playing their more natural position at second base, or learning to handle first base. Maybe that’s the backup plan should Torkelson continue to struggle in his fourth season, but that’s also a trio of pretty good hitting prospects who don’t really fit the roster right now.

On the pitching side, the Tigers have Skubal, Olson, and Jobe lined up to start in 2025. Beyond them they still have RHP Keider Montero, LHP Brant Hurter, RHP Casey Mize, RHP Kenta Maeda, RHP Matt Manning, RHP Ty Madden, and then RHP Sawyer Gipson-Long should be back from Tommy John once he recaptures his form at the Triple-A level. Starting depth isn’t an issue. Quality beyond the top three guys is an issue, however. Landing a good free agent starter would open things up for Tigers to trade from their pitching depth as well.

The Tigers really feel like they’re in a position to trade some decently talented but ill-fitting pieces to consolidate depth at positions of need.

Offseason expectations

Early this offseason, the rumors around the Tigers have been scarce. These are no longer the Mike Ilitch era Tigers featuring brash, bold leadership and a willingness to risk a big mistake pursuit of a title. Scott Harris seems much more focused on not making big mistakes and playing the long game. That’s probably for the best as long as they don’t squander seasons in which they should contend. So we’re not expecting a spending spree and multiple big contracts, but the Tigers are in pretty optimal position to make a big push to improve this offseason, and they absolutely should.

Harris has stated that they’re pursuing a right-handed bat that can help balance out the offense, as well as at least one starting pitcher. Beyond that there is no table pounding or passionate speeches about winning in the style of the Lions’ Brad Holmes and Dan Campbell. Harris can remain low key, but he needs to emphasize quality over value right now.

This isn’t a time to just tweak the depth chart and otherwise run it back. The Tigers need impact, and they need to shore up their roster depth a bit. If they can add a good right-handed hitter and a good starting pitcher, they’ll be in good position to challenge for the AL Central crown in 2025.

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