Scott Harris knows how it looks. So does A.J. Hinch: "If you look at just the bad stretch of games where we didn’t win a ton," said Hinch, "it looks like we had a struggling offense that swung and missed a lot and didn’t score a ton of runs." And that struggling offense, at least on paper, is almost exactly the same.
The Tigers will likely take 12 of the 13 position players into this season that they took to the ALDS last year in their five-game loss to the Mariners. Barring spring injuries, swapping out Andy Ibañez for Matt Vierling could be the only change.
In a narrow view, it doesn't feel sufficient after Detroit's offense plummeted down the stretch last season amid the club's collapse in the AL Central. In a wider one, "we made some pretty big strides and we expect guys to be better this year than they were this time last year," Hinch said Wednesday in Lakeland as the Tigers opened spring training.
The Tigers had one of the top offenses in baseball for most of last season. Through August, they were eighth in the majors in runs scored and 11th in OPS. They sunk to 24th in both categories in September. Those struggles followed them into the playoffs where they averaged 3.6 runs per game and posted a .607 OPS while falling a win shy of the ALCS.
Harris admitted after the season that he wondered in hindsight whether he should have added a bat at the trade deadline and that he was going to "obsess over" two questions in the offseason: How did the offense plunge so suddenly, "and is that a blip on the radar or is that predictive of the future?" The Tigers clearly believe it was a blip.
And so another question looms: For all their arms, do they have enough bats?
"Listen, I get it," Harris said Wednesday. "I understand the narrative about our offense out there. I’ve seen it. I understand that we struggled down the stretch last year. I don’t think it’s all that fair to our players to paint the entire season last year with the end-of-season brush."
Harris pointed out that skepticism in the offense was similarly high at the outset of last season after the reverse story played out in 2024: "We spent the first four and a half months really struggling to score runs, and then we took off in the end." To Harris, the concerns were legitimate given the sample sizes at play, which is why the Tigers went out and signed Gleyber Torres to stabilize the top of their order. Otherwise, Harris stressed the importance of "investing in the hitters we have and helping them continue to grow."
"And then we go and did what we did and the first five months we were a top-eight offense in baseball. We struggled down the stretch, we finished 11th. This group scored 76 more runs than they did in 2024, they scored more runs than any Tigers team since 2013, and they did it with one of the youngest offenses in one of the biggest ballparks in baseball. This is a good offense. They performed. We absolutely have to get better. But I think the general characterizations of this offense aren't all that fitting given what they actually achieved last year," Harris said.
The Tigers enjoyed several revelations last season. Javy Baez and Zach McKinstry were All-Stars. So were Torres and Riley Greene, who slammed 36 homers but also set Detroit's single-season record for strikeouts. It's hard to say whether the Tigers can count on such performances again. After the All-Star break, McKinstry hit .213 with a .656 OPS, Baez hit .223 with a .548 OPS, Torres hit .223 with a .659 OPS and Greene hit .218 with a .694 OPS.
Torres, to be fair, was hampered by a sports hernia that he had surgically repaired this offseason. And Greene looks like a bonafide -- but flawed -- big-league slugger. But other key hitters for Detroit also took dramatic dips in the second half, like Colt Keith and Wenceel Perez. The only consistent producers over the course of the season were Spencer Torkelson and Kerry Carpenter, the latter of whom has a long track record of injuries. And Dillon Dingler, the second-year catcher who finished with a .752 OPS and a Gold Glove.
Harris and the Tigers are placing three major offensive bets this year: that their young players will continue to make leaps like Dingler and Torkelson made last year, that healthy seasons for Parker Meadows and Matt Vierling will offset inevitable regression elsewhere, and that their highly-touted hitting prospects on the doorstep of the majors will eventually provide a spark.
"There are going to be some additions on this roster internally. There’s some young impact players that are coming, they’re coming fast, and we’re going to trust them," Harris said. "Part of our identity is giving opportunity to young hitters and continuing to build around them. We trust that it’s going to improve, and I think in the last three years there's some evidence that it’s working."
The Tigers made a hard run at Alex Bregman in free agency last offseason before he signed at the last minute with the Red Sox. At the time, they felt his right-handed bat would have been worth $170 million to their offense. It says a lot, right or wrong, about their belief in their lineup now that when Bregman was back on the market this winter after opting out of his deal with Boston, the Tigers didn't pursue him.
Harris on Wednesday declined to "talk about other team’s players" when asked about passing on Bregman, but acknowledged, "It’s a huge vote of confidence in the players that we have, both the players that were in the big leagues last year but also the players that are coming."
"We’re going to push everybody," said Hinch. "We believe in these guys, because we have a good offense."