Their approach is patient more than urgent. Their actions echo their words. Scott Harris and the Tigers are sticking to the plan. They left the Winter Meetings this week having added one veteran to the roster: 37-year-old pitcher Alex Cobb. On their final night in Dallas, Harris and his top lieutenant Jeff Greenberg sat side by side at a long, white-clothed table in a Hilton suite and reiterated the vision.
It comes down to a fundamental question. After their first playoff appearance in 10 years, are the Tigers more compelled to supplement the core or stay the course that got them there?
"I don’t think it’s an either-or," said Greenberg. "Seeing what we did last year and the progress that we made down the stretch -- one of the best teams in baseball for the last two months with the youngest team in baseball -- the experience our guys had, making that run, getting into the playoffs, with that comes a lot of development. They stepped up in big opportunities. We saw the value in giving our young guys the runway we gave them."
Greenberg pointed to Colt Keith and Parker Meadows. Keith, 23, was one of the worst hitters in the majors through the first couple months of the season. Meadows, 25, was so overwhelmed he wound up in Toledo. By the end of the year, they were two of the most valuable players on the Tigers' roster.
"Acknowledging where we are and how we got there, it presents additional opportunity moving forward," said Greenberg. "Of course we’re going to try to continue to get better, we're going to continue to do the work on the free agent front, on the trade front, but I think it's building off of where we are and how we got there."
At that, Harris jumped in: "Part of the strategy of building around young players is that they continue to get better."
"Every Winter Meetings when I’ve been sitting here talking to you guys, there have been a handful of players that feel like question marks and then we fast forward a year and they’re anchors on our team," he said. "They become middle-of-the-order bats or mainstays in our rotation, because they do get better. And the only way for us to help those young players go from question marks to mainstays on our team is to give them opportunities, so we have to keep doing that.
"But we’re a playoff team now, and everybody feels that. So we have to both find ways to get better internally, and add players like Alex Cobb ... that we can’t access from within."
The risk here is clear. For every Keith, there's a Spencer Torkelson. For every Meadows, an Akil Baddoo -- who was DFA'd to make room on the roster for Cobb. Torkelson entered last season looking like an anchor and came out of it as maybe the biggest question mark in the organization. Not even Keith and Meadows can be trusted to maintain their current trajectory next year. And when it comes to even greener players like Jace Jung, Trey Sweeney and Dillon Dingler, the Tigers are relying on hope in 2025 -- which isn't a strategy.
It feels like a "playoff team" is making a lot of assumptions about its roster, particularly its lineup. Namely, that every position player will improve. Some stall out. Others regress. As Harris acknowledged himself, "I don’t think that's a possibility. I think it’s likely. Development isn't linear at all." Question is, how are the Tigers guarding against that? What are they doing to ensure that the final two months of last season serve as a platform, and that next season won't be a plunge?
"We are trying to attack that a few different ways," Harris said.
One is by doubling down: the Tigers are pushing and preparing their players to have a "big offseason" of growth, said Harris. Another is by, well, tripling down: "Volume. We’ve got a lot of young players here, so my hope is that we can stagger the bumps a little bit." The third is the most important, and so far the least evident: "Adding from the outside."
The Tigers badly need a proven, right-handed bat at one of the corner infield spots, and they know it. They've been linked to third baseman Alex Bregman, but he's likely to command more years and dollars on the open market than they're willing to give him. They've also shown interest in first baseman Paul Goldschmidt, but the 37-year-old is on such an offensive decline the past two seasons that he might not be an upgrade over what they have in house. First baseman Christian Walker feels like the most feasible free agent target, but the Tigers will have to outbid a number of teams for his services.
To the trade market is where they could turn. At first base, Yandy Diaz of the Rays and Ryan Mountcastle of the Orioles could be fits. At third, Alec Bohm of the Phillies makes sense. So does Nolan Arenado of the Cardinals, though he'd have to approve a trade to Detroit. Any one of them -- even Arenado, despite his own dip at the plate -- would at the very least help stabilize an offense that struggled to create runs for most of last season.
All of them would cost talent, but the Tigers have the prospect capital to do it. As Greenberg said, Detroit can trade "from a position of strength" basically up and down the organization. Its farm system is one of the best in baseball. Given where they are on their competitive timeline, Harris was asked, are the Tigers more open to moves that would send out prospects than they have been in the past?
"Undoubtedly," he said. "The nature of the conversations we’re having now are wildly different than they were my first winter in the organization. The tone and substance of the conversations are much different. We are much more open-minded than we were in recent winters. We still have to be responsible and focused on what we have right now and how we can win this year but also every year moving forward, because we’re trying to build a window in which we are a mainstay in October -- not just a flash in 2024 and then never get back."
If the Tigers enter next season with their current roster, they will likely regress. Their historic surge was fueled by youth and athleticism, sure, but mostly by a mutant pitching staff that led the majors in ERA from the start of August and a 15-3 record in one-run/extra-inning games down the stretch. The Tigers can't expect those trends to hold over the course of a full season, and they have to make meaningful improvements to their lineup to offset it. The offense won't, and can't, fix itself.
At the moment, Harris and the Tigers are placing a huge bet on internal growth. "Is it a risk?" he said. "Absolutely. Are we doing everything we possibly can to minimize that risk? Yes."
The offseason is young, but his second answer doesn't -- yet -- ring true.