The Tigers are hunting -- or at least tracking -- big game.
With five star shortstops on the free agent market, Detroit is in on each one — plus a sixth flying under the radar.
Per Jon Morosi, the club has spoken this week with agents for:
- Carlos Correa
- Marcus Semien
- Corey Seager
- Trevor Story
- Javy Baez
- Chris Taylor
Between them: 10 All-Star Games, five Silver Slugger awards, four World Series rings, three NLCS MVP’s and a World Series MVP. Not bad.
It’s no surprise to hear the Tigers are in on the Big Five, especially Correa. They’re hurting for a shortstop and ready to spend. One of those five is likely to take the field in Detroit on Opening Day next season.
Unless Taylor does instead.
The 31-year-old is coming off an All-Star season with the Dodgers in which he quietly hit 20 home runs. He’s not strictly a shortstop. He played every position last year but catcher and first base, splitting most of his time between center field and second base. And no one loves positional versatility more than A.J. Hinch.
Taylor does have plenty of shortstop experience. It’s the position he’s played most over his eight-year career, including in 2020 when he helped the Dodgers win the World Series.
He had a big first half last year to earn the first All-Star nod of his career, before finishing with a .254 average and .782 OPS 148 games. He boasts an .804 OPS over the last five seasons, but also one of the higher strikeout rates in the bigs.
Taylor would be a lower-cost, shorter-term alternative to the five headliners of the shortstop market, all of whom are likely to command north of $20 million per year, with Correa and Seager pushing (and perhaps exceeding) $30 million -- and possibly $300-plus million in total.
Per Morosi, Detroit's "willingness to sign a player in the $250 million range is uncertain" due to its needs in the rotation, which might be taking precedent over shortstop.
“There’s a lot of teams looking for a shortstop, I can tell you that,” Tigers GM Al Avila told reporters this week at the GM Meetings. “We counted it up. Including us, there’s nine teams looking for shortstops. So I don’t know where the musical chairs are going to stop."