Major League Baseball is back, and with a bigger playoff field than ever before. To which we say: watch out for the Tigers.
Watch out for a rotation headlined by the Big Three and the Big E. Watch out for a lineup with new muscle in Javy Baez and more muscle coming in Riley Greene and Spencer Torkelson. Watch out for a club that played winning baseball for the final five months of last season and has leveled up this winter.
Because with six teams from each league making the playoffs as part of the new CBA between the owners and the players (good job, fellas!), the Tigers were darn near a playoff team for most of 2021. Detroit went 68-61 starting May 8, which ranked eighth in the AL and trailed the sixth-best team by just four games.
If A.J. Hinch and the Tigers can slightly improve on that pace over the course of 2022, we might have real October baseball in Detroit for the first time since 2014.
Consider: 68-61 equates to 85 wins in a full season. Last year, the Blue Jays would have claimed the AL's sixth playoff spot with 91 wins. Excluding the COVID-shortened 2020 campaign, the average bar for admission to the AL playoffs over the last 10 years would have been 88 wins. The 2016 Tigers would have made the playoffs with 86 wins.
The 2022 Tigers should be good. Competitive, at the very least. Detroit's rotation ERA (4.17) ranked seventh in the AL last season with rookies Casey Mize, Tarik Skubal and Matt Manning accounting for 77 starts, several of them stunted by innings limits. The trio combined to win 19 games. With longer leashes and further growth (and more run support) in 2022, why can't they combine to win 30? You can count on 30 starts from newcomer Eduardo Rodriguez, who was so much better last season than the results would suggest.
The value of adding Baez is hard to overstate, if only because he's filling a black hole. The Tigers were one of only three teams in the majors last season that didn't finish with a positive shortstop fWAR. Baez was worth 3.6 fWAR himself. Offensively and defensively, he's a massive upgrade at arguably the most important position on the field.
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Whenever they arrive, Greene and Torkelson stand to make a similar impact. They have bats built to thrive in the middle of the order. In the 3-4-5 spots last season, the Tigers ranked 28th in the majors in OPS (.715) and were one of only six teams to finish with a sub-100 wRC+. We'll see where Greene and Torkelson slot in to start, but even league-average production from the heart of the lineup this year would go a long way toward creating more runs. Runs win games.
The Tigers likely aren't done in free agency. They're seeking another veteran starter and maybe a new arm for a bullpen that was surprisingly solid last season, led by All-Star flamethrower Gregory Soto (and Michael Fulmer!). They do have some really good innings to replace in the rotation with the subtraction of Wily Peralta, a fifth/sixth starter who submitted a 3.07 ERA. Which is a good reminder that growth won't come without at least some regression. Are Detroit's catchers hitting the second most homers in the majors again?
Again, for 80 percent of last season, the Tigers would have been a playoff contender in a 12-team field. The question is whether they can pick up where they left off and improve as they go. Is 88 to 92 wins attainable for this team? Let's see what this team looks like on Opening Day, but an optimist would like Detroit's chances.