A.J. Hinch has already talked lots with the Tigers' Big Three. The first time he saw two of them in uniform, Wednesday morning in Lakeland, Tarik Skubal and Matt Manning were pitching side by side.
"It's fun to watch Skubal throw a live bullpen. He was throwing right next to Manning. There's a reason to be excited about those guys," Hinch said Wednesday afternoon after the Tigers' first workout of spring training. "I let them know, 'You're not going to make the team today, but what you do today is going to build toward making the team.'"
Now throw in Casey Mize. Ideally, that's 60 percent of the Tigers' future rotation. It's also the foundation of the team's rebuild. Oh, there are hitters on the way, like Spencer Torkelson and Riley Greene, but the pillars of the program are the pitchers.
This isn't lost on Hinch. The Big Three are perhaps the three biggest reasons he came to Detroit. He believes strongly in building a team through starting pitching. That's how he won three division titles, two AL pennants and the 2017 World Series in five years with the Astros.
In Houston, Hinch had scads of proven talent in his starting rotation. His three most talented starters in Detroit enter the 2021 season with one big-league win combined. The hype is fun. It's deserved. It's also dangerous, if it breeds satisfaction.
"Obviously there's a lot written about these guys, there's a lot talked about these guys," Hinch said. "As I will tell them and as I told Manning this morning, 'You can use it as motivation, but if you use it as comfort it's going to come back and you're going to regret it, because it's going to be a distraction.'
"So, go out on the field and compete. I love the reputations, I love the prospect status. I'll love the production on the field more."
That shouldn't be problem with Mize, Skubal and Manning. They're as driven as they are talented, as keen as they are green. And they aren't anything close to satisfied with where they stand at the moment. In the words of Mize, they want to 'bring Tigers baseball back to what it should be.' That job is just beginning.
Mize and Skubal are poised to start this season in Detroit, assuming they pitch well in camp. Manning shouldn't be too far behind them. Then the pitch counts and innings limits will begin, especially after the shortened 2020 season. But whenever they're on the mound, Hinch wants his young guns emptying the chamber.
"As a staff and an organization, we have to develop a plan for them. But the player needs to be put on the field and told to go compete as hard as he can, as long as he can. There's a fine line of tiptoeing around the season, trying to stretch and claw and budget for however many innings you have.
"That doesn't help you against the Indians in the first series of the season, if any of these kids break with our team. What helps you there is the compete button."
