Fan Poll: Have the Detroit Tigers done enough to contend in 2024?

The Detroit Tigers finished the 2023 season with a mildly surprising second place finish, posting a winning record of 39-34 in the second half of the season and going 78-84 overall. A nine game losing streak in early June after a bad run of injuries pretty well crushed any hopes of a surprise run at the division. Still that strong second half featured a lot of good signs. For Tiger hopefuls, that was enough to leave a taste of what could be when next season rolls around. Well, next year is upon us, and the Tigers enter the 2024 campaign with over half the roster turned over since last Opening Day.

Gone are nine of the ten most experienced, and nine of the ten highest paid Tigers from a season ago. In their place are half a dozen major league free agents, five of them signed to one year contracts, and a crop of young players who hope to form the core of the Tigers roster for many seasons to come.

Also gone are half a dozen players from the lineup who posted a negative fWAR in 2023, while the nine players (with a minimum of 150 plate appearances) returning were all in the black. This was a lineup that finished 28^th in the major leagues in runs scored, so change was sorely needed. While Detroit improved to 19^th of 30 MLB teams in run scoring in the second half of the season, their veteran additions are Mark Canha and Gio Urshela. Not exactly cause for storming the box office.

On the mound, the losses are more significant, with the departures of Eduardo Rodriguez, Matthew Boyd, and Michael Lorenzen who combined for 59 starts and left via free agency. They are replaced in the rotation by Kenta Maeda and Jack Flaherty, two veterans who have performed well in their careers when healthy. Reese Olson, who logged more starts and innings than any of the other four starters, will round out the rotation.

The Tigers added to an already decent bullpen by adding veterans Shelby Miller and Andrew Chafin. Detroit’s bullpen and the team’s starting rotation both ranked in the middle of the pack in 2023 in ERA, FIP, and runs allowed. 22 blown saves was better than average, but leaves room to pick up a few wins.

One sign for optimism is that the club is sending some pretty good players to the minors. Players such as Matt Manning and Akil Baddoo, who easily made the team a year ago when healthy, will start the season in Toledo this year. That’s an indication that the threshold to make the 2024 club has risen.

Of course, the main focus of the Tigers’ hopes for the future, starting now, is the core group of young talent that has been raised in the organization, and continues to fill starting jobs in Detroit. The young quartet of Spencer Torkelson, Riley Greene, Kerry Carpenter and Parker Meadows who arrived on the scene last year will be joined at least by Colt Keith and perhaps Jace Jung and/or Justyn-Henry Malloy later in the season.

Just getting full seasons of Greene, Carpenter, and Meadows would surely give the offense a good boost. Some of the innings lost to injuries a year ago will be made up by having a healthy Casey Mize and Tarik Skubal on the mound, hopefully for a full season.

In 2023, the Tigers posted a winning record against each of their division opponents, which helped them to that second place finish. Odds are that will be a tough act to repeat. They need to close a nine game deficit between themselves and the Minnesota Twins. The Twins did little over the winter to improve their club, losing Maeda and Sonny Gray from their starting rotation and Jorge Polanco from their lineup. But they do have some talented young hitters added to the mix and when healthy, a really good bullpen.

Most prognosticators have the Tigers as a roughly .500 team, give or take a few games. The projection systems take the under on that, however. Still, we’d argue that In the American League Central division, a run at the division is within the margin of error. If the definition of contending is playing meaningful games deep into September with a real chance to play in October, then the Tigers have a solid shot, and we’ll take our chances from there. They will need some good luck and some good health, but mainly they’ll need improvement from the young group of players they’re building their roster around, and maybe a smart trade or two along the way.

So here we are. Opening Day 2024. Final answer time. What do you think?