Detroit Tigers baseball is in a rebuild at the moment, but 2020 will be a season where their future will be shaped as young pitching will arise.
2019 was about as bad as you can ask for in Detroit Tigers baseball. They finished 47-114 as the worst team in the league- so much so that they didn’t even complete their damn season as you can see they were one game short of 162! But rest assured, 2020 won’t be as bad for the Tigers as there’s obviously nowhere to go but up.
What else is there to say about 2019? The Tigers were dead last in scoring and 28th in team ERA, so they were terrible in all facets last year. But this offseason was very productive for them as they brought in more offensive capability in CJ Cron and Jonathan Schoop from Minnesota as well as Austin Romine and Cameron Maybin from the Yankees.
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They also shifted Niko Goodrum into a more prominent role as the starting shortstop for the start of 2020, so things are looking up. They can’t possibly be any worse offensively than they were last year………right?
One of the big letdowns for the Detroit Tigers last season was what they got out of an aging Miguel Cabrera in his 17th year. Miggy kept his batting average and short game on the up and up hitting .282, but at the same time, we saw a full year from the great Miggy and he only hit 12 home runs and came in with a whopping 0.0 for his WAR.
Now, WAR is a little bit of a nerdy stat for me, but a zero in anything is not very good no matter how you look at it. I would very much like to see Miggy get his power back and perhaps get a trade to a better situation.
But other than the known veterans on this team that all need to step up to make up for last season’s debacle, the Tigers have a nice group of young players I think we’ll see a lot of including Travis Demeritte, Harold Castro, Willi Castro, Isaac Paredes, Jake Rogers, Victor Reyes, Daz Cameron, and Christin Stewart.
There’s also the competition going on in Spring Training right now for that last roster spot between Jeimer Candelario and Dawel Lugo that could leave one or both of them put on waivers if they don’t make the team. So, there will be some movement in these Tiger position players in 2020 to see what they have to build into a core group.
But what I’m really interested in seeing from the Detroit Tigers this year is their starting pitching. Their bullpen is what it is- it’s very thin of actual relief pitchers and will be topped off by Joe Jimenez and Jose Cisnero in the closer and setup roles, Jimenez being a former All-Star. To me, this team will be all about starting pitching and starting pitchers trying their hand out of the bullpen from day one to Game 162 (or however many games they play this year).
The Tigers are absolutely loaded with starting pitching in their farm system right now, and just about every one of them is close enough to break through into the Majors. We have Matthew Boyd heading the Tigers’ rotation after the big 2019 he had alongside Jordan Zimmermann and the newly-acquired Ivan Nova, but I suspect all three will be on the trading block at some point this year, and maybe even Michael Fulmer if he returns and has a good stretch.
What the Tigers have beneath the surface is a lot of hard-throwing right handed pitching, so Boyd would be a great guy to keep around in that regard as a softer throwing lefty. But just how much room will there be in this rotation for Boyd to stick around? I didn’t feel this way last year, but I think Boyd might just have to go if he’s having another good year and his value is high.
Looking at the young pitching the Detroit Tigers have, we saw a lot of Spencer Turnbull last year as he, unfortunately, led the league in losses at 17. Turnbull isn’t by any means the best young pitcher the Tigers have, but his experience in the Majors last year puts him in a good position to grow in 2020 and potentially anchor this Tigers pitching staff the next couple of years.
But all eyes are on the guys we haven’t seen yet at the Major League level, and those are Beau Burrows and Kyle Funkhouser who are the closest to the bigs at Triple-A, as well as former number one overall pick Casey Mize, Matt Manning, Tarik Skubal, and Alex Faedo who are all at the Double-A level.
I feel as though we could see all of these guys come up in 2020 and have an impact, especially Mize, Manning, and Skubal who’s ceilings are very high. I think this is going to be a team that struggles to win games and turns the ball over to its young group of guys to get their feet wet in the big leagues.
I’m interested to see how the Detroit Tigers do this year in developing all of these young arms and if we can indeed see all of them break through to the Majors. I had the Tigers finishing a little better than last year at 60-102 in fourth place in the AL Central (before the Coronavirus outbreak of course). Now, I’m not exactly sure how many games will even be played. But I still like them to finish in fourth and improve a bit upon last year. Let’s see this young pitching. Let’s see how this ship is going to turn around.
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