Wojo: Tigers ready to take their swings in most anticipated season in a decade

Detroit — They’ve been down this road before, this exact same road, two years in a row, actually.

The Tigers have reached a tantalizing level, good enough to make the playoffs, good enough to win a series, good enough to take fans on a rollicking summer ride, too streaky to win big. They haven’t won their division in 12 years, haven’t reached the World Series in 14 years, haven’t won it all in 42 years.

So what’s next? Well, in baseball, one option is to take a bigger swing.

The Tigers indeed are swinging harder, and perhaps more judiciously. They signed top free-agent starting pitcher Framber Valdez, decorated reliever Kenley Jansen and familiar legend Justin Verlander. They even chose punch over patience and put 21-year-old elite hitting prospect Kevin McGonigle on the Opening Day roster.

“It was all about baseball,” manager AJ Hinch said after the Tigers made the McGonigle announcement. “It was all about winning. We kept returning to the idea that we’re trying to win as many games as we can. We are trying to win the World Series.”

Inarguably, this is the Tigers’ most-anticipated season in a decade or more. They begin Thursday in San Diego, play three more in Arizona, then return for the home opener next Friday against St. Louis. They have a few new faces, lots of familiar faces, and one increasingly strident, unambiguous goal.

“We’ve solidified ourselves as, ‘These guys can play a little bit, now they’re the team to beat,’’’ catcher Jake Rogers said during spring training. “We want to get to the playoffs and go even farther, get to the World Series and win it. It’s no easy task, but I think we’ve got a lot of talent to do it.”

Nobody in baseball spends and wins like the Los Angeles Dodgers, favorites to win their third straight World Series. That issue of lopsided resources has created labor strife, with the collective bargaining agreement expiring after the season. That’s another reason for the Tigers to swing now, with a loaded pitching staff and key hitters entering their expected primes.

Tigers reach fork in the road

In many ways, this is a fork in the road for the franchise, time to turn a direction into bigger action. It’s likely their final season with superstar Tarik Skubal, ticketed for free agency. Verlander is 43 and still firing, precisely 20 years after he thumped onto the scene and helped lead the Tigers to the 2006 World Series.

Symmetry abounds, but games aren’t won on symmetry. Virtually every position player is back from the team that went 87-75 and made it to the final pitch of the 15th inning in a soul-crushing ALDS Game 5 loss in Seattle. For half of last season, the Tigers looked like the best in the game, with six All-Stars. In the final two months, they gasped and swooned, then recovered and almost took the story where it seemed destined to go.

President of baseball operations Scott Harris and Hinch chose to run it back with the same everyday players, and an even stronger pitching staff. The biggest swing was doling out $115 million for Valdez, 32, one of the most durable and dependable starters in baseball. Skubal is the two-time AL Cy Young winner, but rather than offer a monstrous landscape-altering contract, or trade him, the Tigers chose to keep him and ride it out.

Prudent, sure. Prudence is never overly exciting, and it would be bad business if they didn’t spend elsewhere. But owner Chris Ilitch took his swings, adding approximately $165 million in payroll, lifting the Tigers from 16th in the majors to eighth. The pitching rotation — Skubal, Valdez, Verlander, Jack Flaherty, Casey Mize — might be top five in all of baseball.

The Tigers aren’t favored to win the World Series (ahem, the Dodgers) or even the A.L. pennant (ahem, the Yankees, Blue Jays and Mariners). But the Tigers are heavy favorites to win the Central, something they haven’t done since 2014, and predictive analytics peg them as an 88-74 team with a 62% chance of making the playoffs. They may be a playoff regular, but they have work to do to become a powerhouse.

Did they do enough to improve their everyday lineup? Questionable, as they’re mostly counting on internal growth from a homegrown roster.

Is their bulked-up pitching enough to make them championship contenders? Absolutely.

“From an investment standpoint, it shows that this organization is invested in winning,” Harris said. “I would put our rotation up with any in the game. It feels like when we can go to a series with those guys leading us, we got a great chance to win, whether it’s in the regular season or postseason. … This is the best roster we’ve had since I’ve been here.”

Verlander and McGonigle – fiery veteran and glossy rookie – are the fascinating extremes. But the Tigers’ hopes rest in the middle, in hitters that aren’t so raw anymore – Riley Greene, 25, Spencer Torkelson, 26, Kerry Carpenter, 28, Dillon Dingler, 27, Colt Keith, 24, Zach McKinstry, 30, Javier Baez, 33.

Those guys all take their swings, and their misses, which has made the offense wildly inconsistent at times. Torkelson hit 31 home runs with 78 RBIs and struck out 169 times. Greene was an All-Star with 36 home runs and 111 RBIs but set a franchise record with 201 strikeouts.

Young guys tend to swing for the fences, but perhaps two years of excruciating playoff battles can be enlightening. More big swings from the franchise, fewer big swings from the hitters?

“I was trying to hit a home every single time last season,” Greene said. “(This offseason) I worked on the mental side of things, picking and choosing your spots. Hey, if you have two strikes with a runner on second, maybe try not to hit a homer 5,000 feet.”

Searching for a winning game plan

The near-historic team slump started mid-July, when the Tigers had a 14-game lead in the Central. They went 18-41 the rest of the way and scrapped for a wild-card spot, one game behind Cleveland.

Hinch saw what we all saw, but was reluctant to belabor it in the moment. This spring, he and his staff preached better command of the strike zone, not reaching for the unreachable.

“I think everyone wants to hit a homer; it’s one of the best feelings in baseball,” Hinch said. “Part of the maturation process for young hitters is realizing it’s one of many ways you can impact winning.”

Nowhere was it more apparent than on the final night of the season. From the seventh inning on, the game was tied 2-2. The Tigers went 1-for-9 with runs in scoring position, including three prime opportunities in extra innings, before the Mariners won it in the 15th.

Baseball increasingly celebrates upper-cut swings that produce majestic home runs, and overlooks the homely bunt or the humble sacrifice fly. The Tigers were fifth in the majors in strikeouts last season. In 28 exhibition games this spring — small sample size, I know — they struck out the fewest times of any team. Not coincidentally, McGonigle’s sharp bat-to-ball skills were evident, as the only Tiger regular to have more walks (11) than strikeouts (nine).

Situational hitting has to be better but pitching should be the Tigers’ overwhelming strength, including a deep bullpen with Jansen, Kyle Finnegan, Will Vest and Tyler Holton. That’s partly why Harris and Hinch didn’t feel compelled to shuffle the lineup, which will turn out to be a mistake only if the hitters didn’t learn from the postseason.

“Once we got a taste (of the playoffs), this is how we go about things, this is who we are now, we don’t expect anything less,” said Rogers, with the Tigers since 2019.  “Last year was definitely more of a gut punch because people in this clubhouse knew we could’ve made it farther, and in our heads, we should’ve made it farther. Guys took it more personal, which is good.”

It’s good that it hurt, good that players took it personally, good that management made expensive moves to improve their chances. It’s not now or never for the Tigers. But in baseball, you only get so many big swings.

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@bobwojnowski