“Sentencing” – A Detroit Tigers preview

8:00 AM CDT on April 5, 2018

It's finally happened. All of the superstars are gone.

The defining characteristic of Detroit Tigers teams of this decade has been the presence of multiple elite-level players. When at their best, Detroit had supporting casts that could push their top players to baseball's biggest stage. The lesser stars-and-scrubs teams would still (for the most part) have enough firepower to keep the team competitive. In either case, there has been premium talent in Detroit that's anchored the team to relevance for over a decade. Whether you want to give them credit for their shrewdly aggressive moves or point out that they had the advantage of the late Mike Ilitch's loose wallet, the Tigers' rosters over the past eight years were uncommon and special. Here are all the players that posted at least 5.0 bWAR in each season:

2010: Miguel Cabrera (6.5), Austin Jackson (5.1)
2011: Justin Verlander (8.4), Miguel Cabrera (7.5), Alex Avila (5.1)
2012: Justin Verlander (7.8), Miguel Cabrera (7.2), Austin Jackson (5.4)
2013: Miguel Cabrera (7.3), Max Scherzer (6.7), Anibal Sanchez (6.3)
2014: Max Scherzer (6.0), Ian Kinsler (5.7), Victor Martinez (5.5), Miguel Cabrera (5.0)
2015: Ian Kinsler (6.0), Miguel Cabrera (5.2), J.D. Martinez (5.0)
2016: Justin Verlander (6.6), Ian Kinsler (6.1)
2017: Justin Verlander (6.3 - total), Justin Upton (5.2)

Add in the fact that the above Tigers had other, slightly lesser iterations of themselves in the years in which they're not listed and that Detroit received other All-Star-caliber performances from guys like Prince Fielder and Rick Porcello and the Tigers have consistently boasted a collection of outstanding stars that were the envy of most teams in baseball.

And now, well, they don't.

Most of the above players have made their exodus from Detroit, and the two that remain -- Cabrera and Victor Martinez -- are shells of their former selves who played below replacement level in 2017. That leaves an open question of where Detroit is going to get its best players for its next run at contention. The best candidate on the current roster is Michael Fulmer, a 25-year-old sinkerballer who has good velocity without the strikeouts to match and makes his living on suppressing home runs and inducing double-plays. Fulmer looks like a good #2 starter, but he's probably not the guy you want throwing Game 1 of a playoff series. Another possibility is Jeimer Candelario, whom the Tigers plucked from the glut of Chicago Cubs infielders in a midseason trade and who posted an OBP north of .400 over about 100 plate appearances in Detroit. Candelario has showcased legitimate power at Triple-A and has a chance to be a good big league hitter, though reviews of his defense have been mixed and his BABIP with the Tigers was .392.

The remainder of the Tigers' roster is filled with guys who are either unexciting or have crippling weaknesses. James McCann can hit alright for a catcher, but is so brutal at receiving that the Tigers would do well to cut bait before their glut of pitching prospects arrive in the next two years. Center fielder Leonys Martin can glove it, but has a .283 OBP since 2015 without plus power. Nicholas Castellanos has come along as an average-and-power bat the past two seasons, but had to move off of third base to the outfield, where he was two outs below average on just ten opportunities (think about that for a second) last year. Mikie Mahtook was a little better than league average with the bat last season, but he's a tweener on defense who's already 28 years old and doubtfully has much upside remaining. In the middle infield, Dixon Machado and Jose Iglesias are both strong defenders that are punchless at the plate.

The remainder of the Tigers' rotation has similar limitations. Daniel Norris has been very promising when healthy but a variety of leg injuries contributed to a forgettable 2017; it's up in the air whether his upside will manifest itself this year. Further clouding his situation is that he's currently blocked by a couple veterans in Mike Fiers and Francisco Liriano who can't be optioned to the minors. Fiers is an asshat who plunks hitters on purpose a lot. He's probably reeling from the fact that a juiced ball doesn't jive with a pitching approach centered around throwing 90 mph fastballs up in the zone. Liriano cracked the rotation to begin the season thanks to injuries, but his control issues are well-documented and will surely re-surface given enough of a sample, Matt Boyd upgraded his outlook from "punching bag" to "possible league average starter" and the changeup artist will continue to get chances to reach that modest potential in 2018. Jordan Zimmermann is stuck on "punching bag".

***

The Detroit Tigers will be one of the worst and least interesting teams in all of baseball in 2018; there's little way around that and they didn't help the situation by hiring a dinosaur of a manager in Ron Gardenhire, who will surely block any possibility of real innovation happening on the field. It's a sentencing that's been a long time coming for their prolonged period of aggression and it's probably going to take several years before the Tigers are relevant again. The next step in the White Sox rebuild is to prove that they're better than teams like this. 19 head-to-head games won't determine that definitively, but it'd be a nice step in the right direction.

Probable Starting Pitchers: