Detroit Tigers Decision Maker Says Team is Trying to 'Raise Bar' in Offseason
We already knew going into 2024 that the Detroit Tigers had one of the best young cores in all of baseball, but most assumed that the team was still a couple of years away from the rebuild being complete and seeing true contention.
The 2024 season proved that Detroit is ready to win much earlier than anyone anticipated after even selling their most tradable assets at the deadline, becoming the hottest team in baseball down the stretch to make the playoffs and defeat the Houston Astros in the Wild Card round. After the run ended in five games to Cleveland and saw a near trip to the ALCS for the Tigers, it's up to Scott Harris and the entire team brass to figure out how to take things to the next level.
Harris spoke at the annual MLB GM meetings and talked about how while of course the strategy will turn aggressive when it comes to bringing in outside talent, getting their young stars to play even better than they did down the street will go a long way towards taking a huge step in 2025, specifically naming Matt Vierling, Kerry Carpenter, and Riley Greene as guys that need to raise their bar of success even further.
"We have to find a way to raise the bar for each of them this offseason," Harris said of his young stars via the Detroit Free Press. "All of a sudden, you're going to start stacking those gains, and the 2025 Tigers are going to be a lot better than the 2024 Tigers."
Harris went on to add that while his team is focusing both on outside additions and internal improvement, it's easy to get caught up in the big splashes of free agency and that his team is not forgetting that getting more production out of what's currently in the clubhouse will be more important.
"We got to do both, and we are actively doing both," he said. "This isn't a moment in time where we just focus on external additions and forget about development. We are just as focused on development through the offseason while we're trying to add from the outside. It means we got a lot on our plate, but that's what it should be."
Seeing what Detroit ends up doing in the free agency period will be fascinating. Everyone wants to sign the biggest names out there and there's reason to believe that the Tigers are certainly a contender for some of them. But their young stars 'raising the bar' as Harris says will go a longer way towards taking the next step than any sort of outside signing will.
The expectations have been raised in Detroit, but pressure is a privilege and the Tigers certainly have that privilege this offseason.
