Detroit Tigers Star Outfielder is Due For Huge Breakout Season Next Year
The Detroit Tigers had an epic run to the postseason in 2024 led by their young core that they've fostered and built the right way.
From guys like Riley Greene to Tarik Skubal, it's been a rebuild spearheaded by players who were drafted and developed by the Tigers organization. But one that nobody really saw coming has been the incredibly pleasant surprise and has become one of the key pieces of Detroit's offense in Kerry Carpenter.
Since entering the league full-time last in 2023, Carpenter has been an absolute machine at the plate. The injury he missed time with in 2024 was a huge part of the reason the team struggled for the way they did to make the playoffs, and his return was a major catalyst towards the hot streak that saw playoff baseball in the Motor City for the first time in a decade. In an article detailing breakout players who look ready to explode in 2025, Will Leitch of MLB.com named Carpenter to his list.
"Carpenter authored a major breakthrough season in 2024, raising his OPS a full 121 points to .932, leading the team in that category," Leitch wrote. "A midseason injury hurt his counting numbers, and the Tigers suffered quite a bit in his absence. They didn’t look whole again -- and didn’t make their great run to the postseason -- until he returned."
Admittedly, Carpenter's 87 games played in 2024 are a small sample size, but he was borderline elite when he was on the field. The .932 OPS is unbelievable, but so is the 18 home runs in effectively half a season. He had an OPS+ of 159, a batting average of .284, and a slugging percentage of .587, numbers that if extrapolated over a full season are borderline MVP-level.
This was all coming off a 2023 season in which he was very solid over 118 games with a .278 average, an OPS over .800, and 20 home runs. But this past season, Carpenter seemed to take his play to a whole new level we hadn't seen yet from the team's 2019 19th round pick.
If Carpenter can stay healthy and continue the trend of getting even better each year he's been in the league, he has a chance to establish himself to be one of the most feared hitters in all of baseball, something that would give Detroit an incredible weapon in the middle of the lineup while they continue to ascend.
