Everyone’s Going to be Worse: 2024 Detroit Tigers Season Preview Notes

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Many have published their previews of the 2024 Detroit Tigers season. What follows are my notes from those previews, primarily the corresponding Baseball Prospectus annual chapter and its PECOTA projections, along with my own annotations and recent news updates.

Everyone’s Going to be Worse

Only the really hopeless Athletics and White Sox scored fewer runs than the Tigers in 2023. The reason the Tigers’ offensive outlook today isn’t hopeless (as any good Detroit fan will tell you too many times) is because Spencer Torkelson had a really good second half last season, and that’s going to be his new baseline for his major-league career, which really will begin this year. His 121 wRC+ and a homer every 16.2 plate appearances– his second half– sounds a lot more like a good first baseman than a 95 wRC+ and a homer every 31.3 plate appearances– his first half. Torkelson is the case study that proves Tigers fans’ optimism for 2024 is grounded in reality: all good trends will be banked as established new normals, while any bad trends have reasonable explanations and therefore safely may and should be ignored.

The cold baseball computer isn’t buying the Midwestern thaw. PECOTA projects every Tigers hitter listed in the team’s BP annual chapter to be worse in 2024 than he was in 2023. Can that sentence really be true? I don’t know whether it can but it is. Sure, some of these guys are Not Ready For Primetime Players, minors types whose prospect statuses merit their mention but, at least for this year, understandably don’t project as majors talent. But it really is bad news for all of the alleged major-league talent.

The only Detroit MLB hitters PECOTA says won’t see WARP drops this year are Riley Greene (1.2 WARP to 1.5) and Parker Meadows (0.5 WARP to 0.7). Even these very modest bumps are illusory, however. For Greene, it’s just about an anticipated full season of playing time after his injury-shortened 2023. PECOTA sees him as a ever-so-slightly worse hitter this year (96 DRC+ versus 97) with evaporating power (.385 SLG/.545 SLGCON versus .447/.640). For Meadows, it’s about defense. He’s projected to make a giant leap to elite-defender status (5 DRP, which would have been better than all but two other center fielders in 2023) in 2024, a skill surge supposedly sufficient to wipe out a projected cratering in his batsmanship (90 DRC+ to 74). My non-computer brain is having a tough time painting a picture of such a pastoral Meadows.

PECOTA also projects every Tigers pitcher listed in the 2024 annual to be worse this season than he was last season. The exceptions with very modest WARP bumps similarly are illusory or negligible. Jack Flaherty (1.1 WARP to 1.2) seems to be receiving a nudge of favorable credit for an expected rebound from his .356 BABIP in 2023 (career .282). For Sawyer Gipson-Long (0.2 WARP to 0.3), like Greene, it’s about a bigger workload even as he’s projected to be a worse pitcher (99 DRA- to 105). (And see below about why that workload may not materialize.) Same for Tarik Skubal, the Torkelson of the Detroit rotation, who’s projected to increase from 2.2 WARP to 3.4 in double the innings pitched slightly less well (71 DRA- to 75). Perhaps the same for Kenta Maeda (1.4 WARP to 1.5), although at least he’s expected to improve according to DRA (97 DRA- to 93), even as his strikeout and walk rates both are projected to move in their respective wrong directions. That leaves Casey Mize, who basically hasn’t pitched since 2021 and so doesn’t have a useful baseline for this comparison framing (projected 0.3 WARP) and Joey Wentz (magnificently projected to raise his -0.8 WARP to -0.2).

If that blanket coverage wasn’t wet enough for you, read on for some further comments on some of the players referenced above and other up-to-the-minute nuggets.

Getting Defensive About Defensive Metrics

PECOTA projects major swings in defensive performance for two Tigers. One is Meadows, mentioned above, who’s expected to improve his 1.4 DRP showing in 2023 to 5 DRP in 2024. This change may in large part be due to the expectation that Meadows will be up for the full season (547 plate appearances) this year following his late-August debut last year. Even if so easily explained within the context of PECOTA, it still bears special mention since it easily would make him a top-ten defensive centerfielder in any recent season (as far back as I cared to check on BP’s new leaderboard, which doesn’t permit sorting across seasons). The Tigers will need all of this defensive value to materialize if PECOTA also is correct about what’s going to happen to Meadows’ bat. His projected 76 DRC+ would be worse than anything Javier Baez has done since leaving the Cubs, and it would’ve tied Meadows for fifth-worst among all batters in 2023.

The other is Jake Rogers, and PECOTA sees Detroit’s likely starting backstop completely forgetting how to catch in 2024:

Rogers was a top-ten defensive catcher in 2023. (The BP website has different defensive numbers for Rogers and other catchers than those appearing in the book. I’ve inquired and it sounds like their stats team made some post-publication tweaks to their average benchmarks that may account for the variance.) Most of this projected thirteen-point drop comes in the form of a projected swing from being a top-ten framer to a bottom-thirty guy at that skill. Ironically, Rogers’ BP annual blurb mentions his “unseat[ing of] Eric Haase for the starting catching job” even as PECOTA projects him to frame as poorly as Haase did in 2023. (To fully square this circle, Haase’s 2024 framing projection is -3.2 runs.)

This is not the first time PECOTA has thought lowly of Rogers’ defense. In the 2023 BP annual, for example, it forecast him for -7 DRP, with a -6.5 on the framing component, both huge misses. Undaunted, the computer has doubled down for 2024.

Everyone in baseball will tell you that defensive metrics are especially difficult to define and measure and therefore probably should be regarded a little more cautiously than other performance metrics. That’s sensible and unobjectionable. What creates undue difficulty, in my opinion, is what seem like wild year-to-year oscillations in players’ defensive numbers. Of course players aren’t going to be exactly the same person every season, and many factors– injury, age, chance, drugs, etc.– can cause production value to vary outside a “normal” career development curve. Breakouts can happen quickly. Careers can end quickly. When we’re told a player’s defensive performance has yo-yoed erratically from season to season without ready explanation, though, it makes it very difficult to ascribe any meaning to defensive metrics, even on their own terms and within their own contexts. Maybe Rogers really is a definitively unremarkable catcher who just had his Brady Anderson framing season. Probably not, though.

Stolen Stolen Bases

Rob Mains’ introductory article in the 2024 BP annual very helpfully summarized the effects of all of the recent MLB rule changes. One of the most notable was the increase in stolen bases, a direct consequence of new pitcher restrictions and the larger bases.

The Tigers didn’t exactly catch the SB wave, though; or, better stated, they didn’t seem to change their running identity relative to their competitors. Only the Rangers, Rockies, Angels, and Giants stole fewer bases in 2023. The Tigers definitely stole more bases last season– 85– than they did the prior season– 47. They were in the bottom grouping in 2022 too, though. What’s sort of odd is that they stole 88 bases, and were in the top group, in 2021, manager A.J. Hinch’s first season with the club. Maybe Hinch’s base-stealing strategy is murky. His Astros teams tended to be middle-of-the-pack in that department. Maybe it just depends on his roster.

New to Detroit this season is outfielder Mark Canha. The thirty-five-year-old will play his tenth season with his fourth team. Canha split 2023 between Milwaukee and Queens and, pertinent to the matter at hand (foot), was not a fast runner. His sixty-third percentile sprint speed placed him just below Wil Meyers, for example. Yet Canha’s eleven stolen bases in 2023 would have placed him in the upper tier of Tigers base stealers, bested only by Zach McKinstry (16), Akil Baddoo (14), and Baez (12). Unsurprisingly given the tenor of this post, PECOTA projects Canha for just five base swipes in 2024. The only increases it sees are for Andy Ibañez (from one to two), Rogers (from one to two), Matt Vierling (from six to eleven), and full-season Meadows (from eight to thirteen). No tectonic shifts here.

If you’re curious, the fastest Tigers (sprint speed) in 2023:

  • Matt Vierling
  • Akil Baddoo
  • Parker Meadows
  • Zach McKinstry
  • Riley Greene
  • Javier Baez
  • Zack Short
  • Kerry Carpenter
  • Spencer Torkelson

Comp Time

One of the fun things PECOTA spits out for each player is a list of comparable players. These “comps” are the other players most similar to the subject player for the season when the comp was the same age as the subject player. Some notable 2024 Tigers comps:

  • Javier Baez: Derek Jeter
  • Akil Baddoo: Robbie Grossman
  • Mark Canha: Andrew McCutchen, Dusty Baker
  • Kerry Carpenter: Lucas Duda
  • Andy Ibañez: Mike Aviles
  • Colt Keith: Corey Seager, Mike Moustakas
  • Eddys Leonard: Eugenio Suarez
  • Parker Meadows: Jackie Bradley Jr., Aaron Hicks, Mallex Smith
  • Jake Rogers: Cameron Rupp; Sandy Leon, Jonathan Lucroy
  • Andrew Chafin: Justin Wilson
  • Jack Flaherty: John Smoltz, Julio Teheran
  • Sawyer Gipson-Long: Spencer Turnbull, Shane Greene
  • Brant Hurter: Framber Valdez, Matthew Boyd
  • Kenta Maeda: Jack Morris, Zack Greinke, Corey Kluber
  • Shelby Miller: Dennis Eckersley
  • Tarik Skubal: Drew Smyly, Blake Snell, Alex Wood

Who’s Your Tiger?

Detroit fans usually select “their” Tiger based on a combination of quantifiable on-field performance and less-quantifiable aesthetic or emotional factors. Respectfully, of course, how else to explain the disproportionate popularity of your Bobby Higginsons, Austin Jacksons, and Don Kellys?

But what if it was a big, square baseball computer sitting next to you at Comerica Park discussing “its” Tiger? Right now, there probably would be a lot of overlap between the fans and PECOTA, both of which have good reasons to like Tarik Skubal. His 3.4 WARP projection paces the group, and none of his teammates are living in the same neighborhood.

The top nine Detroit Tigers by projected 2024 WARP (i.e., the only ones with projected WARPs of 1.0 or better):

  1. Tarik Skubal: 3.4
  2. Mark Canha: 1.5
  3. Riley Greene: 1.5
  4. Kenta Maeda: 1.5
  5. Javier Baez: 1.3
  6. Spencer Torkelson: 1.2
  7. Jack Flaherty: 1.2
  8. Akil Baddoo: 1.1
  9. Kerry Carpenter: 1.1

Final Preseason News Headlines

1 thought on “Everyone’s Going to be Worse: 2024 Detroit Tigers Season Preview Notes”

  1. Pingback: Before you accuse me, take a look at Jake Rogers | ALDLAND

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