The 2024 Detroit Tigers: A Season for the Ages

By Joe Underhill

What an incredible end to the baseball season! On August 10, the Tigers were 55-63 and ten games out of the last spot in the wildcard race. The Tigers were sellers at the deadline. They shipped out NLCS game one starter Jack Flaherty, veteran reliever Andrew Chafin, time-share catcher Carson Kelley, and outfielder Mark Canha. They also released veteran Gio Urshela on August 18 (and Shelby Miller on September 29).

Comerica ParkPhoto byWikimedia Commons

It was a youth movement. Detroit manager AJ Hinch said the team was going to get younger, more athletic and better. Fans and media had the same reaction, the Tigers are giving up on the year and we’ll see if any of these kids could be part of a distant dream to be a contender. Then something crazy happened. From August 10 through the end of the season, the Tigers went 31-13 and climbed not only into contention but all the way into the playoffs, sweeping the Houston Astros and taking the Cleveland Guardians to game five of the American League Division Series.

The team embraced its youthfulness, played with aggression, and used “bulk” relievers and pinch-hitting; they played like they had nothing to lose. Hinch managed every game like it was a playoff game and the city saw the baseball revival it’s been hoping and praying for. The playoff roster featured 13 rookies. During the push to the postseason, their offense was driven by ten players in their age-25-or-younger season.

The team is now at a crossroads. The offense needs to be more consistent, but has four foundational pieces - Riley Greene, Kerry Carpenter, Matt Vierling and Colt Keith. They have promising players who still have some questions to answer if they are going to be long-term assets - Trey Sweeney, Spencer Torkelson, Wenceel Perez, Jace Jung and Dillon Dingler. Jake Rogers, Zack McKinstry and Andy Ibanez are the veterans who supplement the offensive side of the ball.

What Chris Fetter and AJ Hinch did with the pitching staff to end the season should be appreciated. The Tigers used two traditional starters after the trade deadline, Tarik Skubal (who should win the American League Cy Young Award) and rookie Keider Montero. The rest of the starts featured an opener and a bulk reliever. It created a way for Hinch to leverage matchups and ease a series of young, inexperienced arms into the big leagues. The Tigers got excellent production from Brant Hurter, Bryan Sammons, and Ty Madden, all three of whom had underwhelming numbers at AAA. Veteran Kenta Maeda also pitched better in the bulk role after struggling mightily in the rotation.

The Tigers will need to see the health of their starters improve next season if they want to build on this year’s success. Casey Mize, Matt Manning, Reece Olson, and Sawyer Gipson-Long all missed time this year due to injury. The Tigers will probably need to target a veteran starter or two in the offseason, but the continued growth of the young pitchers will be critical to the continued success of the team.

The bullpen was good all year and exceptional down the stretch. The bullpen tends to be more pitch-to-contact than high velocity and strikeout rates. Bullpens can be volatile, but the team seems to have struck gold with Tyler Holton, Will Vest, Jason Foley, and Beau Brieske. Sean Guenther and Brenan Hanifee came up late in the season and pitched well.

The end of this season is one that Tigers fans should relish and will tell their children about for years to come (remember the 35-5 start to the 1984 season). The last time we saw a Tigers team overachieve was 2006, and that led to a decade of competitive baseball. It is now on the Tigers to determine if this is going to just be a dream finish to a season or the start of something truly special.

Joe Underhill is a high school administrator, diehard baseball fan and fan of the city of Detroit. Joe currently writes for the HTP Newsletter. You can follow Joe on Twitter @TransplantedDet and on Bluesky @transplanteddet.bsky.social.