How will Tigers improve offense? 'Growth is going to come from within'
When president of baseball operations Scott Harris explained the reason why the Detroit Tigers collapsed over the final month of the 2025 season, he didn’t point to the starting rotation falling apart beyond ace Tarik Skubal or the bullpen struggling to miss bats aside from Will Vest.
So how do the Tigers plan to fix it?
“The majority of our growth as an offense is going to come from within,” Harris said. “It’s going to come from that first group continuing to get better and step into their prime. It’s going to come from that second group making the leaps that the first group just made. It’s going to come from this next wave of some of the best prospects in all of baseball really starting to make that leap into the big leagues.”
The Tigers view their position players in three waves.
The first group: Spencer Torkelson, Riley Greene, Kerry Carpenter – all arbitration-eligible players who won’t reach free agency until after the 2028 season. The second group: Parker Meadows, Dillon Dingler, Colt Keith, Wenceel Pérez – all under team control through at least the 2029 season, if not longer. The third group: Kevin McGonigle, Max Clark, Hao-Yu Lee, Max Anderson – all top prospects awaiting their MLB debuts, with McGonigle ranked as the No. 2 prospect in baseball.
“We’re going to try to find a way to improve our offense without blocking those guys because they’re too important to both our present and our future,” Harris said. “I used to talk about them as solely our future. Now they’re about to be our present and our future.”
Here’s a look at the projected 13 position players for the Tigers on the 2026 Opening Day roster, with 98 days remaining until the regular season begins March 26 against the San Diego Padres:
- Catcher: Dillon Dingler
- First base: Spencer Torkelson
- Second base: Gleyber Torres
- Shortstop: Javier Báez
- Third base: Colt Keith
- Left field: Riley Greene
- Center field: Parker Meadows
- Right field: Wenceel Pérez
- Designated hitter: Kerry Carpenter
- Bench: Zach McKinstry, Jahmai Jones, Hao-Yu Lee, Jake Rogers
By the end of 2026, the Tigers are expected to promote top-100 prospects McGonigle and Clark – along with Lee and Anderson – for their MLB debuts. When they arrive, all three waves of the Tigers’ position-player pipeline will be in the big leagues together.
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Refusing to block young players may not be the clearest path to winning a World Series in 2026, and some players – such as Jace Jung and Justyn-Henry Malloy previously – will fail to meet expectations, but it aligns with the Tigers’ vision of sustainable success, the ultimate goal that has been preached by owner Christopher Ilitch for many years.
The philosophy has produced back-to-back postseason appearances, even if both ended in Game 5 losses in the ALDS.
“I think a lot of the gains that we’ve seen in our offense over the past couple of years has been actually from trusting them [young players] and saving opportunity for them and watching them blossom into the players that they are now,” Harris said.
In 2025, the Tigers’ offense ranked 11th among the 30 MLB teams in scoring, averaging 4.63 runs per game. (Before the September collapse, they ranked eighth at 4.79.)
That production came from nine above-average hitters among players with at least 150 plate appearances, listed in order of wRC+: Jahmai Jones, Greene, Torkelson, Carpenter, Zach McKinstry, Gleyber Torres, Dingler, Keith and Pérez. Only two – Carpenter and Greene – were above average for the Tigers in 2024, highlighting how much internal growth the Tigers saw from their youngsters in 2025.
All nine are returning in 2026.
That’s why the Tigers continue to play the long game.
The Tigers are willing to explore offensive upgrades via free agency and trade, but signing free-agent third baseman Alex Bregman to a long-term contract appears unlikely unless his market collapses. The real priority is internal development: Greene into a superstar, Keith into an All-Star and McGonigle into an everyday player.
Leaning on young players to fill holes in the lineup has guided the Tigers to the postseason in the each of the past two seasons, and if those waves continue to thrive without any regression, a third straight playoff appearance is all but guaranteed.
There’s one red flag.
The strategy didn’t result in winning the World Series in 2024 or 2025, so if the Tigers fall short in 2026, then Harris might be left pointing his finger at the offense once again.
“I think there’s going to be some positive regression, like some gains, coming from the existing group, both getting better and then also some of the injured guys coming back,” Harris said, referring to Pérez, Meadows and Matt Vierling, all of whom missed most of spring training with injuries. “Those guys were making up for lost time throughout the entire season. I think there’s an opportunity for those guys to reset this year and our offense to benefit from it.”
Contact Evan Petzold at [email protected] or follow him @EvanPetzold.
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This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Detroit Tigers trust young players to improve offense in 2026 season
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