This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider.
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I can chip away at this roster, but it feels like nitpicking. The Tigers have the best record in baseball, third-best third-order mark, and they’ve done it while missing key pieces. Parker Meadows’s return, in particular, will make the whole outfield defense better and add a good lefty bat to the lineup. Vierling is a Statcast darling and the best defensive third baseman on the team. Cobb may not be someone who makes a lot of starts, but the ones he does make will be effective. It’s likely that we haven’t seen the Tigers’ best roster yet.
Of the teams I missed on in the spring, I am most likely to accept an L on the Tigers, though with the caveat that the team I evaluated is quite a bit different than the one that’s 31-17 today. I don’t know that anyone could have projected Baez, Torkelson, and McKinstry to be playing at five-win paces, or even that they would get the playing time that might have produced that kind of value. Even accounting for that, though, the team’s offense is clearly better than I expected it to be, and even regressing it a bit, will be an above-average group this year.
