5 former Tigers players still without a job heading toward Spring Training

Jonathan Schoop

Jonathan Schoop's decline while he was with the Tigers from 2020 to 2023 is one of the team's more notable disappointments of the past few years. He put up some very good numbers with the Orioles for the first six years of career, and continued to do so during a year-long stint in Milwaukee before coming over to the Tigers. He played in 44 games during the COVID-shortened 2020 season and batted an impressive .278/.324/.475 to gain some momentum, which then carried over into 2021, when he put up nearly identical numbers over 156 games and was one of the Tigers' most productive hitters.

This led the Tigers to extend him for two years on a $15 million deal, a timeline which unfortunately coincided with his decline. Over 2022 and 2023, he batted a cumulative .204/.248/.311 and was the league's worst player in batting average and OBP to close out the 2022 season. He only played in 55 games for the Tigers in 2023, during which time he only got 29 hits in 136 at-bats, before being DFA'ed and eventually released in July.

Schoop's future in MLB is maybe the most nebulous of anyone on this list, and he might be fully turning his attentions back to international baseball instead of exploring free agency in the major leagues. He's expected to play for his home country Curaçao's national teams in the Intercontinental and Caribbean Series, the latter of which will be played in early February.