Dream Detroit Tigers starting lineup for the 2024 season

The offseason is a season for dreaming for Detroit Tigers fans. It's a time for wishing that your club had more money, or that they spent the money they have more intelligently, or both. It's a time for looking longingly at the free agent class, knowing which pickups would be best for your team, and hoping that the front office will see what you see. That brings us here, to the Tigers 2024 dream lineup. Nothing is off limits; money is no object. Let's be a more than a little delusional together.

The dream 2024 Detroit Tigers starting lineup

The point here isn't to overhaul the entire Tigers roster with available free agents. No, this should still be a Tigers lineup at its core. It should reflect some well-earned belief in the guys that are already in Detroit and did great work in 2023 to get the Tigers to their best finish in a long time. Will there be a small sprinkling of wishful thinking? Of course. A little wishful thinking never hurt anyone. Here's what the lineup could look like given unlimited resources and no competition from other teams.

Batting leadoff: LF Mark Canha

Mark Canha is Detroit's newest real-life Tiger, having just come from the Milwaukee Brewers in exchange for prospect Blake Holub. It's a positive development; Canha is a vet who got off to a barnstorming start in Milwaukee, which shows a lot of potential for him to be good for the Tigers in the last few years of his career. It also gives the Tigers outfield, which has fluctuated a lot, a more regular presence in left field to hopefully replace Akil Baddoo, who had a disappointing season.

In Milwaukee, Canha put up .287/.373/.427 in 50 games, which contributed to a career .250/.349/.422. He'll be a dependable presence on the base paths who will still run if he's allowed to (between the Brewers and the New York Mets this year, he stole 11 bases). He'll also be adding a 9.7% walk rate to a team that really doesn't walk enough. Accordingly, with a .358 OBP in 2023, Canha beat out all of the 2023 Tigers, which will make him a good leadoff bat.

All in all, Canha is a great puzzle piece in Detroit's real 2024 lineup as well as this imagined one. He'll be a good complimentary piece to the real bevy of young talent the Tigers are just starting to tap into and be able to bring some consistency to the lineup and outfield.

Batting second: CF Riley Greene

Even though he missed a lot of time this year, Riley Greene still managed to gain the highest fWAR of the 2023 Detroit Tigers, with a 2.3. As the 2019 draft's fifth overall pick, it doesn't feel too hyperbolic to say that Greene (along with Spencer Torkelson, who we'll get to later) represents the Tigers' future, and there's a lot of hope riding on him. The fact that he had to undergo Tommy John at only 22 years old is brutal, and although hope for him has far from waned, his performance off of surgery will be unpredictable at the start of the 2024 season.

But because this is a dream lineup and rules of reality don't apply here, we'll say that Greene will come back in full form in March. Playing in center field is well-trodden territory for him; before he was sat in September, he made most of his starts in center. Batting second is also familiar, as he went back and forth between second and third in the lineup before he was injured.

Putting Greene near the top of the lineup to reliably get on base and maybe even force himself into scoring position (he led the Tigers stolen base leaderboard, with seven) is the smartest thing to do, which is why the Tigers had a good thing going before he got hurt, and his addition back into the real lineup next season will be a breath of fresh air.

Batting third: 1B Spencer Torkelson

Having played in all but three games in the 2023 season, Spencer Torkelson is setting himself up as one of the most reliable, go-to players on any Tigers roster, real or imagined. This year, he had a whopping 606 at-bats with 31 home runs, 94 RBI, and the fourth highest Tigers fWAR at 1.4. He also lent his glove to Miguel Cabrera during Miggy's last appearance at first in a passing-the-torch gesture that couldn't be more storybook.

Third in the order is a good spot for Torkelson; he was most well acquainted with third, despite being frequently shuffled over to second. Defensively, he had a few blips over the season with 11 errors, but he's tied with 2023 Gold Glover Dansby Swanson and finalist Francisco Lindor in that category, so it's not much to read into.

Torkelson was the first overall pick in the 2020 draft, and he seems on the cusp on something special. With his consistency and his clear ability to hit for power, not to mention Miguel Cabrera's stamp of approval, any Tigers lineup without him would feel incomplete. Hopefully, he'll be able to pick his batting average up a bit more next year, but he's given Tigers fans every reason to be optimistic.

Batting fifth: 3B Matt Chapman

Of the players in the 2023 free agent class, Matt Chapman might be one of those more likely to come to Detroit if given the right deal, and he's most certainly someone the Tigers should pursue in earnest. The Tigers third base role changed hands multiple times throughout the 2023 season, so it's in dire need of a steady, proven presence there.

Chapman, an AL Player of the Month last year and a doubles machine, would not only be a good defensive addition but a great added bat. His production waned a bit after his stellar April, when he hit five home runs with 20 RBI and batted .372, but he still finished off the year with a respectable .240/.330/.424, his best numbers since 2019.

Most of all, though, the Tigers need a good defensive third baseman, and Chapman is a Gold Glover who just won for the fourth time who led the AL in defensive runs saved, with 12 on the year. He's a no-brainer for the dream lineup, and really should be one in real life too.

Batting sixth: RF Kerry Carpenter

Kerry Carpenter had an excellent offensive year and a less excellent defensive one, where he spent most of his time in right field. Putting him in the outfield in the dream lineup instead of moving him to DH full-time (which is probably what will happen in real life, given Miguel Cabrera's retirement) is purely an accommodation for Shohei Ohtani, who has a short history of playing in the outfield but not enough of one to put him there everyday, especially after a major surgery.

Carpenter's inclusion here does come at the expense of OF/3B Matt Vierling, who also had a productive offensive year and appeared in all corners of the outfield throughout the season. Carpenter and Vierling have relatively comparable offensive numbers: Carpenter hit .278/.340/.471 with 20 home runs and 64 RBI; Vierling hit .261/.329/.388 with 10 home runs and 44 RBI, but with more hits for extra bases.

It's the differences in those numbers that come out in Carpenter's favor, even if his performance in the outfield can be a little nebulous. It could be a position and lineup spot that would fluctuate a bit during this fictional season, with Carpenter in the role more if he can step up defensively, or Vierling if he can step up offensively.

Batting seventh: 2B Andy Ibáñez

Infielder Andy Ibáñez had a sneaky good year in various corners of the diamond. He made the big league team a month in the 2023 season, having spent some time in Triple-A after getting picked up by the Tigers on waivers from the Texas Rangers, and quickly became a familiar face at second. He finished the year with a final line of .261/.309/.408, 11 home runs, 41 RBI, and the third highest fWAR on the team.

Putting him lower in the lineup would be a change of pace for him; although the Tigers' 2023 lineups fluctuated frequently, he mostly batted second or third, with occasional appearances at sixth. Putting Ibáñez in at seventh would be a bit of a compromise but not a stretch of the imagination.

It would also be good to let Ibáñez to settle in at a position with a reliable group of infielders around him. In 2023, he spent time all over the field as well as DH, which allowed him to prove himself as a diverse reserve player and ultimately get a lot more playing time than anyone could have expected from him at the beginning of the year. Letting him get most of his time at second would demonstrate a bit of good faith from the front office and keep the home fires burning at second while No. 2 prospect Colt Keith works his way into the big leauges.

Batting eighth: C Jake Rogers

Another sneaky solid presence for the Tigers in 2023 was catcher Jake Rogers, who would either place very high or very low on a ranking of best facial hair in baseball, depending on your persuasion. Rogers split time behind the plate with Eric Haase, a free agent this year after rejecting an outright assignment by the Cleveland Guardians, and Carson Kelly, who joined the Tigers in August and just had his option picked up by the team for 2024.

It's likely that Rogers and Kelly will split catching time pretty evenly in 2024, but Rogers gets the spot on this dream lineup. Kelly might have a small edge in terms of defense — though he had a lower overall strike call rate, he was a more successful framer on the corners and caught two more runners stealing — Rogers had far more blocks above average and a marginally better pop time to second.

'Marginally' seems to be the key word here; Rogers and Kelly's offensive and defensive performances are similar. Either way, the Tigers would be in competent hands. Call Rogers' appearance in this lineup over Kelly recency bias, or maybe it has something to do with his facial hair.

Batting ninth: SS Kiké Hernandez

Could a dream Tigers lineup be a dream Tigers lineup if it didn't get rid of Javier Baez at shortstop? Impossible. This is definitely stating the obvious even though it needs to be said, anything is better than Baez, who had the lowest OBP in baseball this year and made 19 errors at shortstop. True, if the Tigers replaced Baez with free agent Kiké Hernandez on a regular basis, they'd be eating the $98 million Baez has left on his contract, but we've already established that money is no object when it comes to the dream lineup.

This year's free agent class is not like last year's, which featured four world class shortstops up for grabs, all of whom went to their current teams on multi-year contracts ranging from $177 million to $300 million. This year, the most high profile shortstop in free agency is the San Francisco Giants' Brandon Crawford, who probably played his last season in MLB this year. The second best option of the pool is Hernandez. He loves LA, where he's spent a lot of his career, and there's a chance the Dodgers might invite him back. But since they haven't yet, we're bringing him to Detroit for the dream lineup.

Hernandez, despite being a Team Puerto Rico hero and a seemingly delightful clubhouse presence, has offensive ups and downs. In his 2023 with the Boston Red Sox and the Dodgers, he hit .237/.289/.357 overall, and then his numbers were boosted significantly upon his return to LA. He hit 11 home runs and batted in 61 runs over the year, which are okay numbers, but also had a not so great walk to strikeout rate of 6.7% to 19.1%. But it's like we've already established here: anything is better than Javier Baez at shortstop.

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