The Athletic surprisingly declines to rule out Tigers in top free agent's market

Every offseason, there's always one player who stands totally apart from the rest of the free agent class. Everyone knows he'll get the biggest, longest contract of the year, and only the highest-spending teams will bother trying to court him (usually, it's not the Detroit Tigers). Last year it was Juan Soto; the year before that Shohei Ohtani; the year before that Aaron Judge, and so on. This year, it's Kyle Tucker.

Tucker is predicted to make anywhere between $350-425 million in free agency, even after a bum second half and postseason with the Cubs, and the teams who could afford to pay him that much are already circling. The Dodgers are expected to be aggressive, the Yankees will probably be involved, and most of the other top-10 payroll teams in baseball will at least check in.

One would assume that Tucker simply wouldn't be on the Tigers' radar at all, and that $350-450 million is simply way too much money for them to spend on one player. More realistic options for Detroit are Alex Bregman or Bo Bichette, both of whom would still force them out of their comfort zone by costing closer to $200 million.

However, The Athletic didn't rule the Tigers out entirely. There are a lot of far more likely candidates, but the Tigers are in Tier 8 ("Could they be talked into it?") out of 11 ("No chance"). The latter lists exactly one-third of the league, but somehow the Tigers are exempt.

The Athletic doesn't totally rule out the Tigers as a destination for Kyle Tucker

This isn't exactly an indicator that the Tigers are expected to spend this offseason, rather that no one has any real idea what the Tigers' approach to this offseason is going to be. The mostly unanimous opinion is that they need to spend a little bit outside of their comfort zone, but Scott Harris would never let fans or journalists deep enough into his thought processes to know if that will actually happen.

It's a pivotal offseason for the Tigers, who risk losing Tarik Skubal anywhere between now and next offseason. They could do what they always do and spend little only to supplement, or they could — frankly — put on their big boy pants and go after game-changing talent.

If you asked a Tigers fan if they thought Detroit would ever make a play at Tucker, they'd laugh. We're kind of laughing right now. But the Tigers not being totally on the outskirts of the conversation around him is a reminder that the possibilities seem endless this offseason, if they're actually daring enough to explore some of them.