Tigers face uphill battle with AJ Hinch's 2025 goal thanks to their own doing

The Detroit Tigers are a different team now than they were a year ago – not necessarily in terms of the roster makeup, but in terms of what is expected of them.

After a magical, late-season run that catapulted them into the postseason and saw them take down the mighty Houston Astros in the American League Wild Card series, the Tigers need to prove that the 2024 campaign wasn't a fluke. The standard has been set, and the expectations have been raised.

When it comes to goals for the 2025 season, Tigers manager AJ Hinch did not mince words.

“I think the biggest challenge for a young team, and I've seen this before, is not looking backward as you're trying to progress,” Hinch said Dec. 10 during an appearance on MLB Network at the MLB Winter Meetings in Dallas . “I mean, we can't repeat last season. We're not trying to repeat last season. We're trying to be better. We want to win the AL Central. We want to put ourselves in a better and better position moving forward. You can't do that by looking backward."

Read that again: "We want to win the AL Central."

Tigers face uphill battle with AJ Hinch's 2025 goal thanks to their own doing

Needless to say, if the goal is to win the AL Central in 2025, the Tigers will need to play better, for longer. During the 2024 season, the Tigers went 3-0 in March, 14-13 in April, 11-16 in May, 10-17 in June, 14-11 in July, 17-11 in August and 17-8 in September. While it made for a fun second half of the season, that's hardly a recipe to win a division.

The Tigers are still a young team, and they are a few pieces away from being a legitimate contender. They can't take what they did in 2024 and run it back in 2025, expecting different results. As Hinch said, looking backward will only hinder this team's progress.

And yet, it's almost 2025, and president of baseball operations Scott Harris and the Tigers' front office have done... next to nothing, even when you factor in the recent signing of Gleyber Torres, which hardly upgrades their current situation. In addition to signing a handful of players to minor league contracts, Detroit has signed just one other player – 37-year-old, nearly-retired starting pitcher Alex Cobb – in free agency. The club hasn't made a single trade, and the Alex Bregman rumors continue to feel like they are trending in the wrong direction, with the latest suggesting there is a "gap in perceived value" during negotiations.

Hinch has set the standard for the Tigers moving forward, but he and the players can't uphold it on their own. They need buy-in from the front office and ownership, and if the early moves (or lack thereof) are any indication, this offseason is going to end in major disappointment.

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