2026 ZiPS Projections: Detroit Tigers

For the 22nd consecutive season, the ZiPS projection system is unleashing a full set of prognostications. For more information on the ZiPS projections, please consult this year’s introduction, as well as MLB’s glossary entry. The team order is selected by lot, and the next team up is the Detroit Tigers.

Batters

This year was like two very different seasons in one for the Detroit Tigers. Through July 8, their high-water mark in 2025, the Tigers had the best record in baseball, and held an imposing 14 game lead over the Twins and Royals. Over the final three months of the season, however, they barely played .400 ball, and won less often than any of the White Sox, Pirates, or Nationals. While the threats from the Twins and the Royals didn’t prove to be fatal, the Guardians made up a 15 1/2 game gap to grab the division at the last moment, and the Tigers just barely snuck into the postseason on the strength of a tiebreaker with the Astros. By comparison, the humiliations of the 1978 Red Sox and 1969 Cubs (nine games) were minor. While the Tigers were able to get revenge against the Guardians in the Wild Card round, they were bounced by the Mariners in a 15-inning Game 5 nail-biter in the ALDS. But in what might end up being Tarik Skubal’s final season with the team, the Tigers don’t have much time to brood on the summer of 2025.

Detroit’s lineup is fairly solid despite lacking any true stars. In a lot of ways, the Tigers are a team largely made up of role players, but they actually fit together quite well. They have competent defensive players up the middle, nobody is really forced to play too often at a position they shouldn’t, and the platoon options largely make sense. And there’s arguably a viable injury replacement at every position.

Riley Greene is the closest thing the lineup has to a star, and he’s still younger than his service time would suggest — he just turned 25 a couple of months ago — so that long-predicted big breakout could still happen. However, his defense in left is rather unexciting for a player who was an adequate center fielder, and his plate discipline took a troubling step back in 2025. Spencer Torkelson finally put up a full league-average season in the majors, and at this point, an OPS anywhere between .600 and .900 wouldn’t surprise me. People on social media were oddly annoyed with the positive Dillon Dingler projection last year, but I think he demonstrated that he can actually hit major league pitching and is a real plus defensively.

Gleyber Torres accepted the team’s qualifying offer earlier this week, so he’ll return to play second base. Colt Keith looks to head a committee at third base, while Jace Jung might be a trade candidate, as he’s without much of a path to another chance in the majors in Detroit. ZiPS, like Steamer, isn’t in on Javier Báez, and largely attributes his temporary bounce-back in 2025 to him outperforming his peripheral data by about the same amount he underperformed his peripherals in 2024. ZiPS really, really wants the Tigers to call up Kevin McGonigle and Max Clark sooner rather than later, especially with the computer fairly grumpy about Wenceel Pérez.

Honestly, the Tigers are a hard lineup to upgrade because they’re not actually abysmal anywhere. I don’t expect any huge changes here over the next three months.

Pitchers

Skubal is basically the superstar on the Tigers right now. If you’ve somehow spent the last three years living on the moon, locked in a box, with earplugs in and the greatest hits of Creed playing full blast while your ears slowly disintegrate into primordial ooze as you beseech every creator you can think of for the sweet release of oblivion, one glance at Skubal’s top three comps should indicate just how good he is right now. Skubal’s 5.5-WAR projection is the highest since Chris Sale in 2019 (let’s not look up what happened to Sale at that point). It’s going to require a lot of Skooby Snacks to keep him in town for more than another year. If Skubal has another Cy Young season and doesn’t appear to be close to a mega-deal before next year’s seemingly inevitable lockout, I wonder if he’d be receptive to the Tigers offering something like 1/50 for 2027 in order to hit free agency under a new CBA.

Skubal is the straw that stirs the rotation’s drink, but the rest of the starters form a decent supporting cast. ZiPS sees Jack Flaherty, Casey Mize, Reese Olson, and Troy Melton as all being slightly above-average starting pitchers, and Keider Montero and Sawyer Gipson-Long aren’t that far off. ZiPS thinks Brant Hurter is also a viable starting option, should he be needed. Losing Skubal to an injury or a trade would be a huge hit to the rotation, as it would be for any team that employed Skubal, but without their Cy Young winner, the Tigers wouldn’t collapse and suddenly be the Rockies or anything.

Hanifee, Holton, Hurter & Horn sounds like a great late-inning law firm. Add Will Vest at the top, and you have a good-but-not-great bullpen. ZiPS thinks the Tigers could use a few arms at the back end of the ‘pen for 2026, perhaps Gipson-Long if he’s not called on to start due to injuries. Jason Foley will be an interesting reclamation project for someone if his shoulder is sound next season.

All told, despite last season’s summer swoon, the Tigers are probably the most complete AL Central team, and ought to go into the season as at least the moderate favorite.

Ballpark graphic courtesy Eephus League. Depth charts constructed by way of those listed here. Size of player names is very roughly proportional to Depth Chart playing time. The final team projections may differ considerably from our Depth Chart playing time.

Players are listed with their most recent teams wherever possible. This includes players who are unsigned or have retired, players who will miss 2026 due to injury, and players who were released in 2025. So yes, if you see Joe Schmoe, who quit baseball back in August to form a Ambient Math-Rock Trip-Hop Yacht Metal band that only performs in abandoned malls, he’s still listed here intentionally. ZiPS is assuming a league with an ERA of 4.16.

Hitters are ranked by zWAR, which is to say, WAR values as calculated by me, Dan Szymborski, whose surname is spelled with a z. WAR values might differ slightly from those that appear in the full release of ZiPS. Finally, I will advise anyone against — and might karate chop anyone guilty of — merely adding up WAR totals on a depth chart to produce projected team WAR. It is important to remember that ZiPS is agnostic about playing time, and has no information about, for example, how quickly a team will call up a prospect or what veteran has fallen into disfavor.

As always, incorrect projections are either caused by misinformation, a non-pragmatic reality, or by the skillful sabotage of our friend and former editor. You can, however, still get mad at me on Twitter or on BlueSky. This last is, however, not an actual requirement.