I don’t know how much more of a drop-off Schoop can have from last year. A big one would put him in Christian Pache territory and have the Tigers considering DFA’ing him after all. I think he rebounds to at least halfway back to average, which still isn’t good, but possible.
I’m thinking TORK! will have a good season and, bold prediction, Riley has a legit All-Star year. They will be two highlights. Javy will be MVP-level for 300 at bats, Schoop-level for 200 more, and somewhere in the middle otherwise, so he’ll be a net gain. Haase may drop some, but Jake will be a big gain over Tucker. One of Maton/Vierling will surprise with a good year while the other one struggles. Carpenter’s bat will keep him the job all year. Austin Meadows is the only one I’m not sure will recover. He hasn’t been good at all this spring (still no homers!) and I’m betting on a hunch he will see significant IL time, but we have more OF options than before to cover him. Miggy will be ziggy.
The pitching is a complete wild card to me. Fetter’s work with the bullpen last year was outstanding, but. Can’t be sure it wasn’t lightning in a bottle, and this corps looks more tattered. The rotation could go either way, too, although it’s hard for me to see how it could be worse, since all that’s really different is we won’t have a half season of Skubal this year. The pitching, I think, is what could make the difference between us pushing 80 wins and pushing 100 losses.