Two or three mid-level guys would be great, but in the current players' market, we're not getting even one mid-level guy. Just about all the mid-level position players—whom I would peg as being those guys who could expect to sign for two to four years—are already gone, and most of the guys who were crowd-sourced on Fangraphs to get two or more years got more years than expected.
There are a few reasons Detroit is at or near the bottom of everyone's list, but our recent record is probably the most visible. This team had been losing at a 98+ clip pretty consistently for four years, and even though we surprised with a 77-win season in 2021 and snagged three halfway decent free agents the following winter—all substantial overpays—we backslid into a 96-loss team anyway. Even removing the disadvantage that is the city of Detroit from the equation, no free agent would choose to throw in his lot with a team like that over other options, despite the firing of Al Avila and the hiring of Scott "Who?" Harris. I would not expect to sign any position-player free agents until after we start playing spring training games. I'm fairly confident we'll get somebody, but probably not a somebody that anybody here really wants on the team as of today. It's going to be somebody we're not talking about now, and who comes here because he needs a job. Think along the lines of Johan Comargo or Cesar Hernandez or Jonathan Davis or Jake Marisnick.
As for trading for a player at the level of a mid-level free agent, do we have the trade chips to do it? This is still a rebuilding team, so trading prospects for a two-win guy to get us from 70-something wins to 70-something-plus-two wins is out, I'm sure. I'm thinking the best we can hope for is a trade in which someone will accept Gregory Soto and Alex Lange and maybe a depth guy, and who knows, maybe even and money. I know some fans think we could get a good player by relieving another team of the onerous contract, although I'm not sure that's on the front office's radar. What bad contract do we want to hobble ourselves with, that will move this organization forward? Honest question, because no one is coming to mind.
I just think we're in a position in which the organization has been so thoroughly decimated that we are going to have to accept basically what we have on the team now, plus whoever's left that we can get here in March, and we will have to show and prove to the rest of baseball over the course of certainly this year, probably next year, and maybe even 2025, that we are serious about rising from the dregs of the game to become at least a middling contender on a regular basis. That's probably a reasonable goal to shoot for, given where we've been and where we are.