Folks, we\u2019re almost there. Winter still has us in its icy grip here in the north, but a week from today, pitchers and catchers will be reporting to Lakeland. The anticipation of spring training is often followed by a minor letdown as March\u2019s interminably long slate of Grapefruit League games grind by and the desire for Opening Day and regular season baseball builds pressure. However, we\u2019ll also get the World Baseball Classic to break things up, as well as the Spring Breakout games for prospect hounds. It should be a pretty fun spring camp, as they go.<\/p>\n
Of course, how we\u2019re all going to figure out how to actually watch the Tigers remains up in the air. Hopefully the club will offer some clarity on their broadcast situation shortly. They\u2019ve had plenty of time to prepare their alternate plans, so we\u2019ll be looking for more word on that soon.<\/p>\n
In the meantime, the Tigers released the full spring training roster for major league camp on Wednesday. The list includes 23 non-roster invitees, and just the sight of certain names should get you juiced up for baseball.<\/p>\n
Top prospects galore will be involved this time around, and to a degree the Tigers haven\u2019t really seen since 2020-2021, if then. Kevin McGonigle, Max Clark, Josue Brice\u00f1o, Thayron Liranzo, Hao-Yu Lee, Max Anderson, and more will be on hand. Left-hander Jake Miller is still rehabbing from hip labrum surgery, so we may not see him until late in camp, while Jackson Jobe is rehabbing from Tommy John and will move to the 60-day injured list immediately, opening up a 40-man spot for a signing or promotion. Slugging C\/1B Eduardo Valencia will be a name to watch after a breakout 2025 season. Veteran minor leaguers like Jace Jung, Trei Cruz, Tyler Mattison, and Ben Malgeri will also be fighting for some kind of a role, at least as an up and down option throughout the season. Sawyer Gipson-Long will try and put Tommy John behind him after a tough reintroduction to the major leagues in 2025, and we\u2019ll be curious to see how he looks as rotation depth.<\/p>\n
And of course we\u2019ll have the usual batch of veteran relievers and depth pitchers. As always a few will stand out in spring camp. Someone will have a little extra velocity, or a new pitch that could unlock their game. Free agent signing Drew Anderson will have plenty of eyes on him, as will veteran relievers like Tanner Rainey, Tyler Owens, Dugan Darnell, Phil Bickford, Jack Little and more. Of course, those spring standouts often crumble later in camp as the hitters get up to speed, but it\u2019s all a normal part of spring camp. Seeing how the Tigers are trying to help pitchers adjust and find something new in their game is always interesting, if usually futile for all but a few.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s been a long winter, and it sure isn\u2019t over yet, but the promise of spring camp is better than a groundhog for signaling that spring is finally around the corner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Folks, we\u2019re almost there. Winter still has us in its icy grip here in the north, but a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":554564,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2386],"tags":[5,147,53,34954,2583,4,594],"class_list":{"0":"post-554563","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-detroit-tigers","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-detroit","10":"tag-detroit-tigers","11":"tag-detroit-tigers-roster","12":"tag-detroittigers","13":"tag-mlb","14":"tag-tigers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=554563"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554563\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/554564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=554563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=554563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=554563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}