Tigers seeking additions to promising staff

DETROIT -- The Tigers have put a priority on adding pitching this offseason, despite a rotation that could already go into next year with five starters and a quartet of highly touted prospects either having made the rotation this past summer or knocking on Detroit’s door.

“We want to enhance the pitching staff,” manager A.J. Hinch told Mike Ferrin and Jim Duquette on MLB Network Radio on Monday. “I think we have incredible upside in some of our younger pitchers. We need Michael Fulmer to come back as a bona fide guy in the middle to the top of the rotation. Matt Boyd has logged a ton of innings, and it wasn't too long ago he was leading the league in strikeouts and having a chance to really cement himself as an upper-tier pitcher. Spencer Turnbull has done very well to continue to develop. And adding a pitcher or two is something that [general manager] Al [Avila] has been searching for, for the entire offseason. And you can never have enough pitching.

“You look at the teams that have done well either getting to the playoffs or getting deep runs to the World Series, those teams have tremendous pitching. And I go back to the [pitching coach Chris] Fetter hire: If we're going to do this right in Detroit, we have to get the pitching right.”

Avila seems to be on board with this.

“I think ideally we'd like to add a pitcher, maybe two, depending on the situation,” Avila said last Friday.

? GM Avila discusses Hot Stove, Tigers' plans

Part of the reason for wanting more pitching is the ramp-up from this year’s 60-game season to potentially 162 games. The prevailing thought in recent years in many baseball organizations, including the Tigers, is to avoid increasing a pitcher’s workload too much from one year to the next year, especially pitchers with injury histories but also with healthy hurlers. It’s why the Tigers limited Daniel Norris to three innings a start down the stretch in 2019, and why they’ve been cautious with top prospects the last few years.

“We have to be careful on a couple fronts,” Hinch said in November. “No. 1, we have young pitching that has never really been tested north of, call it 125 innings. I'm talking about [Casey] Mize and [Tarik] Skubal, and you have Turnbull who has done it before a little bit. You have Fulmer, who's done it a ton but [is] coming off Tommy John [surgery].

“To me it's very individualized, I don't think you can have one specific criteria. Twenty percent might work for some, 30 percent might work for another, 10 percent might work for a third guy.”

? Offseason checklist: Tigers' needs, moves

Boyd was the only Tiger last year to top 60 innings; he pitched 60 1/3, down from 185 1/3 in 2019. Turnbull, at 56 2/3 innings, was the only other Tiger to top 40 innings. Next up on the innings list was Skubal at 32, despite not joining the rotation until mid-August.

“I think every pitcher that threw 60 innings, you have to really monitor what you’re going to do with him in ’21,” said agent Scott Boras, who represents Boyd. “Because you’re really talking about, if you go around asking pitchers to take a 120-innings jump from where they were, you’re looking at risk factors that have dramatic consequences, historically.”

Boras also represents Skubal, and he noted the workload ramp-up among young starters when asked about it during a virtual Winter Meetings media session on Tuesday.

“The pitchers that we’ve had that ended up being the most successful of late -- [Stephen] Strasburg, [Max] Scherzer, [Gerrit] Cole are great examples -- when they were young, they had step-wise management and movement of their pitch limits and where they go and how they move forward. … We all know there’s a real record about injury and innings jumps that are 50 or 60 innings beyond where they were the prior year, so we have a lot of data and a lot of information that suggests that if this is done correctly, these players have to take steps.”

Skubal tossed 122 2/3 innings in 2019, his only full season as a pro. Likewise, Mize threw 109 1/3 innings in 2019 before being shut down in mid-August as a precaution. He actually threw more innings in his final season at Auburn.

Skubal and Mize both made seven starts for the Tigers, and both had games in which they looked like they belonged in the Majors going forward. But Detroit’s desire to add starters is a message that they’re going to have to compete for those spots, a message that includes the Tigers’ position prospects as well.

“You have to be prepared for some of the young players coming up in the next couple years, a Spencer Torkelson, a Riley Greene, obviously Skubal, [Matt] Manning, Mize, big names in our organization,” Hinch told MLB Network Radio. “You have to make sure the path is somewhat clear, but also increase your competitiveness at the Major League level.”