ESPN Chalk's Joe Peta is sharing his season win total projections for every MLB team, including a reason for optimism and pessimism.
Plus, he recommends an over/under play, or a pass. This is the entry for the Detroit Tigers.
Detroit Tigers
Reason for optimism: A rotation that starts with David Price, Justin Verlander and Anibal Sanchez can still evoke memories of the dominant 2013 staff.
Reason for pessimism: Alfredo Simon and Shane Greene on the back end of the rotation most assuredly do not.
For the last three years, Detroit has had the same trouble on defense as Cleveland, ranking 27th in 2014 at converting batted balls into outs and erasing existing baserunners. Like the Indians, that was no aberration: the Tigers were ranked 27th in 2012 and 25th in 2013. The only team that allowed more baserunners than the Tigers in 2014 was the Minnesota Twins. (If you're a contact hitter, there are worse places to ply your trade than the American League Central.) Previously, that defensive deficiency was mitigated when Verlander, Max Scherzer and even Sanchez in 2013 were striking out more than 25 percent of the batters they faced, but that's no longer the case.
Scherzer has, of course, departed for Washington, 2013 was just a pleasant outlier for Sanchez and sadly, Verlander doesn't look anything like the pitcher he was just two years ago having posted a below-league average strikeout rate (17.8 percent vs. 19.3 percent for AL starters) in 2014. Price is now the ace of the rotation, coming off a career high 248 innings pitched (256 including postseason) and while that somewhat mitigates the loss of Scherzer, the back of the rotation is still very weak.
On offense, the Tigers will have three new starters in 2015 and in two cases of replacement -- Torii Hunter and the shortstop-by-committee platoon -- will eliminate roughly replacement-level (zero WAR) performance. The hope is that a recuperated Jose Iglesias and the newly-acquired Yoenis Cespedes will not only improve offensive production but represent huge upgrades in the field as well. In the case of Anthony Gose taking over in center field for Austin Jackson, Detroit should probably be content with limited slippage, and hope that loss doesn't erase the gains of Cespedes over Hunter.
Then there's the matter of regression. Whether it's regression to the higher of the mean (think league average) or a player's mean (even in decline, Albert Pujols is better than an average first baseman) a team needs to be wary of mean regression from a player following an unexpected breakout season. When a performer of seemingly limited talent and no prior record of achievement suddenly has success to rival the leaders of the industry, it's foolish to expect a repeat performance in future years. In the Tigers' case, this applies to J.D. Martinez, who provided more than 4 WAR of offensive contribution in less than 500 plate appearances last season.
Oddsmakers overrated the Tigers on a day-to-day basis for the entire season, consistently pricing Detroit as a 92- to 93-win team and a minus-140 favorite in the ALDS vs. Baltimore despite lacking home-field advantage. As Tigers fans know, Detroit needed to rally to win 90 games after having played under-.500 ball for an 81-game stretch from Games 41 to 121 (39-42) and then were swept by the Orioles.
This year, the expectations have been tempered but even a total wins market of 84.5 looks quite a bit too high. Take the "under."
2015 projection: 80-82, (third, AL Central)
Bet recommendation: Under