Detroit Tigers 2015 MLB season preview and predictions

3 Players to Watch

1. Justin Verlander – If forced to select one player who could make or break the 2015 season for Detroit, the pick would be Justin Verlander. The loss of Max Scherzer places additional emphasis on Verlander, who struggled mightily to a 4.54 ERA across 206 innings a season ago. On the bright side for Tigers fans, the big right-hander has seen blips of ineffectiveness at different points of his career, but in the same breath, Verlander has a lot of miles on his powerful arm, and Detroit needs ace-level production from him. The days of Verlander throwing 250 innings with an ERA in the low-2.00’s are likely gone, but he must get back to being a dominant strikeout artist to make up for the lack of depth in the rotation.
2. Alex Avila – Avila was treated kindly with defensive metrics a year ago, allowing him to post a 2.1 fWAR season, but his bat didn’t exactly light up the world on the way to a .218/.327/.359 slash line in 457 plate appearances. The 28-year-old catcher is adept at drawing walks, to the tune of a 12.8% career clip, but it would be beneficial for the Tigers if he could regain the form that saw him blast 19 home runs with a .389 on-base percentage in 2011. At worst, a slight bump from a .359 slugging percentage in 2014 should be expected.
3. Joe Nathan – Things didn’t go well for Nathan in 2014. Detroit’s highly-paid closer put together a 4.81 ERA, and while he did save 35 games, his season was certainly a disappointment. Now, the rest of the bullpen is an even bigger question mark for the Tigers (we’ll come back to this), placing emphasis on Nathan to regain the form that brought nine seasons with 30-or-more saves. No one is expecting Joe Nathan to be the lights-out closer that he once was, but the Tigers can’t afford him to be flatly inept in a similar fashion to 2014.

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