SAN DIEGO – On the first day of spring training, Detroit Tigers manager A.J. Hinch framed the long journey ahead for his coaches and players in a team meeting.
"We're back at the bottom of the mountain again, with clear goals."
More than five weeks later, Hinch closed spring training with a declaration as a new season gets underway.
"We're trying to win the World Series."
Opening Day arrives Thursday, March 26 (4:10 p.m., Detroit SportsNet), against the San Diego Padres at Petco Park, beginning the 2026 season. The Tigers are chasing a championship with a battle-tested roster built to win now, blending young talent, established players and proven veterans.
It has been more than a decade since the Tigers last won the American League Central – in 2014 – but this team isn't searching for an identity – not after back-to-back postseason exits in Game 5 of the ALDS.
This team has experience.
And this team has expectations.
"I'm ready to play baseball for the Detroit Tigers and try to win a World Series," said Tarik Skubal, the reigning two-time AL Cy Young winner and now three-time Opening Day starter lined up for a $400 million payday when he hits free agency after this season.
It all starts with the rotation.
Skubal leads a group of five starters built for October, followed by left-hander Framber Valdez and right-handers Jack Flaherty, Justin Verlander and Casey Mize. The bullpen still has swing-and-miss concerns, but Kenley Jansen, Kyle Finnegan and Will Vest are equipped to carry games to the finish line.
In the rotation, the Tigers have the best pitcher in the world at the top, another ace who signed a lucrative contract behind him, a future first-ballot Hall of Famer with a wealth of knowledge in the middle and postseason experience from others throughout, including five World Series championships on their combined résumés.
"I would put our rotation up with any in the game," president of baseball operations Scott Harris said at the beginning of spring training. "It feels like when we can go into a series with those guys leading us, we got a great chance to win, whether it's in the regular season or the postseason."
The Tigers project to have a top-three rotation in baseball.
The players believe it.
"Hopefully, we end up doing something special as a staff," said Verlander, a 43-year-old franchise icon who pitched for the Tigers from 2005-17, then returned for 2026. "I sit here and look at these guys, and it definitely has the opportunity to be one of the better staffs that I've been a part of, and I've been a part of some really good ones."
Pitching will carry the Tigers.
The offense will determine how far they go.
The Tigers struggled with strikeouts but were an above-average offense for most of the 2025 season – until a late-season collapse that erased a 15½-game lead in the AL Central. Poor swing decisions and an inability to put the ball in play doomed a volatile offense.
"How does a top-eight offense for five months become a bottom-eight offense in September?" Harris said, only three days after the Tigers were bounced from the 2025 playoffs by the Seattle Mariners. "That's the question that really keeps me up at night."
One problem: The Tigers didn't make any external additions to address their downfall, instead chalking it up to a team-wide slump and betting on internal growth.
The hope for improvement focuses on top prospect Kevin McGonigle, a 21-year-old shortstop who made the Opening Day roster without experience above Double-A. He is known for his smart swing decisions and advanced bat-to-ball skills.
"He's still an unfinished product," Hinch said. "That development needs to continue at the major-league level, but we feel his preparation and his routines that he developed during this spring were foundational enough to make him part of this."
The answer isn't just McGonigle.
It's the core.
The Tigers need Riley Greene to cut down on strikeouts, Spencer Torkelson to avoid regression, Kerry Carpenter to stay healthy and Colt Keith to unlock more power as those four position players enter the prime of their careers – all while Gleyber Torres remains a veteran presence as an on-base machine near the top of the lineup.
Everyone has seen the flashes.
Now, the offense needs consistency.
"I understand the narrative about our offense out there," Harris said. "I don't think it's all that fair to our players to paint the entire season last year with the end-of-season brush. This is a good offense. We absolutely have to get better, but I think the general characterizations of this offense aren't all that fitting. We have a lot of confidence that on an individual level they've gotten a lot better this offseason."
In 2024, the Tigers were the youngest team in baseball when they ended a decade-long postseason drought with a late-season surge. In 2025, they proved the miracle run wasn't a fluke with a red-hot start.
Entering 2026, the Tigers aren't a mystery anymore.
They've already learned how to win.
"Experience is everything," Greene said. "Now we know what to expect – crowds, adrenaline, how to slow ourselves down."
"When you do it, the expectations rise," Flaherty said, "and that's where it gets really fun because you've got teams chasing you instead of it being the other way around."
The climb is underway.
And the Tigers expect to reach the top of the mountain.
"We have to run the race throughout the season," Hinch said. "You can't win the division without winning 90-plus games. You got to stack a lot of wins to have a successful season. We should start with small goals, like winning the first series against the Padres, and then you want to have the winning road trip, and then you want to have winning weeks and winning months. That's what leads you to the finish."
Contact Evan Petzold at [email protected] or follow him @EvanPetzold.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Detroit Tigers 2026 preview: Opening Day roster built for World Series