Detroit – It may be a bit theatrical to suggest a player is at the crossroads of his career when he is 25 or 26 years old. But that’s the reality for a handful of young Tigers players. For them, the 2019 season marks, if not a full-on crossroad, then certainly a career-defining campaign.
The organization itself is in transition. It is the second year of the rebuild. The top prospects, the ones tasked with making the Tigers competitive again, are a year or three away from being impactful at the big-league level. Much of the focus now is on laying groundwork – in terms of payroll, infrastructure and stockpiling talent – for late 2020, 2021 and 2022.