On Saturday, we get to watch the Detroit Tigers play a baseball game for the first time since their ALDS loss to the Mariners. A lot has happened in the interim, and it’s great to be back.
Truth be told, how to watch Tigers baseball is still up in the air as Grapefruit League action begins on Saturday. Today, the Detroit Tigers matchup on the road against the Yankees at 1:05 p.m. will be free on MLB.tv with their home broadcast team from the YES Network. The Tigers radio broadcast should still be available on all the usual Tigers Radio Network affiliates. We’ll have a gamethread up as usual.
Longer term, how we’ll be watching the Tigers is a little more complicated question to answer.
With the Detroit Tigers taking their broadcasts into their own hands in partnership with MLB this season, the rough outline is clear. A Tigers TV package will be available through MLB.tv and will give in-market fans full streaming access to the Tigers. The broadcasts will be produced with MLB, and still helmed by Jason Benetti and Dan Dickerson, respectively, with Andy Dirks and Dan Petry returning as analysts.
Right now, the broadcast packages at MLB.tv list most of the teams now going direct through MLB’s site for streaming, but Tigers TV wasn’t listed as of Friday night. The decision to part ways with FanDuel Sports Network was pretty recent, and while teams have been preparing contingencies for a long time, we may have to wait a while for a full rollout of the streaming package.
For Saturday though, the game is free on MLB.tv.
The Tigers return home Sunday and Monday against the Orioles and Twins, and those two openers in Lakeland will be radio broadcast only. Pretty standard stuff for most of spring training. We’ll see if more games are televised this year or not. The next one set to be a Tigers TV game is Wednesday the 25th in a matchup against the Phillies on a split-squad day.
The part of this that will take more time to sort out than Tigers TV, is licensing the broadcasts to cable networks or platforms in the region. We’ll have to wait for further announcements regarding cable providers who will ultimately be partnering with the Tigers and MLB directly now to air the games.
Tigers v. Yankees
Early in spring training, it’s natural for the overreactions to run a little hot. It’s really best not to read much into performance in the early going especially. It’ll just be great to watch a baseball game.
No doubt, someone’s velocity will be notably down and people will panic in the coming days. Someone else will look incredible and we’ll get too hype. These are spring traditions. Last year, Parker Meadows and Matt Vierling were hurt immediately once exhibition season began, which is a great reminder that the only real goal of spring camp is to get stretched out and built up to game speed without getting hurt. Other than Reese Olson’s unfortunate shoulder surgery, the Tigers injury report is pretty light in camp so far, so let’s keep it that way.
The only starting player still working his way back from something is Dillon Dingler, who had his elbow cleaned out during the offseason, and is still building up his arm strength in a throwing progression. Trey Sweeney is currently out with a shoulder strain, but he was obviously a longshot for the Opening Day roster. A few of their minor league pitchers are still rehabbing something, but overall that’s a pretty good place to start compared to a lot of other teams.
Keider Montero gets the start
Keider Montero gets the first start of the year, and his is a pretty interesting case going into the first day of Grapefruit League play. The 25-year-old has been a very helpful depth piece for the Tigers rotation the past two years, but hasn’t made a convincing enough case as a starter yet. On the other hand, he pitched well late in 2025, obviously has the stuff to be a pretty good pitcher, and finished the year in pretty stirring fashion as he tossed 5 1/3 scoreless innings in the postseason. With only one option remaining, and Monteroprobably sitting 8th on the starting depth chart, it feels like he’s likely to start the season in the bullpen.
The Tigers really like the idea of multi-inning relievers these days and it’s easy to see why. Once a pitcher is warm and in the game, you’d prefer to push them two innings and have more rest days in between outings, as opposed to pitching a lot of guys for one inning many times in a given week. If the staff stays healthy, they might end up with Montero, Drew Anderson, Troy Melton, Brant Hurter, and Tyler Holton all as guys very comfortable going multiple innings.
Maybe you don’t even bother keeping someone “stretched out” anymore. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to squander Montero or Melton’s arm in Triple-A just to have them stretched out if the tradeoff is a lesser option in the Tigers bullpen instead. Anderson has a major league free agent deal and can’t be optioned. So maybe just cover any minor injury or missed start with bullpen days. Until there’s some longer term attrition in the rotation, perhaps they don’t need to worry about having someone ready to go five innings on a moment’s notice. Just use your pen full of depth starters to handle things, while keeping Will Vest, Kenley Jansen, and Kyle Finnegan in the high leverage spots.
This is all just idle talk of course. Spring training tends to decide in its own way what your pitching staff looks like and what your options are by the time Opening Day arrives. Hopefully they have more options than they know what to do with, but that’s a rare level of abundance in pitching. We’ll just see if Montero can parlay his seasoning of the past two years into more consistent performance in whatever role he lands in.
The Tigers have confirmed that infielder Hao-Yu Lee and outfielder Jahmai Jones will play at some point in Saturday’s game as well. Jake Rogers will DH, and another player worth watching, C/1B Eduardo Valencia, is scheduled to be behind the dish. The 25-year-old Valencia kind of came out of nowhere last season with a massive year in Toledo, but his catching remains the weak side of his game. Saturday will be the first look at Valencia’s defense for most fans.
Kevin McGonigle, shortstop
Of course, here finally is the featured attraction in Saturday’s starting lineup. The really fun thing to watch is Kevin McGonigle starting at shortstop for the Detroit Tigers. He’ll be playing between veteran mentors in Javier Báez at third base, and Gleyber Torres at second. Hinch is getting McGonigle right into the thick of the action.
A.J. Hinch and everyone else knows that McGonigle has some question marks about his development defensively. And a driven player like Kevin McGonigle is 100 percent planning on winning the starting shortstop job out of camp. He’s not thinking about service time. So it feels a bit pointed by Hinch to put him out there on day one. It’s probably going to take a lot to convince the Tigers front office to take him north immediately, but no doubt Hinch is happy to throw him in there, get past any jitters early on, and give him every opportunity to make his case this spring. Whatever his timetable, the experience should be good for the 21-year-old, currently ranked the second best prospect in baseball according to most national rankings.
McGonigle played some third base in the Arizona Fall League, and the Tigers even had Alan Trammell out there coaching him for both positions. After missing time with injuries in 2024 and 2025, the point of the Fall League was probably defensive reps as much as anything to do with his bat.
Everyone believes he’s going to rake, but his defensive ability is the bigger question mark. His arm is modest for a shortstop, and throws deep in the hole are never going to be his forte. On the plus side, he has the speed and hands to be solid there and he’s still only a few years removed from high school. There’s reason to expect him to refine his actions and turn himself into something close to an average shortstop. That would be just fine, assuming he hits as expected, and he could shift off the position to second or third when a better option presents himself.
The top prospects will all be followed closely this spring, and it’s going to be fun to see how they do, but McGonigle vs. the shortstop position will be its own little roster battle to watch play out. It’s not as though Trey Sweeney, Zach McKinstry, or Báez are plus defensive shortstops either. The bar isn’t that high for McGonigle to make it clear he’s their best option.
The Tigers know they need as much Kevin McGonigle as they can get this season without pushing him too hard too fast. The tension between those two ideas will color everything the Tigers top prospect does this spring. Hinch is prepping him for the scrutiny. For his part, McGonigle is a thoughtful young player and his own toughest critic. He seems well positioned to deal with the burden of expectations. He just may need time against good upper level minor league pitching until he’s ready to hit the ground running in the big leagues. At some point this season, he’ll be undeniable. For now, the opportunity to prove he’s ready gets underway on Saturday.
Tigers Baseball is back and we couldn’t be happier.