Over and Under The Competition: The Tigers

You’ll be hard-pressed to find anyone that doesn’t think the Detroit Tigers are the favorites to with the AL Central, including those who generate MLB futures odds. But Vegas has also tagged them with the highest over-under number in the American League: 93 games.

Vegas picked a similar number last year and the Tigers disappointed.[PRBREAK][/PRBREAK] They won the division, but they only won 88 games, and only their dominance of head-to-head matchups with the White Sox saved them from an ignomnius fate. After adding Cecil Fielder in the offseason, their offense was only slightly above average, though playing in Comerica Park might skew that a little. They bolstered their starting pitching staff by acquiring Anibal Sanchez but their bullpen remained full of question marks.

To their credit, they further improved this offseason. They retained Sanchez and replaced Delmon Young with Torii Hunter. But maybe best of all, they’ll add Victor Martinez to their lineup as he is fully recovered from the ACL surgery that cost him all of 2012.

So start with 88 wins, add a full year of Martinez, a full year of Sanchez, swapping Hunter for Young….and they pretty clearly approach that number. I’ll add in a more ethereal reason too: sometime it seems like it takes a team of superstars a year or so to remember that games won’t be just handed to them.

However, 93 is a huge number, so it’s hard to take the over – but that’s the point. If it was lower, everyone would bet it. Which way would you go?