This story was excerpted from Jason Beck’s Tigers Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

DETROIT -- The start of baseball season is always special in Michigan, marking the long-awaited transition from the dreary winter to the sunny optimism of spring. But as the Tigers prepare to open their season Thursday in Chicago, it’s hard to miss the sense of something special -- beyond sunshine and 60-degree weather in March.

Detroit sports fans showed during the Lions’ run to the NFC Championship Game what a contender means around here. Now it’s the Tigers’ turn.

Yes, they’ve been here before. The 2022 season brought hope that the time had arrived, only for a 96-loss campaign to show there was more to be done. Unlike that year, when the Tigers were waiting for Riley Greene and Spencer Torkelson to arrive, the young core in the middle of the lineup is in place. In fact, there’s young talent all over the place; as many as seven of Detroit’s starters on Opening Day could be players who came through the Tigers' farm system, including starter Tarik Skubal. Many of them have grown up in front of fans’ eyes at Comerica Park. They dominated their division opponents last year (35-17), winning the season series against each, only to struggle against clubs outside the AL Central.

“This is a talented group,” president of baseball operations Scott Harris said at the start of Spring Training, “but it’s a young group. It’s going to be one of the youngest position playing groups in all of baseball.”

Adding to last year’s momentum is a Spring Training that saw the Tigers’ highest Grapefruit League win total (20) since 2012. Even the early-season schedule has seemingly lined up in Detroit’s favor at last, providing a potential ramp to end the Tigers’ run of slow starts.

The Tigers are trying to temper expectations, especially with such a young group of position players. But given that they are trying to take a step forward from last year’s 78-win season, it doesn’t take a huge leap to contend in the AL Central.

“I think the eyes are set on winning the division,” Skubal said early in Spring Training. “Win the division, get in the playoffs and anything can happen. We have to be a little bit better early in the year. I thought we played our division really, really well last year. Do that again and then play the AL East maybe a little bit better this year, and we’ll be in a really good spot. If we can kind of flip-flop those and take it, you never know what happens in a postseason. It would be a ton of fun to do that.”

What needs to go right?

The young hitters the Tigers have built their lineup around need to take steps forward. For Torkelson, that means translating his power numbers into more run production and becoming a more consistent hitter. For Greene, that means staying healthy and turning his hard contact into more line-drive and home-run power. For Kerry Carpenter, that means further lowering his chase rate and doing more damage against breaking balls. For Parker Meadows, that means using speed to his advantage on offense as well as he does in the field, something he did exceptionally well in Spring Training. Yes, an offensive rejuvenation from Javier Báez would be a boost, too, but a bonus.

Great unknown

The Tigers thought enough of Colt Keith to sign him to a long-term contract before he makes his MLB debut. Now their No. 2 prospect gets to put his combination of left-handed power and plate discipline to the test against big league pitching. The Tigers have done their best to temper expectations, pointing out how many highly-rated hitting prospects struggled making the jump last year. But the club is also clear it wants to give Keith every opportunity to grab this job and run with it. If he can do that and provide some production upon arrival, Detroit’s lineup becomes much deeper.

Team MVP will be …

This is a wide-open race with so many young position players. If Greene – the 2022 Tiger of the Year as voted on by the Detroit chapter of the BBWAA -- can stay healthy, he has a great chance to fill this role, even with the move from center field to the corners. The metrics show his offensive quality, as does the Tigers’ success when he plays. Now it’s a matter of quantity, staying on the field and at the plate as much as possible. Projection models are all over the place with Greene, up to a 3.0 WAR player, but the offensive potential is fairly consistent.

Team Cy Young will be?

With all due respect to Jack Flaherty’s comeback season potential, Skubal is the strong choice here. His stretch run was dominant, earning him AL Pitcher of the Month honors for September, and he arguably looked even better in Spring Training with more feel for secondary pitches. Like with Greene, a healthier season than his recent track record is critical, but this is the season he steps into a No. 1 starter role, not just relative to the Tigers' staff (he’s a popular dark-horse pick for AL honors) but among the league’s most formidable starters.

Bold prediction

Predicting the Tigers as an AL Central contender this year has become as fashionable as the Olde English D, so maybe this should be in a different font rather than bolded. Still, there’s good reason to believe Detroit will end what is currently tied for the longest active postseason drought in the Majors. The Tigers had the best in-division record of any AL Central team, and among the best such records in the Majors. Their out-of-division record, particularly against the AL East (7-25), did them in. Contenting in 2024 would be ahead of schedule, but many times, these progressions don’t follow a timetable.