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.

Scott Harris laid out the Tigers’ offseason picture succinctly a couple of days after their season ended in Cleveland with a winner-take-all Game 5 loss in the American League Division Series. Detroit went scoreless for the first 17 innings of the series and had one multi-run inning in the series, on Kerry Carpenter’s ninth-inning home run in Game 2. Most of the divisional clash was a pitching duel that turned on a couple of big hits.

“There are two main fronts that we need to work on this offseason,” said Harris, the Tigers’ president of baseball operations. “The first is, regardless of what we do this winter, the majority of our growth has to come from within. There are too many young players on this roster that can and must improve this offseason. The gains that they access this offseason with the help of this coaching staff, when we add all those up, when we get to Lakeland, [Fla.], in February [for Spring Training], they have to outweigh anything we do via an external addition, because there’s just too much opportunity on this roster.”

Two-plus months later, player development remains the sole driver on the offensive side. The Tigers remain on the market for additions, even after signing Gleyber Torres to a one-year, $15 million deal, and could make more splashes as the Hot Stove season heads into the back half. Even if that happens, Detroit’s chances of turning last season’s incredible run into a longer-term window of contention hinge more on current players continuing to get better.

Thus, the big question heading toward Spring Training: How much better can Detroit’s young hitters get this offseason? And will it be enough to lift an offense that struggled for consistent run production?

“We obviously need to play better for a longer period of the season,” manager A.J. Hinch said at the Winter Meetings. “We showed that we can win as many games as anybody in baseball over a period of time, but we had some tough months, too. We had some tough learning curves for our players and everybody around the organization. So we just have to get incrementally better in every spot.”

Three key player developments could define how much Detroit’s offense improves:

1) Healthy Meadows

Sometimes, the eye test can be deceiving, but in this case, Parker Meadows seemed to be a constant for the Tigers in their stretch run for good reason. He was a much-improved player upon his return from Triple-A Toledo in July, and especially after a month-long stint on the injured list with a right hamstring injury. Meadows hit .296/.340/.500 over the final two months, and he was the centerpiece of Detroit’s outfield defense. At the plate, he was vastly improved against fastballs upon his return, raising his contact rate and average exit velocity. His respectable numbers against offspeed pitches suggest he wasn’t simply jumping on heaters. If Meadows can keep up that balance and stay on the field, he has a chance to be an all-around weapon, especially on the bases: Despite playing in just 82 games, he tied with Zach McKinstry for the team in Baserunning Run Value, according to Statcast.

Meadows isn’t the only Tiger who could be a formidable threat with a full season: Kerry Carpenter had a .954 OPS upon his August return from a back injury. Still, when Meadows is at his best, he provides a skill set that’s tough to find.

2) Better Tork

The Tigers have so far refrained from testing the first-base market in hopes that an offseason of work from Spencer Torkelson can get him back into an effective form like he showed down the stretch during his 31-homer season in 2023.

“He's got a great setup in Arizona, along with a number of other players,” Hinch said at the Winter Meetings. “We sort of have a whole operation in Arizona now, with a couple of players and a few of our staff members that live there. They just got together with a few of our hitting guys to check in with them.”

Torkelson has to get back to making pitchers pay for throwing fastballs in the strike zone. He showed potential in that upon his return in August, batting .344 off fastballs with two homers, a 12.7 percent whiff rate and a 94 mph average exit velocity in August. But he regressed in September, though not to the degree of his April and May struggles.

The ZiPS projection system, which uses multiyear statistics, park factors and similar players to predict future performance, projects a .228 average, 27 homers, 84 RBIs and 175 strikeouts in 575 at-bats from Torkelson, not far off his 2023 stats. But that ’23 season had a rough start, an up-and-down summer and a strong finish. Whether Torkelson can afford a slow start could depend on the rest of the Tigers’ offseason. Even if Detroit doesn’t sign another first baseman, the fact that Colt Keith and Justyn-Henry Malloy were taking grounders at first this offseason shows the Tigers want options in case.

3) Sophomore Keith

There’s a lot of expectation for Keith to take a step forward after a rookie season that tested him but showed his ability to make in-season adjustments. His expected numbers in batting average, slugging percentage and weighted on-base average were all better than his actual numbers, reflecting some quality contact that didn’t get rewarded. His plus-6 Run Value against fastballs trailed only Carpenter and Riley Greene on the team. But Keith also finished in the bottom quarter of MLB players in average exit velocity, barrel and hard-hit rates despite getting more pitches in the strike zone than the Major League rate. He spent a few stretches of the season searching for his timing at the plate, and he had an above-average whiff rate despite a below-average chase rate.

Now that Keith knows what to expect from himself and from pitchers in a big league season, his combination of patience and power should come through. His emergence at the plate would help lengthen the run-production portion of the Tigers’ lineup.