Ron Gardenhire spoke to his full roster of 62 players for the first time on Monday morning.
The Tigers look a lot different than most baseball fans, players, and their new manager are used to seeing, but Gardenhire shared a concrete message in light of the rebuild.
"We're gonna go do our thing. We're gonna work hard. We're not gonna pay attention to what everybody says. [Expletive] happened to our ball club. We can't worry about that," he said.
Victor Martinez and Jose Iglesias were in the final group of players arriving in Tiger Town for the full-squad workout. Martinez and Miguel Cabrera both said their offseason workouts weren't restricted, and they feel healthy heading into spring training.
"We're trying to get to know everybody. Lotta new faces and guys that I've never really seen before, but today's the first full day and I think it's good to see everybody," Jordan Zimmermann said.
Detroit is one of 12-15 teams rebuilding in baseball. That makes for an environment of unknowns.
Nick Castellanos provided what may be an early front-runner for quote of the spring when he addressed the low expectations for this year's team.
"Expectations are an idea. At the end of the day, ideas don't matter. We had expectations to win a World Series last year. We lost 99 games. So much for expectations."
