Just because a baseball team returns all the players who contributed to the most exciting and successful run the city of Detroit has witnessed in a decade doesn’t mean you can run it back the next season and things will automatically be the same.

Manager AJ Hinch certainly understands this.

“We’re back at the bottom of the mountain,” he said.

Everything the Tigers earned in that exhilarating 31-13 finish, the two-game sweep over the Astros in the American League Wild Card Series, right up to the heartbreaking Game 5 loss to Cleveland in the ALDS last season, well, it will have to be earned again.

But, unlike at this time last season, they are starting from a point of strength.

“We feel really good about what we’ve got,” president Scott Harris said. “This is a group that’s a year older and has a lot of winning under its belt after the second half last year and into the postseason. And it has five new teammates, three of whom played in the World Series. This is a group we think is going to come together very nicely.

“We think it’s a group that’s going to play a similarly aggressive brand of baseball with a lot of hungry players who are eager to demonstrate that what you saw last year wasn’t a fluke.”

Those new teammates Harris referenced. Start with second baseman Gleyber Torres and reliever Tommy Kahnle. Both played for the Yankees in the World Series last October, and both bring a winning pedigree to the Tigers.

The other World Series participant is right-hander Jack Flaherty, who, after starting the season with the Tigers, helped the Dodgers get to and win the World Series and, because baseball irony is like that, he will start against them in the second game of the season.

They are also returning the reigning AL Cy Young winner in Tarik Skubal, who leads what could be one of the best starting rotations in the American League, a deep and diverse bullpen that was the clear strength of the team last season and a handful of young players coming off career seasons, including All-Star outfielder Riley Greene.

And one other new addition — expectation. For the first time since maybe 2016, the Tigers are not hoping to make the playoffs, they are expected to make the playoffs.

“You have to expect to win the World Series,” catcher Jake Rogers said. “You have to. Anything less than that is a lie. There’s only one team at the end who gets to hold up that trophy, and we want to be that team. If you don’t think that, your expectations aren’t high enough.“We expect to be in the playoffs and be the last team standing. Every guy in here can speak to that because we believe it.”

Expectations can motivate a team or weigh it down. You either embrace them or carry them like a burden.

“I think it’s a privilege to have big expectations from fans and the league,” Skubal said. “I can’t say those expectations have been there since I’ve been in the big leagues. I appreciate those expectations. That’s why, as a player, you go put in the work and try to be the best you can, because you have people who support you and expect things out of you. That’s a good thing.

“But as far as how we meet those expectations, that’s a day-to-day thing and that’s where our focus needs to be.”

Hinch has been down this road before with a young team. His Houston Astros team, which had lost 92 games the year before he took over, made a surprise run to the playoffs in 2015. That same group of players started 7-17 the next year and missed the postseason.

That experience galvanized in him one of his most strict managerial tenets: Just win today.

“The most boring way to describe it is, we just have a game today. What’s the expectation today?” he said. “Too many people look at overarching expectations and apply that. It’s about today. That’s what I have been hammering since Day One: All that matters is today.

“Maybe that’s a little reverse psychology, like, you’re worried about things we don’t even know? It’s about today. Today is the only thing that matters.”

That’s not to tamp down any dreams or goals, mind you. It’s just keeping things in proper perspective.

“You can have underlying hope or burn that you want to be a playoff team,” Hinch said. “But if you don’t stack good days together, it doesn’t matter.”

It’s a micro vs. macro focus.

“I think this team is mature enough to understand the difference,” Hinch said. “Nothing matters except facing (Dodgers’ starter) Blake Snell on opening day. After that game, are you a playoff team? No. Last year, we had to win 86 games. I’m just realistic about what we’re actually nervous about or what we’re actually timid about or talking about.

“There is no expectation other than what happens that day.”

The players echoed that message all spring.

“It doesn’t feel different because our goal is the same every single day,” Greene said. “It’s to go out and win baseball games. Are there a lot of different expectations on us now since we made the playoffs? One hundred percent. But I would say it’s not going to change how we think. It’s just that people are thinking more of us.

“We’re going to go out and do what we do. We’re going to go out and win baseball games. We want to make it back to where we were, and we want to go farther.”

Starting shorthanded

If last year taught us anything, it’s that how a team looks in April is not how it likely will look in August and September. Which is a comfort since the Tigers will not be fielding their best lineup in April.

Two vital players will start on the injured list — center fielder Parker Meadows, who is dealing with a nerve issue in his upper right arm, and utility player Matt Vierling, who has a strained rotator cuff in his right shoulder.

The Tigers were 54-28 when Meadows played last year, 78-66 when Vierling played.

On top of that, Wenceel Perez, who was to pick up the slack in center field in April, reported back pain in the final Grapefruit League game Sunday and also will start the season on the IL.

“That’s two guys that are pretty big in our lineup and we’d love to see them in there every day,” Greene said. “But we know we all have to step back and trust each other. Just have that trust in our teammates and try to win games.”

The absence of those players impacts the offense, certainly, but more so on the defensive side of things.

The Tigers are built around their pitching staff. That is the undeniable strength of this team. And last year, that pitching staff was fortified by the fifth-best defensive team (per Sports Info Solutions) in the game. The outfield defense, specifically, was among the best in the game with Meadows in center (plus-5 defensive runs saved), Vierling in right (plus-4) and Greene in left (plus-14).

And when Alex Bregman chose to sign with the Red Sox over the Tigers, Vierling was expected to play a bigger role at third base, too.

Now, with Meadows out through May and Vierling through April, it’s become a scramble. Center field will be manned by committee for the first two months. Kerry Carpenter, who was expected to log at least half of his games as designated hitter, will play more in right field.

Once it was clear Meadows would be out longer, Harris quickly worked to sign veteran outfielder Manuel Margot, a 30-year-old right-handed hitter who can play all three outfield positions but is probably most proficient on the corners.

“We prioritize versatility here for these situations,” Harris said. “So we can adapt to the adversity that we’re facing. We did a pretty good job of that in the second half of last year. We’re going to have to leverage that versatility again to win games moving forward.”

The infield defense is perhaps the biggest concern the team has going into the season. Signing Torres was a boon to the offense, which was light on right-handed impact bats. Torres, as he showed with a torrid spring, can provide that.

But the consequence of signing him was to move Colt Keith to first base. That’s going to be a work in progress defensively most of the season.

So, the Tigers will deploy Keith in a new position at first; Torres, who has led second basemen in errors the last two seasons, at second; a revolving door at third featuring Zach McKinstry, Andy Ibanez and Javier Ba´ez; with Trey Sweeney, who has played all of two months in the big leagues, and Ba´ez, coming off hip surgery, sharing shortstop.

It’s not ideal, but things were far from ideal after the trade deadline last year and the team found a way to make it work. That adaptability and resourcefulness is near the top of the team’s list of assets. Hinch called it a “figure-it-out mentality.”

In AJ we trust

The buy-in is a byproduct of the trust the players have in Hinch. And that trust was forged by the success on the field. The hunting of matchup advantages, no matter how marginal, no matter how early in the game, the mixing and matching, it worked.

Carpenter, arguably the Tigers’ most dangerous hitter, understands why Hinch is calling him back to the dugout against certain left-handed pitches. It’s not because he can’t hit lefties. It’s because Ibanez, a right-handed hitter, hits them better.