Surprising is definitely a word I would use to describe the year 2020, which can go straight to hell and take COVID-19, police brutality, embarrassing presidential candidates (plural), and murder hornets with it. And don’t even get me started on the price of Youtube TV going from $50 to $65 per month. But surprising as it relates to the 2020 Detroit Tigers? In a good way? Didn’t exactly see that one coming.

But I’ll take it.

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Where we at?

Can we start with the fact that it is surprising, if not shocking, that they are still playing baseball games at the quarter mark of the season to begin with? The Miami Marlins and St. Louis Cardinals have each been ravaged by COVID outbreaks, forcing roster and schedule reconstruction on the fly. When it seemed a canceled season was inevitable, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred dug in his heels and declared that he’s “not a quitter”. What a warrior. A true American hero.

Yes, we are soldiering on with this very strange season, and Detroit has a very strange baseball team that fits right in with all the other hijinks that 2020 has to offer. The Tigers sit at 9-6 at the (theoretical) quarter-point of the season, owners of the fourth-best record in the American League, and just percentage points back of the Twins for the AL Central lead. We’ve seen them win in a hodgepodge of ways that make them a fun team to watch but a tough team to figure out.

But before we get into the deets of how this team has navigated the first leg of the 60-game sprint, we need to highlight just how important their hot start was to their overall prospects this season.

A 9-6 stretch of baseball is a drop in the bucket of insignificance in a normal 162-game season. The Tigers got off to an 8-4 start in 2019 but that didn’t stop them from sinking down deep into the abyss and logging one of the most pathetic seasons in American League history.

But taking a look at FanGraphs’ playoff probabilities highlights just how much more impactful a hot stretch really is in 2020.

Detroit’s playoff odds jumped from 12% on opening day all the way up to 37.4% as of 8/11. Only the 12-5 Colorado Rockies have done more for their postseason aspirations in such a short time. Also, let’s not forget that the day before opening day we were still under the assumption that baseball would have the traditional 10-team playoff format, which would have given the Tigers roughly a “not gonna happen” chance at a 2020 postseason run.

So, in a span of about three weeks, we went from essentially 0% to 37.4%. I repeat, as I have in my season preview as well as the opening weekend observations, this is not a playoff quality roster as is currently constructed. Lucky for us, given the season length and new playoff format, a playoff quality roster is no longer required to join in the fun.

Going 20-25 the rest of the way will likely put Detroit squarely in the mix for the final playoff spot in the AL. Even the haters would agree that this is doable even for a run-of-the-mill below-average team like the Tigers should be. At the very least, Detroit has all but guaranteed that it will be playing meaningful baseball the rest of the way, even if they fall short of the postseason.

Now that we’ve recapped exactly where the Tigers are, let’s take a look at how they got there.

…and carry a big stick

Let’s cut right to the chase, shall we?

After taking the year off offensively in 2019, the Tigers have reversed course and are making up for lost time. Through the first two series of the 2020 season, Detroit led the majors in home runs, a slight improvement from their ranking of 29th last season. But all the postponed games across the league (the Tigers had an entire series with St. Louis canceled, and this week’s scheduled doubleheader against the Cardinals has also been postponed) make it hard to compare counting stats between teams, most of which have played a different amount of games.

Fear not, because plenty of traditional baseball rate stats, and even some of the analytics (the new world order of baseball) highlight just how good the Tigers have been offensively thus far.

• The Tigers have a league-leading hard-hit rate of 46.0%. The gap (more like a gulf) between them and second-ranked Oakland is more than 5%. Interestingly, the gap between Oakland and 30th ranked Milwaukee is less than 10%. Long-story-short, the Tigers are hitting the ball hard and distancing themselves from the pack in a traditionally crowded metric. No doubt unsustainable, but worthy of props nonetheless.
• The biggest contributor to that top-ranked hard-hit rate? Our old pal slim n’ trim Miguel Cabrera, whose 60.0% mark clocks him at sixth in the majors. This, along with his .167 BABIP, tells us that his .189 batting average is quite misleading and should correct itself sooner than later.
• ICYMI- Miggy tried to tell you he was coming for the (triple) crown in 2020 when he released a banger of a single (the musical kind) back in May. Feast your ears on “Miggy Al Bate”, which should be terrible but somehow isn’t.

• Enough with the Statcast hocus pocus. Let’s get to the stats I can read about in the paper. Detroit’s 5.13 runs per game is pacing the AL Central thanks in part to their division-leading SLG% and a team OPS that ranks in the top ten in MLB.
• A star is born? Probably not, considering the guy is 28-years-old with over 1,000 plate appearances under his belt. But JaCoby Jones’ .311/.380/.733 triple slash makes him the Tigers’ early offensive MVP. On a team that has gotten solid contributions across the board, that’s saying something. Jones’ 1.113 OPS – a top-five number – has guys named Trout and Judge looking up at him on the leaderboards.
• Oh yeah, and Jones hit an inside-the-park HR in a Monday win over the ChiSox. First for Detroit since 2017. Those are always fun.

Best Q1 win: 6-4 @ CIN (Game 2 of season)

This was actually a crowded field, as the Tigers have had their share of memorable wins in the early going. What to choose, what to choose? There was C.J. Cron’s go-ahead 2-run bomb in the 9th to win the series in Cinci. How about Detroit taking the series opener in Pittsburgh 17-13 in 11 innings after blowing a 3-run lead in the 9th? Perhaps the very next night when the Tigers became just the second team in MLB history to hit four homers in the first five ABs of a game?

I’m going with win No. 1 of the season, a 6-4 defeat of the Reds, in which the Tigers awoke from 15-innings of lifeless baseball to begin the season. The first game-and-a-half looked a lot like a 2019 carryover: sketchy starting pitching (Boyd, Nova), sub-par relief work (Cisnero, McKay), a couple of lowlights for the blooper reel (Maybin), and lots and lots of strikeouts (errbody).

And what happened then? Well, in Detroit they say – that the Tigers’ small hearts grew three sizes that day (the Grinch is going to love COVID Christmas).

Three late-inning dingers off the bats of Austin Romine (a massive upgrade relative to the tire fire that was 2019 Tigers catchers) Cabrera and Jones lifted the Tigers to victory and set the tone for what has become a scrappy team of underdogs playing loose and free without the weight of expectations anchoring them.

Relive the game that put MLB on notice that the strangest thing about 2020 might just be Detroit’s power.

Do the Tigers actually have a good bullpen?

Kind of. Let’s put it this way: there are some pieces to work with here.

And those pieces look really, really good.

Coming into the season it looked like, if the Tigers were to have any strengths at all, one of them would have to be the starting rotation. That has not been the case, as Spencer Turnbull (stud) has been the only bright spot of what has been a sloppily constructed mess.

Matt Boyd, whose underlying metrics pointed to an improved ERA in 2020, has been an unmitigated disaster. Ivan Nova, brought in to be an innings eater and consistent presence (and trade deadline chip), has not been as advertised and is now merely a roadblock for the promotion of the next-gen arms in Toledo. And the Michael Fulmer/Daniel Norris piggyback experiment more resembles indecisiveness and mismanagement than strategy and optimization.

On the merits of the rotation alone, the Tigers should be the bottom-feeders many pegged them to be. But offensive heroics aren’t Detroit’s only surprising feature in 2020. Stellar relief work has kept the Tigers in many a ballgame so far, and it might be time you begin to familiarize yourself with some of the standout names.

Buck Farmer is a name you probably already know, considering he trails only Miguel Cabrera in tenure – he’s now in his seventh year in Detroit. Before landing on the 10-day IL with a groin injury he was turning into a stabilizing presence in an eighth-inning role setting up Joe Jimenez. He’s not blowing anyone away with only one K in 6.1 innings, but he’s keeping teams off the scoreboard, building off of a solid 2019 campaign in which he logged a 3.72 ERA.

It’s ok that Farmer hasn’t exactly been dominant, per se. Hey, they can’t all be as filthy as Gregory Soto and John Schreiber.

Here is the get-to-know-these-guys section. Greg and John sound more like 58-year-old weekend warrior softball guys than shutdown MLB relievers. But trust me, these are bad boys.

Soto got heavy play as a rookie in Detroit in 2019, and the results were…uh…not great. When you walk almost as many batters per 9 (5.2) as you K (7.0) over a large sample, baseball might not be for you. But he looks like a new man in 2020, allowing only one hit and one walk (0 ER) in 9.0 innings of work with 11 Ks. This guy throws easy heat, and has made opposing hitters very uncomfortable by brushing guys back without getting wild, something I’m sure Jack Morris is quite pleased with.

Schreiber has a little submarine-y side-arm-ey but sorta regular at the release point delivery that just makes him look cool. And he’s from Wyandotte. Neat! The numbers are just a side of warm gravy. The next walk he issues will be his first of 2020, and his ERA has a lot of zeroes in it (0.00).

Here’s hoping Soto and Schreiber – just 25 and 26-years-old, respectively – are the hidden gems that can turn into building blocks for the future.

Where are the kids?

Perhaps the most surprising part of this surprising year is that the Tigers have done what they’ve done without having to debut any of the young studs down in Toledo. We are now well past the seven-game benchmark which served as the first contract manipulation hurdle, a topic I have covered recently that you can check out here.

What we do need to discuss is making sure you don’t buy the snake oil that Al Avila is selling or believe the MLB rumor mill gas bags when they talk about Detroit’s top pitching prospect Casey Mize’s call-up that wasn’t.

Just over a week ago, the Tigers entered a series with the Reds with a TBD next to one of their starting pitcher slots. Speculation grew that Mize – the most seasoned of Detroit’s high-level prospects – would finally be making his debut (he’s already 23). Oddly, manager Ron Gardenhire did nothing to quell those rumors. It didn’t end up happening, as the TBD ended up turning into the return of Daniel Norris.

Since it’s damn near impossible to get any sort of transparency into the dealings of executives and managerial priorities, media outlets were left to spin their own stories as to why we haven’t yet seen the debut of Mize when there are clearly holes in Detroit’s rotation. Some said that Detroit pivoted away from Mize because rain was in the forecast on the date of his potential start (seriously, to protect him from a wet Sunday afternoon). Others saw a looming series against the COVID-stricken Cardinals and concluded that the Tigers balked on a Mize call-up to ensure his first career opponent wasn’t the Coronavirus (which is slightly more dangerous than rain).

Let’s not beat around the bush (league). When and where Casey Mize (or Matt Manning or Tarik Skubal or Alex Faedo, etc.) makes his debut is all about the almighty dollar and stretching out team control. It’s not about Mize not being ready to help the team or a scary lightning bolt on a weather app. And it certainly isn’t about protecting players from COVID-19. Since, you know, they are still playing baseball despite the league being ravaged by the pandemic.

Dispelling the “not ready” argument is easy (not that we didn’t know it was bullshit when it wafted out of Avila’s mouth in the first place) given the way the rest of the Tigers rotation has performed thus far. It would only take an ERA in the single digits to be an upgrade over Matt Boyd at this point, while Fulmer and Norris are not being trusted to pitch more than three innings at a time.

But more importantly, Detroit is missing out on the opportunity to bring a pitching prospect into an environment ripe for immediate success. I mean, the Detroit Tigers are a winning team in 2020 for crying out loud, so what does that tell you about the rest of the league (or at least the AL and NL Central)? But for pitchers specifically, strikeouts records are being broken year after year, and the pandemic offseason has hamstrung hitters into an all-time low .235 league-wide batting average.

Kid gloves not required.

Tigers management is playing with fire here. The team’s surprising start is giving them a built-in reason to delay the promotions of Mize and friends. But with each passing start that Matt Boyd gets torched, Ivan Nova nukes his trade value, and no one claims the back end of the rotation, the excuse well is drying up. The last thing you want is to alienate your future stars and give the impression that Detroit is an organization that cares more about the fine print than the on-field product and player development.

Q2 Notes

This piece has focused on the first 25% of the Detroit season, but I can’t hit the publish button without touching on some of the developments of the past 24 hours or so.

The Tigers dropped game 16 to the White Sox 7-5, and it followed the Q1 script to a tee (except the final score). Matt Boyd was lit up for seven runs in just 4.2 innings, while the bullpen cruised the rest of the way (Soto and Schreiber were at it again). More than half of the Tigers’ nine hits went for extra bases, including two more dingos from Jonathan Schoop and the newly promoted Willi Castro.

That last part is significant because Castro is taking the roster spot of C.J. Cron, who reportedly has suffered ligament damage in his knee and has been placed on the 10-day IL. He won’t be back in 10 days. He likely won’t be back at all this season. And because he’s on a one-year deal, he just may have played his last game as a Detroit Tiger.

Brutal, and not just because he’s on my fantasy team.

While the Tigers have steered clear of the COVID bug, the injury bugs are swarming. Cron joins Buck Farmer and Cameron Maybin as significant names on the Tigers IL (we won’t count Jordan Zimmerman), but Cron is the big fish amongst this lot. After some brutal free agent classes in recent years, the Tigers finally appeared to have made some savvy moves on a rebuilding budget when they signed Cron, Schoop, and Romine, all of whom have been above average contributors at their positions. Don’t be fooled by the .190 AVG, as seven of Cron’s hits had gone for extra bases and his .346 OBP played well in the top half of the Tigers lineup.

Q2 begins with a massive hole to fill at the cleanup spot, and the loss of Cron signals yet another botched free-agent acquisition. Though this one can be filed under misfortune rather than mismanagement.

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