A colleague of mine recently went to Comerica Stadium for the first time recently, and didn't have a ton of love for it. Didn't love the food, where it is in town, the blandness. I like it a little more than that but he wasn't too pleased. And all the Little Caesarses didn't exactly give him confidence in the quality of anything. Yet he still got to see Tarik Skubal mow down the Yankees, which had to be worth the price of admission.
The Tigers, after a decade of drudgery and far too many uninteresting teams, not only are competitive, but are a 1st place team. The Guardians are breaking even, the Royals have had a tough schedule this month, the Twins are suffering, the White Sox are the White Sox...and the Tigers are not only confirming the positive vibes they ended 2024 with, but every little bit of potential that seemed lost in the early part of the decade is cashing in.
Right now, the Tigers' best players are Spencer Torkelson, Casey Mize, Tarik Skubal, Jackson Jobe and Riley Greene. Y'know, all their most crucial draft picks going back to like 2019. Torkelson took several years to click but is currently hitting .288 with 5 homers and 12 RBIs, the kind of start that instills confidence. Mize finally seems to have tamed his injury issues, and though his last start was on the rougher side he's still 2-1 with a 2.60 ERA and 15 Ks. Jobe has been very nice in his first starts of the season, albeit not as flashy. And then Greene and Skubal are picking up where 2024 left off, still league caliber. Sku is back on target, with a 2.66 ERA and 25 Ks through 4 starts. I don't know if he's gonna go on a Cy Young run, but he's definitely still one of the best starters in baseball.
Now that those pieces are actually running the show, the moves the Tigers have been making to build around them, which looked sillier before they developed, are paying off. One of the most crucial Tigers so far has been Zach McKinstry, who was mostly famous for some contact stuff during the 2023 season. Right now, McKinstry is hitting .275 with 14 hits, 2 doubles and 8 RBIs. The most crucial members of this team are the contact guys like that, guys like Jake Rogers and Trey Sweeney and Dillon Dingler. This team has even woken up Javier Baez, who's having his first truly great season in Tigers colors, with 11 hits and 4 RBIs in 38 at-bats.
And it's weird that they're doing all this with Rogers hurt, and Gleyber Torres, Matt Vierling and Parker Meadows out for a spell. You can take out a solid chunk of this team's production and they can still be a force to be reckoned with. Most teams would kill for that, and the Tigers, of all teams, have achieved that. At least for now.
The AL Central's gonna be close-knit, like usual, and the Tigers only have one or two clear power guys [Torkelson and Kerry Carpenter]. It feels like this season will be another real crunch, and while I currently feel like the Tigers have enough to edge out the competition, the Royals and Guardians are both very tough teams, and they won't always be this easy to bat away.
I just love that the Tigers are good again, fun again and competitive again. May it last.
Coming Tomorrow- We knew he was for real last year, but this season he somehow seems even more for real.
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