DETROIT – The Detroit Tigers’ pitching staff has a chance to be very good this season, but it comes with major risk -- both in terms of injuries and poor recent performance.
Last week, we broke down what the Tigers’ lineup could look like on Opening Day, and it features some high-upside youngsters like Riley Greene, Spencer Torkelson, and Colt Keith.
The starting rotation isn’t nearly as fun, but there’s potential.
Fortunately, for the first time in awhile, the Tigers have a true, bonafide ace at the top, and some free agent signings have added depth in the middle of the rotation.
Here’s what the starting staff should look like on Opening Day.
1. Tarik Skubal
- Last season: 2.80 ERA, 0.90 WHIP, 102 strikeouts/14 walks in 80.1 innings.
The No. 1 next to Skubal’s name signifies he’ll be at the top of the Tigers’ rotation, but it could also be where he finishes in AL Cy Young voting.
If Skubal can put together a full healthy season, he’s one of the few pitchers in the league capable of winning the award. He returned from the injured list on the Fourth of July last year and proceeded to post one of the most dominant stat lines in baseball, striking out 102 batters in 80.1 innings while issuing just 14 walks.
That’s over seven strikeouts per walk. Seven.
A.J. Hinch and the Tigers took it easy with Skubal, and for good reason. But he still managed to finish the season with a stretch of eight starts that included three of six innings and three of seven innings. Imagine what that could look like with a clean bill of health.
The underlying data absolutely loves Skubal. He had the best expected ERA in the majors at 2.30 and held batters to an expected batting average of .197.
Skubal struck out nearly one-third of the batters he faced in 2023 -- 32.9%, to be exact. Pair that with a 4.5% walk rate and you’re going to see dominant numbers like the ones he posted.
When batters did put the ball in play, there was some hard contact, but thanks to Skubal’s elite 51.8% ground ball rate, most of those batted balls turned into outs or singles. So even his greatest “weakness” was covered by a strength.
Skubal had a whiff rate of over 25% on his fastball and over 50% on his changeup -- that means more than a quarter of the swings against his fastball were misses, and over half on the changeup. Add in a slider with a 24% whiff rate and .206 xBA and you’ve got a deadly three-pitch mix.
But Skubal doesn’t stop there -- he also features a sinker that generated an 86.6 mph average exit velocity and allowed only two extra-base hits (both doubles).
He only used his curveball 6.8% of the time, but that came with a 36% whiff rate. Not a bad change of pace for hitters to keep in the back of their minds.
There’s really only one thing that can stop Skubal, and it’s health. He underwent Tommy John surgery long before his days as a Tiger, and in three full MLB seasons so far, he’s managed only 149.1, 117.2, and 80.1 innings -- an average of 115.2.
We’re still waiting to see a full season out of Skubal, but all signs point to it being special when it finally happens.
2. Kenta Maeda
- Last season (with Twins): 4.23 ERA, 1.17 WHIP, 117 K/28 BB in 104.1 innings.
Speaking of injury risk, the Tigers’ new No. 2 starter has only pitched 210.2 innings over the past three seasons. But again, when he’s on the mound, he’s generally effective. Maeda will turn 36 in April, but there still seems to be plenty left in the tank.
He missed the entire 2022 season only to return last April and get injured again. Maeda rejoined the Twins in late June and made each of his next 16 starts through the middle of September. From his late-June return to the end of the season, Maeda posted a 3.36 ERA and a 1.09 WHIP while striking out 10.5 batters per nine innings.
He had a 13% swinging strike rate during that span and held batters to a .219 average, .279 on-base percentage, and .401 slugging percentage.
Maeda only throws about 90-92 mph with his fastball, but his split-finger changeup and slider formed a wicked combination. He threw the slider 30.6% of the time last season and generated a 27.6% whiff rate. The problem: He gave up 10 home runs on the pitch.
Maeda’s most-used pitch was the split-finger, which he threw 31.9% of the time. The pitch has an excellent 35% whiff rate and held batters to a .182 average and .222 wOBA (weighted on base average -- it’s basically OBP that also accounts for extra-base hits).
Because Maeda was so reliant on that changeup, he was actually better against left-handed hitters than righties in 2023. Assuming he doesn’t experience a mid-30s spike in velocity, that trend will likely continue in Detroit.
The Tigers signed Maeda because he’s an elite strike-thrower and excellent bat misser. They can reasonably expect him to keep them in most games when he takes the mound. In his final 16 post-injury starts last year, Maeda allowed more than three runs just once and went at least at least five innings 13 times.
He’s not a flashy No. 2, but he’s a high floor, low ceiling type of player, and the Tigers need some stability in the middle of an otherwise volatile rotation.
3. Jack Flaherty
- Last season (with Cardinals and Orioles): 4.99 ERA, 1.58 WHIP, 148 K/66 BB in 144.1 innings.
If you stopped watching baseball during COVID and are just coming back, you must think the Tigers are World Series contenders with Flaherty as their No. 3 pitcher. But the once-dominant ace has had a bit of a bumpy ride through his mid-20s.
In his first two full seasons as a 22- and 23-year-old, Flaherty posted a 3.01 ERA and 1.03 WHIP across 347.1 innings with the St. Louis Cardinals. He struck out 413 batters and walked just 114. He was, without a doubt, one of the game’s most promising young stars.
But the COVID season and a series of injuries have thrown him off course. Since the start of 2020, Flaherty has managed to pitch just 299 innings with a 4.42 ERA, a 1.40 WHIP, and 2.42 strikeouts per walk.
The walk rate is the greatest difference for Flaherty, but his strikeouts have also declined.
One thing Tigers fans will love about Flaherty: There’s some Justin Verlander in the way he competes on the mound. He’s not nearly as talented, but Flaherty wants to win, and he’s got something to prove on a one-year deal.
Flaherty was slightly above average in terms of suppressing hard contact and missing bats last season. He also did a reasonable job keeping the ball on the ground.
But he couldn’t get hitters to chase outside the zone, which is a problem for someone who relies so heavily on a fastball-slider combination. The walk rate was also entirely too high at 4.1 per nine innings.
The Tigers were happy to take a gamble on Flaherty because he’s still just 28 years old and looked like a budding star early in his career. Chris Fetter has had success with these types of reclamation projects in the past.
But it’s still a gamble, and if Flaherty can’t improve, the upside for this year’s pitching staff is limited.
4. Matt Manning
- Last season: 3.58 ERA, 1.04 WHIP, 50 K/21 BB in 78 innings.
Manning hasn’t really earned the No. 4 spot in the rotation over some of the Tigers’ younger pitchers, but I expect this is where he’ll start the season because of seniority.
Although he just turned 26 years old, Manning is already entering his fourth season with the Tigers. If it doesn’t feel like it, that’s probably because he’s averaged just 70.5 innings the past two seasons.
In terms of pure run prevention, Manning has actually been very reliable. Over 141 innings since the start of 2022, he owns a 3.51 ERA and 1.10 WHIP.
But I’m willing to declare him one of the luckiest pitchers in baseball last year.
Manning struck out only 50 batters in 78 innings last season while issuing 21 walks. That walk rate is fine on its own, but when you pair it with a minuscule strikeout rate, it borders on disaster.
Manning doesn’t miss bats (bottom sixth percentile in both whiff and strikeout rates), doesn’t limit hard contact (17th percentile in hard-hit rate and seventh percentile in average exit velocity), and doesn’t keep the ball on the ground (only 38.5% of batted balls were grounders).
Basically, the only thing Manning did well last year was throw strikes.
If Manning is going to become an asset for the Tigers, it’ll likely be on the back of his best pitch: the slider. It has a solid 26.1% whiff rate and an expected batting average of .210. He throws it 31.6% of the time, but that number probably needs to increase and cut into his four-seam fastball usage, which was 47.6% in 2023.
Look, you’re not going to get an optimistic projection out of me for Manning. He doesn’t excel in most of the areas that I value for pitchers. The strikeout rate stinks. The ground ball rate stinks. The raw stuff seems pretty meh.
But the upside lies in him being just 26 years old. He’s a former top prospect who hasn’t had a chance to show his potential in a full season yet. So am I giving up on him? Absolutely not. Just mark me down as highly skeptical.
5. Casey Mize/Reese Olson
- Last season (Reese Olson): 3.99 ERA, 1.12 WHIP, 103 K/33 BB in 103.2 innings.
I’m not hedging my bets between Mize and Olson for the No. 5 spot. I’m predicting that they’ll start the season in a piggyback pairing.
Mize is making his return to the Tigers for the first time since April 14, 2022. It’s been almost two full years since he pitched in an actual game.
The Tigers can’t afford to give up on the former No. 1 overall pick, in part because he’s still only 26 years old but also because he was so dominant en route to the big leagues.
Mize flew through the Tigers’ system after being drafted in 2018. In his one full minor-league season, he made 21 starts with a 2.55 ERA, 0.94 WHIP, and 4.61 strikeouts for every walk.
He’s likely guaranteed a spot in the Opening Day rotation as long as he can get through spring training in one piece, but he’s not likely to pitch deep into games. At least not at first.
The Tigers would love to piggyback Mize with a lefty long reliever to make lineup construction tougher on opposing managers, but there isn’t really a lefty who deserves the job. Joey Wentz has been terrible and both Tyler Holton and Andrew Chafin are too valuable in late-inning roles.
So Reese Olson seems like the most deserving option to take over for Mize in the middle innings and pitch until Hinch thinks he’s starting to lose steam.
Olson, 24, enjoyed a successful MLB debut, striking out about a batter per inning with solid surface numbers across 103.2 innings. The metrics mostly support Olson as a back-of-the rotation starter. He was right around MLB average in strikeout and walk rates and just below average in terms of ground balls.
Olson gave up a lot of hard contact, but he threw four different pitches -- a slider, four-seamer, sinker, and changeup -- at least 15% of the time. So playing with that mix could yield some better results.
The slider (41.6%) and changeup (35.9%) were particularly effective at generating whiffs. He started using the curveball more in the final two months (still only about 7.5% of his pitches) and it had a whiff rate of 39% over that span. So maybe that’s an avenue for improvement for the young righty.
If Mize settles into a more regular role at some point throughout the season, Olson is a candidate to hold his own spot in the rotation. He could even force the Tigers to begin with a six-man rotation, if he’s good enough in the spring. But with the injury history of all five guys above him, this situation is likely to work itself out.
Other options
Sawyer Gipson-Long wasn’t great in the minor leagues, but he thrived in his first taste of MLB action. He made four starts for the Tigers, striking out 26 batters in 20 innings while allowing just six earned runs.
He obviously didn’t qualify for actual percentile rankings, but Gipson-Long graded out as elite in pretty much every conceivable underlying metric. He missed bats and limited hard contact, and his expected numbers were even better than the elite surface ratios.
Gipson-Long is 26 years old heading into this season, so he’s not really a prospect anymore. With a strong spring, he would make it very hard for the Tigers to keep him off the roster.
The Tigers gave Joey Wentz every opportunity to earn a spot last season, but he had miserable results. Wentz posted a 6.90 ERA and 1.69 WHIP over 105.2 innings, allowing 11.2 hits and four walks per nine innings. After showing some encouraging signs in 2022, he really didn’t do anything well.
Beau Brieske pitched well as a rookie starter in 2022, but it seems like the Tigers prefer him in a long relief role. He handled it well in 35 innings last year, averaging 96.4 mph on his four-seam fastball and mixing in three secondary pitches with regularity.
Almost nobody made hard contact off of the reliever version of Brieske, which was not the case when he was in the starting rotation.
It also feels like Alex Faedo will end up in the bullpen, if he’s on the Tigers’ roster at all. A wipeout slider with a 41.3% whiff rate offered some hope for the former first-round pick, but injuries and the lack of an effective second pitch have made him wildly inconsistent as a starter.
The underlying numbers suggest Faedo was pretty unlucky last season, so maybe his days as a starter aren’t finished. But that dominant slider could also make him a weapon in relief.
Final thoughts
Every single member of the Tigers’ projected starting rotation has dealt with significant injury problems over the past few seasons -- not exactly a vote of confidence for an organization that was ravaged by the injury bug in 2023.
But there’s upside, too. If Skubal, Maeda, and Flaherty stay healthy and deliver something like their 80th percentile outcomes, this could be the best rotation in the AL Central. Manning, Mize, Olson, and Gipson-Long simply need to be serviceable enough to fill out the final two spots.
My early feel is that the Tigers will be a little better on the mound this season, mostly because a full year of Skubal would go a long way. Maeda is probably only a slight downgrade from Eduardo Rodriguez, and there’s reason to believe some of the young starters can improve.
