I wrote a week ago in the immediate aftermath of the Tarik Skubal trade about what it meant for Skubal’s legacy in Detroit and about the prospects that the Tigers had acquired. Since then, the trade deadline has come and gone, as the Tigers made one more move in shipping out Casey Mize for a pair of prospects from San Diego. In other words, the team sold at the deadline, with no current major league players being acquired (River Ryan will likely start some games this year in the MLB).
The season isn’t over. Far from it, in fact. The team’s winning ways in the summer have improbably put the team back into wild card contention, so there is plenty left to play for this season. I wanted to write about a few more Tigers topics that have come up since the trade deadline, as the team has pushed further into the hunt. Today will be my attempt to do so, a numbered takes format article of assorted thoughts ranging from the Mize trade to the team’s future on the mound to their playoff odds in 2026. Let’s get started:
1.) Thumbs up on the Casey Mize trade. I feel like first I should close the book on the deadline since the Mize deal was not included in my Skubal piece, but I am pleased with this trade. I have no idea if Kash Mayfield will turn into anything but he’s a much better prospect than I was expecting to get for Mize. He also further deepens Detroit’s pitching prospect pool, which had been looking shallow at the stat of the year. Between adding River Ryan and Mayfield at the deadline and using the 2026 Draft to beef up the pitching reservoir, that aspect of the system looks much better now.
As for the decision to trade Mize, I was in favor of it. Mize is a pending free agent and will probably want a longer deal than I would be interested in giving him considering his repeated injuries and inconsistency. I don’t think Mize is a bad pitcher but moving on from him unless he were interested in taking a shorter-term deal made sense to me. And selling high at the deadline was a good idea. This return felt about as good as you could get for Mize, so I am satisfied with that transaction.
[Lon Horwedel/Imagn Images]
2.) One more miscellaneous item on the deadline. This regards the decision not to trade Gleyber Torres and Kenley Jansen, which riled some fans up. I don’t know what offers were out there for them but without knowing, I am not outraged. This team is within striking distance of a playoff spot and the Tigers are a better offense with Gleyber playing. And as middling as Kenley Jansen has been, he’s probably still better than whoever would be replacing him.
Trading Skubal and Mize made sense because the odds of retaining either were not high and they could return legitimate prospects. Torres and Jansen probably were not returning a serious prospect haul and I don’t think selling them off for a bag of chips makes sense given where the Tigers are in the standings. Doing a fire sale just for the sake of a fire sale makes little sense to me when you are still in the hunt and it would send a wrong message to the players after all their hard work in June and July.
If there was a deal that could bring back a bounty for either guy, than they should’ve done that. But I’d rather keep them and let the young roster keep playing meaningful baseball down the stretch than trade them for the 23rd best prospect in some team’s system. Also, I think there’s a world where a short-term extension for Torres could make sense for the Tigers in the offseason.
3.) Colt Keith: back in future plans? When I wrote about the Tigers in early June I was despairing the fall off of Colt Keith, who had gone through a brutal month of May and some 2.5 years into his MLB career, I wasn’t sure what to make of him. He isn’t a great fielder or baserunner, so it really revolves around his hit tool and the bat just hadn’t been consistently strong enough for me to feel like he is a piece of the future.
The summer has been much kinder to Colt, who has posted an .816 OPS since June 1, emblematic of the team’s offensive turnaround since May. I still want to see more homers out of his bat, but he’s gotten plenty of hits and remains patient at the plate. Keith’s season OPS+ is now back above league average and I think his defense looks better at 3B too. It’s easy to forget but Keith is only 24 (turning 25 in a few days) and the Tigers have him signed long-term. If he keeps progressing as a hitter, he can absolutely be a cog in Detroit’s plans for the future, since he’s not that much older than Clark and McGonigle.
[Detroit News/Imagn Images]
4.) Dillon Dingler is having the Tigers’ best season by a position player since… 2016 Miggy? The Tigers have had some world class pitching seasons since the last contention period thanks to Tarik Skubal, but the last time they’ve had a position player performing like Dingler is this year probably goes back to Miguel Cabrera’s peak. 2016 Miggy hit .316 with a .956 OPS, 38 HR, 108 RBI. That’s probably the bar you’re looking at for Dingler.
Dingler’s bat hasn’t been quite to that standard, but it’s not that far off with an .870 OPS (135 OPS+) and he’s on pace for ~36 HR and ~113 RBI. Then you add in Dingler’s abilities as an elite defensive catcher and he will finish with a better WAR than that Miggy season. Right now he should be a top 3 candidate for AL MVP, somehow Detroit’s best hitter and also, arguably, their best defender.
Some people have been squawking “the Tigers need to extend Dingler right now!!” but he’s under team control for four more seasons anyway. I don’t think it makes sense to rush on an extension with a 27-year-old catcher because you never know how the physical toll of playing the position will impact them. On that note, if Dingler’s bat stays at this level, he probably will end up moving away from catching as much at some point in the future in order to preserve the bat. Dingler will be here for quite some time, so just relax and enjoy having a true star on your team.
5.) Consider me excited about the Tigers’ young rotation moving forward. We saw the triumphant return of Jackson Jobe from Tommy John surgery on Saturday night and he looked awesome. Way better than I remember him looking early last season in fact. The fastball was ramped up to 100, which is not something he was doing previously, the changeup looked filthy, and his breaking pitches were sharp. Jobe struggled to generate whiffs last season, so it was nice to see him getting a good number against SF.
He’s still a very young arm with lots of refinement to go but that performance was a reminder of how talented Jobe is. There is a world where he becomes an ace who competes for Cy Youngs. Speaking of an ace, Troy Melton delivered another superb performance on Sunday and increasingly looks like one of the best young pitchers in baseball. The home run problem from early in the season is back in check and the strikeouts are up, with 50 in the last 48.1 IP. Melton is Detrot’s ace now, and could be for some time.
Those two are potential front line starters and the Tigers clearly believe River Ryan has that potential with his raw stuff, based on Scott Harris’ comments after the deadline. That trio is a nice group to begin working with and you also have Keider Montero who can hold down the rear of a rotation. I am incredibly impressed with how much Montero has grown as a starter and like the other three, he’s also in his mid-20s and has many years of team control. There’s the framework of a very good future rotation that terrorizes the opposition for years to come here.
The unsung hero in the bullpen [Detroit News]
6.) I think we’re at the point where I will expect the Tigers to have strong pitching on a perennial basis. I was already coming to believe this a year ago, but the poor end to last season on the mound spooked me a little bit. Detroit’s pitching is back to stellar this season and has been particularly excellent recently. All of this has happened with a bullpen most fans abhor, but the numbers indicate the pen has actually been pretty good. It has certainly struggled in leverage, blowing so many winnable games and those bullpen losses are the biggest reason for the place the Tigers find themselves in standings-wise relative to their run differential.
But on the whole, across all the innings the Tigers have been asked to cover in relief, they have been strong. You don’t string together 13 shutouts (2nd most in the MLB) with a “bad” bullpen. They’ve gotten good innings from Jacob Waguespack, basically out of nowhere, and Ty Madden has become increasingly usable. The ability of this organization to manufacture respectable arms is one of its overriding strengths dating back a couple of seasons.
If we look at 2023-26, the period in which Scott Harris has worked with the pitching lab of Chris Fetter, Robin Lund, and Juan Nieves, the Tigers have consistently been a strong pitching team. Here are their numbers as an organization across those nearly four seasons (ranks among all 30 MLB teams):
3.86 ERA (7th)
3.92 xERA (5th)
3.92 FIP (4th)
4.01 xFIP (6th)
Obviously this includes starting pitching development too, both the players I mentioned in the prior bullet and pitchers of the past. Jack Flaherty hasn’t always been great as a Tiger but they improved him relative to what he was at the end of his St. Louis career, enough to flip Flaherty at the 2024 deadline. The same can be said for Michael Lorenzen back in 2023 and don’t forget that Tarik Skubal got a ton better in 2023 relative to what he was in 2021-22.
It’s not all perfect for Tigers pitching, as we saw at the tail-end of last season when the rotation and (to a lesser degree) the bullpen crumbled. They can’t make everyone great. But it’s reached the point where the baseline expectation for this regime should be competent to high-end pitching. That’s a good feeling.
7.) I do still have questions about leverage innings in the bullpen, now and in the future. While I defended the bullpen in the prior point, I am not ignorant to how many games that group has blown this season. Some of that is variance and poor “luck” but it does remain true that this pen doesn’t have true shut-down relievers. Kenley Jansen has been fine, I guess, but he’s far from a feared closer at this point.
Waguespack may honestly be the setup guy with Drew Anderson in the rotation, though Drew Sommers has been getting more leverage looks. Sommers has been unfortunately BABIP’d a bit but he strikes out a ton of hitters and rarely gives up hard contact, save for that homer against the Royals. His numbers aren’t spectacular but it does pass the eye test for me. I just don’t know how much I love Sommers in the biggest situations.
Really, this is where the nightmarish season for Will Vest hurts, because he would logically be your 8th inning guy, if not closer. As would Kyle Finnegan but I am just not buying it, as his ERA rises to match his ugly FIP/xERA. AJ Hinch went to Tyler Holton for an excellent 10th inning save in the game on Sunday and Holton looking back in form means he’s probably the best set-up guy, with Jansen still the closer? Jansen, Holton, Sommers, Waguespack seem like the big four to me, with Finnegan looming if he could get fixed.
When you include guys like Madden and Enmanuel De Jesus, it’s a lot of players you feel comfortable about getting outs in the abstract, but not too many you feel good about closing out an important one run game. In that way, it’s not really that different than the 2024 Pitching Chaos season, except Hinch has been a less effective manager at pulling the strings this season. There isn’t going to be a fix for this problem the rest of the season, I don’t think.
Dynamite, lockdown late-inning arms aren’t something the Tigers have had much of in the Scott Harris era yet and it’s one thing I’m curious to see how they handle long-term. They’ve nibbled on pitchers like Tommy Kahnle and Jansen in free agency but they have yet to pay up for a marquee closer. Something to keep an eye on but right now you’re mostly relying on a mosaic of guys I’d give a 7.5/10 grade to, which isn’t the worst place to be, but this isn’t a Padres level back-end.
[Thearon W. Henderson/Getty]
8.) A lot of this lineup has a lot at stake down the stretch. There are very few hitters on the Tigers who don’t have something to vie for personally, be it their spot on the team or something bigger than that. If you’re Dillon Dingler, it’s awards hardware. Likewise, if you’re Kevin McGonigle, it’s finishing strong to take home Rookie of the Year and earn the Tigers an extra first round pick. Riley Greene, Javier Báez, and Colt Keith I suppose are probably the most secure overall1, but almost everyone else has intrigue.
Gleyber Torres is playing for a contract. Spencer Torkelson is playing to hold on to the first base job another year, while top prospect and possible 1B of the Future Josue Briceño is knocking on the door after a promotion to AAA. Zach McKinstry is playing for the right to stay a member of this team, after starting to hit much better in June/July. If Kerry Carpenter and Matt Vierling return, they have similar stakes as the roster picture increasingly looks filled with young guys.
Speaking of those young guys, all four of Eduardo Valencia, Ben Malgeri, Hao-Yu Lee, and Max Clark are playing for the chance to nail down a roster spot for next season. Clark is the safest, as I think he’ll be on the team next season regardless, but these are valuable at bats as he navigates the MLB for the first time. Valencia is vying for a gig as a backup catcher, if he can continue to smoke the ball every time he makes contact. Malgeri I would think is competing for one of those reserve outfield spots alongside the likes of Vierling or Wenceel Pérez (if he ever returns). And Hao-Yu Lee wants a spot in the infield after having hit better over the last month or so.
Almost everyone has something to play for beyond just the team success and that’s exciting. Detroit’s lineup picture for next season is pretty malleable and how these final 44 games go is going to tell us a lot. Even if the Tigers slump and fall out of the race, that’s an important data point and the remaining games will be worth watching just to begin forecasting the next Detroit season.2
9.) Playoff odds. After taking 2/3 from the Giants, the Tigers return home 58-60, 1.5 games back of the Texas Rangers for the last wild card spot and 3.5 back of the White Sox in the AL Central. Detroit’s playoff odds have risen to 31.4% on Fangraphs and 47.6% on Baseball Reference. Somehow, after starting the season 22-38, the Tigers find themselves very much in the hunt going into the final 1.5 months of the season. That’s partially due to how well they have played since June 1 and partially due to how weak the AL is this season.
We should be mindful of the playoff line being so low as the key reason why Detroit is still in it, but also let’s not dismiss how well they have played. The team has nearly mirrored their first half slump, going 36-22 since the 22-38 start to arrive at 58-60 and the run. Even crazier, the team’s run differential over those 58 games is +126 (316 RS/190 RA), outscoring opponents by over two runs per game. The Tigers have the 2nd-best team offense in that span by wRC+ and the #1 team ERA.
Remarkably, as good as the Tigers have been in that span, they probably should have an even better record, as their run differential has outstripped their record. And if you followed the games, the Tigers blew a number of winnable games, most notably the 7-0 meltdown against Baltimore, but also a couple against Houston and a couple against KC that stand out. This team tends to obliterate teams when they win and just barely falls short when they lose. That’s not something to ignore.
So what do I think the odds are of actually making the playoffs now? This week will tell us a lot. Detroit has been unable to handle Cleveland for a year now, so if the Tigers win at least 2/3 from the Guardians, that’s a big first indicator to me. Then the Chicago series looms after that, but if the Tigs can go 4-2 in those six games, they will be right there. The Wild Card is tough because so many teams are vying for it, Texas, Baltimore, Minnesota, (and on the periphery) Seattle, and Toronto.
But the Tigers have better metrics than all of those teams, numbers that indicate a team closer in caliber to the Yankees and Rays than to the other wild card contenders. Usually that wins out, but the Tigers may cool off, or someone else may get hot. Hard to say! An even slightly subpar May would have Detroit 1st in the AL, with as good as odds as any team to make the World Series (they’d also probably still have Tarik Skubal). But that’s all in the past now. I’d say Detroit is still more likely than not to miss the playoffs, but this is more of a chase than I’d ever have imagined. If nothing else, I’m glad this young roster gets to keep battling and have each game matter.
None of them are going anywhere due to contract (Keith/Báez) or just generally being consistently solid (Greene)
Will it be in 2027 or 2028? Who knows, but I don’t think the season is going to start on time…