On Friday night, the 2020 Tigers will play a regular season baseball game. This is not a particularly noteworthy sentence if you’re a time traveler reading from January, but for the rest of us who lived through everything that has happened on planet Earth over the last six months, it is worthy of note. Baseball is back. Well, presumably it’s back. I’m writing this on Thursday and a lot can happen in 36 hours. I have not had a lot to say about the Tigers during the last couple of years after writing hundreds of posts about them between 2012 and 2017. There are a couple of reasons for this. Fir ..read more

Al Kaline was the rare athlete whose influence stretched across generations. He wore the Old English D for the first time in 1953. My father had just turned four years old and my mother hadn’t quite yet been born. Even though he retired a full 15 plus years before I debuted on planet Earth, he was unquestionably the most famous baseball player of my childhood. Al Kaline was above suspicion. Archetype of a professional. Gentleman. Signed a deal fresh out of high school and worked for one company his entire life. Not only was Kaline a no doubt Hall of Fame player, he was the greatest Tiger of h ..read more

When the 2019 regular season ends tomorrow, the Tigers will find themselves with the worst record in baseball for the second time in three seasons. They arrived at that mark deliberately and purposefully. They did not have the second worst season in franchise history because of bad fortune between the lines or poorly timed injuries. The Tigers chose to provide an atrocious 2019 season, ostensibly in the name of future success. The Tigers’ decision to sell the way they did in 2017 was absolutely justified and correct. They needed to restock their depleted system and they traded away talented v ..read more

The 2019 Detroit Tigers are not going to win very many baseball games. While my ability to predict the future is limited, the evidence is basically as definitive as you can ever be about this kind of thing. Could the Tigers defy the odds entirely? Stranger things have occurred in baseball’s long history. Anything can happen, but it usually doesn’t. The Tigers are coming off two miserable seasons of fewer than 70 wins. They made virtually no effort to improve their club this winter and their best pitcher is about to undergo Tommy John Surgery and miss the entire season. A rosy prediction would ..read more

The Tigers opened Spring Training last week in Lakeland without having done much to improve on their 2018 campaign. This offseason they signed Matt Moore, Tyson Ross, Jordy Mercer, and the standard contingent of minor league free agents. Moore, Ross, and Mercer were all solid signings, as they all have the potential to reclaim some past glory and provide the Tigers with a nice little return on their investment. But the 2018 Tigers were not a team that needed tweaks to contend in 2019, they needed big upgrades. The 2018 Tigers won 64 games, which is the same number of games they won during the ..read more

Every year, Ernie used to read this quotation from the Song of Solomon on Opening Day. Four years ago, I heard a priest recite this in Ernie’s name in reference to the rebirth of baseball, Spring, and Easter. For, lo, the winter is past, The rain is over and gone; The flowers appear on the earth; The time of the singing of birds is come, And the voice of the turtle is heard in our land. We made it. Go Tigers ..read more

In years past, I’ve previewed the upcoming season with a countdown of the nine bellwether players whose fortunes will dictate the Tigers’ performance. That doesn’t make a lot of sense this year, neither does my annual piece explaining the path the team could take to a World Series win. The Tigers aren’t going to win the World Series and it would be a massive surprise if they earned a wild card berth. For these reasons, I want to take a slightly different approach to the preview. I’m going to run through the players whose 2018 performance will shape what happens for the Tigers in 2019 and beyo ..read more

The Tigers have arrived in Lakeland in preparation for the 2018 season. In a clear sign of the times, Justin Verlander will not be among the players playing long toss or running sprints. The only connection to the powerhouse days of the late aughts and early teens is the first baseman coming off a career-worst season. It’s a new day. This winter, the Tigers made very little news. Ron Gardenhire replaced Brad Ausmus and brought with him a mostly new coaching staff. The club traded Ian Kinsler to the Angels. They signed Leonys Martín and Mike Fiers, and also approximately one-hundred thousand m ..read more

On Tuesday, the Tigers announced a number of signings. The headliner was outfielder Leoyns Martín, but the notable minor league name was Derek Norris. Norris is a catcher who last year was suspended for the final month of the season after his former fiancé described him as physically and emotionally abusive, and detailed a time in which he put her in a choke hold, grabbed her hair, and restrained her as she tried to get away. This is the man the Tigers have chosen to sign. Now I have heard reasonable and evidence-based arguments against a zero tolerance policy. In certain situations, harsh sa ..read more

The Tigers season ended Sunday as Efren Navarro flew out to left, but of course the writing was on the wall much sooner. The Tigers last led the division on April 26th. They were last .500 on June 4th. They were last within three games of the division lead on June 16th. They were last within 10 games of the division lead on August 10th. The club went 6-25 in September and finished 64-98. In 2017, they tied for the worst record in baseball and will pick first in the 2018 draft. Unlike in previous years, this requiem need not consider the randomness of baseball. Unlike in previous years, a few ..read more