‘Don’t have bad hitters play’ is a shockingly effective game plan.
The Detroit Tigers have been off to the races to start the season. After trouncing the Colorado Rockies , our Tigers are an MLB-best 25-13, tied with the formidable LA Dodgers . They’ve done it with a well-rounded team excelling at all aspects: 2nd in runs scored, 4th in starting pitcher ERA, 2nd in relief ERA. They’re even 8th in defensive “Fielding Run Value”, whatever that is, and 8th best in baserunning value. Cherry picking aside, they’ve gotten it done in all facets of the game.
On the surface, this lineup feels shockingly deep. Even missing Parker Meadows and Matt Vierling, two vital contributors in 2024, the offense has undeniably leveled up. On any given night, Dillon Dingler and his .781 OPS or a .300-hitting Javier Baez hit in the bottom third of the order. Conversely, the 2024 Tigers routinely hid a scuffling Zach McKinstry, Báez himself, or defensive stalwart Jake Rogers at the bottom. This led me to a pretty interesting question: how deep is this lineup, really?
The answer is extremely deep. Of the 18 Tigers to take an at bat in 2025, only three have been below average by wRC+. Three. Let’s see how those three have fared. Jace Jung is a promising rookie stuck in a third base timeshare, Ryan Kreidler was demoted to Toledo after a few weeks, and Manual Margot was outrighted to Toledo earlier this week. That’s it. AJ Hinch simply doesn’t allow his players to struggle. On the surface, only having 3 bad players all year so far sounds really impressive, but what the Tigers are doing is somehow even more impressive than it sounds. No team has had fewer plate appearances taken by below-average hitters, and it’s really not even close.
See that orange bar? The really small one? That’s us! Those three players have accounted for 7.16% of Detroit’s overall plate appearances. The not-Oakland-Athletics are a distant 2nd at 19.17%, and yes, I was as surprised as you were. By this quick, rudimentary test, the results are clear: the Detroit Tigers don’t have any bad hitters, and no other team is built like this. Make no mistake, this is by design.
Now, there are some caveats to this metric, so let’s get those out of the way. Naturally, better hitting teams have better hitters, and generally have more of them. It makes sense that other top scoring offenses like the Cubs and Yankees rank well here. Conversely, a lot of the teams have a lineup mainstay struggling to find his footing weighing down their teams here, like Jose Altuve or Bo Bichette. The team can’t do anything about that; Houston can only go as far as Altuve can carry them, so he’ll get every opportunity to hit his way out of the slump. The Tigers are fortunate not to have any such anchor.
At the same time, the Tigers don’t have an answer to Aaron Judge or Shohei Ohtani. There’s no MVP-level threat to anchor this lineup, and it simply doesn’t matter. They’re leading the American League in runs with a “next-man-up” approach percolating the entire lineup, and really, organization. Any given hitter in the lineup is a threat to get on base, pass the baton, and keep the pressure on the opposing team. No other team can say that.
AJ Hinch has preached the need for contributions up and down the organization, and you can clearly see him leverage it with the bullpen carousel. Tyler Owens, Chase Lee, Keider Montero, they’ve all contributed high quality MLB innings and are currently waiting for their next turn in Toledo. But in the lineup, there aren’t as many options to cycle through, so maximizing individual players is key to avoiding slumps and weaknesses.
It’s a little harder to see, but Hinch does this in a lot of ways. It means platooning flawed hitters like Ibanez or McKinstry, trusting his athletes to perform at new positions to keep big bats in the lineup, or just shuffling the lineup to force pitchers to deal with Kerry Carpenter one more time. Whatever buttons he’s pressing, it’s seemingly always the right one, and it’s a major reason this team is dominating pitching staffs left and right through the first quarter of the season.