Tarik Skubal and the Tigers put together a late season surge to secure a spot in the postseason.
If you’ve been following your own team all year and were not looking league-wide to prepare for postseason baseball, you might be surprised to see the Detroit Tigers clinched a spot in this year’s playoffs. Well, you’re not alone. A young Tigers team that appeared to be dead in the water by midseason, and sold off key pieces like Jack Flaherty, reliever Andrew Chafin, and catcher Carson Kelly at the trade deadline, has shocked the world by storming down the stretch to overtake the Minnesota Twins to snatch a wild card spot in the season’s final week.
Led by ace starting pitcher, and probable American League Cy Young award winner, Tarik Skubal, and All-Star outfielder Riley Greene, the Tigers do have a little star power going now after an interminable seven-year rebuild. Still, they aren’t exactly a juggernaut either. What they are is a well-rounded ballclub anchored by consistently good pitching, stellar outfield defense, and a good mix of speed and power up and down the lineup.
That lack of major weaknesses, along with a really strong dose of team chemistry with a lot of players who have come up through the minor leagues as friends as well as teammates, has served them well in this shocking run to the postseason and helped them overcome their inexperience.
While the 23-year-old Greene is developing into an all-around force, the undisputed face of the franchise right now is clearly 27-year-old left-hander, Tarik Skubal. The ninth round selection out of Seattle University by the Tigers in 2018 and has emerged as an unlikely hero. First rounders like Casey Mize and Matt Manning were supposed to lead the next great Detroit Tigers’ rotation. Instead, Skubal has surpassed them both, despite remaking his game almost from scratch after a 2022 flexor tendon tear in his throwing elbow that required surgery.
As a prospect, and even in his early major league work in 2020-2021, Skubal’s repertoire consisted of an overpowering four-seam fastball and a pretty average slider. He returned from surgery and rehab with even more velocity, routinely touching 100 mph in games. That, combined with a deceptive delivery, makes his fastball really difficult to deal with.
The huge key for Skubal though, was in the development of one of the best changeups in baseball. We could probably write a book about all the ways in which manager A.J. Hinch rebuilt the Tigers player development system on top of his managerial duties, but the biggest move was probably among his first decisions upon taking over the Tigers job after the 2020 season. Hinch called upon University of Michigan pitching coach Chris Fetter, to join him as the Tigers’ head pitching coach. Fetter and his staff have proved to be a godsend to an organization that was for so long well behind the curve in modern player development.
When Skubal returned to action in 2023, Fetter and his staff had armed him with a new changeup grip that produced seam-shifted wake movement and didn’t require him to pronate his forearm. He essentially throws it with the same release as his four-seamer, combined with the grip and seam alignment to produce such outstanding depth on the pitch. Paired with the overpowering heater, this combination has formed the basis for his emergence as perhaps the game’s best pitcher over the last year and a half.
On the hitting side of things, the Tigers are probably not going to out-slug many teams in October. While corner outfielders Riley Greene and Kerry Carpenter provide a dangerous 1-2 punch in the lineup, particularly against right-handed pitching, it’s otherwise a collection of solid hitters who put together gritty at-bats and wear down opposing pitching staffs over the course of a series.
The secret sauce is a versatile defensive roster that is heavily left-handed but has just enough quality right-handed options to allow Hinch to pinch-hit aggressively without giving up much in the field to do so. Combine that with an athletic team that runs the bases well and has numerous base-stealing threats, and they can beat you in a number of ways. They just aren’t likely to blow teams out of the water with a barrage of home runs.
One huge strength where the Tigers do excel is in run prevention. When starting pitchers Casey Mize and Reese Olson went down with injuries in early July, the rotation was down to Skubal, Jack Flaherty, and a rookie with quality stuff in Keider Montero. The 24-year-old out of Venezuela was pressed into major league duty a little sooner than he was probably ready for, but has provided quality pitching when needed. He’s just not quite consistent enough yet to fully lock him into a long-term spot in the rotation. Then they traded Flaherty for shortstop Trey Sweeney and a good-hitting catching prospect in Thayron Liranzo who is still in High-A ball.
The Tigers were 52-57 when the month of July ended. Their rotation was Skubal, Montero, and a whole lot of improvisation. Using openers and mixing in Triple-A pitching prospects like Brant Hurter and Ty Madden, the Tigers have been unbelievably good. Their 2.90 ERA in July and August was the best in baseball, and it’s not as though they have an Emmanuel Clase at the back of their bullpen either. Instead, lefty Tyler Holton and right-handed sinkerballer Jason Foley have led the way, producing superb results despite very pedestrian strikeout rates.
This pitching staff is a pretty unique amalgam of using new school data capture, analysis, and pitch design principles, to produce a pretty old school pitching staff. They pitch down and keep the ball on the ground, they don’t issue too many walks, and they keep the ball in the park, relying on strong defense to make it difficult to do much damage against them. Unless an opposing lineup can string together a bunch of hits in a row, you’re just not going to put up many big innings against this group. That will be further tested in the postseason as opposing lineups become a little more consistently tough to deal with.
The final keys to this run have been the return of center fielder Parker Meadows and the acquisition of Sweeney at the deadline. Like Spencer Torkelson, Meadows struggled mightily early this season and was demoted to Triple-A Toledo for two months to figure it out. While Torkelson has been a solid force in the lineup since his return, Meadows has been a revelation. The second round pick from 2018 saw a rise in production, hitting .296 with a 137 wRC+ while playing elite centerfield in the second half. Hitting at the top of the order most days, the Tigers now have a leadoff hitter with discipline and power who can really run to set the table for Greene, Carpenter, and the rest of the Tigers lineup.
As for Sweeney, it’s really a case in which shoring up your weakest position is more valuable than upgrading from a good player to a star. Javier Báez’s body appears shot at this point as back and hip injuries have badly hampered him over the past two seasons. The former star, and the Tigers’ highest paid player, was also their worst player and an albatross around their neck. Simply replacing him with Sweeney, who has played good defense and contributed almost league average offensive production while Báez went down with season ending hip surgery, was the final piece that clicked to spark the Tigers late season run.
Certainly, some of the Tigers’ stride to the postseason has been a bit flukey. They’ve excelled in one-run games and out-performed their pitching peripherals, i.e. their relative lack of strikeout artists beyond Skubal. 2025 and beyond was supposed to be their window as ace pitching prospect Jackson Jobe arrives and ownership is finally persuaded to make some significant investments in the roster. Instead, they’re here now and riding a big wave of momentum into the postseason. Adding Jobe at the end of the season to bolster the pen gives them an extra weapon to deploy in October.
With the leadership of Hinch and the impressive work of his coaching staff to guide them, anything is possible. To paraphrase, ace defensive catcher Jake Rogers, you shouldn’t have let the Tigers get hot.