2026 DETROIT TIGERS REGULAR SEASON THREAD

[SoCalTiger]

45 minutes ago, chasfh said:

Yes, it is many things, and not just a “terrible” bullpen. I know people are uncomfortable with this idea, but I believe a lot of it is attributable to luck. 

Managerial decisions ? Possible contributing factor ?

[Tiger337]

53 minutes ago, chasfh said:

Yes, it is many things, and not just a “terrible” bullpen. I know people are uncomfortable with this idea, but I believe a lot of it is attributable to luck. 

I agree that luck is part of it (maybe the majority of it), but I also think that they don't have relievers that are suited to high leverage situations.   

Edited Tuesday at 07:24 PM by Tiger337

[chasfh]

33 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

I agree that luck is part of it (maybe the majority of it), but I also think that they don't have relievers that are suited to high leverage situations.   

Tigers relievers suited to high leverage situations: Kyle Finnegan 2025; Will Vest 2025.

Tigers relievers not suited to high leverage situations: Kyle Finnegan 2026; Will Vest 2026.

 

 

Edited Tuesday at 07:56 PM by chasfh

[chasfh]

40 minutes ago, SoCalTiger said:

Managerial decisions ? Possible contributing factor ?

Possible.

[Tenacious D]

So when a bullpen performs, it’s good luck?  

Can’t that logic be applied to everything?

[chasfh]

47 minutes ago, Tenacious D said:

So when a bullpen performs, it’s good luck?  

Can’t that logic be applied to everything?

Partially, sure. Baseball is hugely affected by luck, on practically all fronts.

[Tiger337]

51 minutes ago, chasfh said:

Tigers relievers suited to high leverage situations: Kyle Finnegan 2025; Will Vest 2025.

Tigers relievers not suited to high leverage situations: Kyle Finnegan 2026; Will Vest 2026.

 

 

Finnegan has never been suited to high leverage.  He went on a lucky sreak the first few weeks with the Tigers.  Teams usually put their high strikeout pitchers in high leverage positions and I think there's a reason for that.  I agree with you that there is a lot of randomness in bullpen performance that can't really be explained, but I'd like the Tigers to get some swing and miss relievers.  I'd like to remove some of the ramdomness.

[monkeytargets39]

1 hour ago, chasfh said:

Tigers relievers suited to high leverage situations: Kyle Finnegan 2025; Will Vest 2025.

Tigers relievers not suited to high leverage situations: Kyle Finnegan 2026; Will Vest 2026.

 

 

Depends on how much of this year Vest was pitching with that issue and didn’t really get diagnosed with it.  If he can come back with his high velocity then I think he can be a possible option.  There’s a good chance he’s probably done being much more than a recovery project though.

[SeattleMike]

2 hours ago, chasfh said:

Yes, it is many things, and not just a “terrible” bullpen. I know people are uncomfortable with this idea, but I believe a lot of it is attributable to luck. 

There has been a lot of kvetching on here about the Tigers lack of K ability by the bullpen. Looking at MLB's late/close stats reveals a few things. Disclosure: I don't know the exact parameters of the stat. Assume it's what a happens after the 7th inning in close (1-2 runs?) games.

Anyway, let's start with the offense. The Tigers are 29th in OPS in late/close situations, confirming my suspicions that the offense goes quiet at a rate much higher than league average. In fact the problem is more acute than I thought. And it's not Ks, for all those who want to blame Riley Greene for swinging from his heels, as Twitter likes to complain about. They are only 20th in most Ks late/close. Or one of the 10 most difficult teams to K in late/close situation. The problem: 28th in BA and 29th in HRs. 

On the pitching side, the K/9 rate is 14th in MLB. The BB/9 rate is 7th. The SO/BB ratio also puts them at 7th. The issue has been a 256 BA against, which is 24th. But the real culprit has been HRs. The Tigers have given up the third most long balls in close/late situations.

So, on both sides of the ball, lots of BABIP bad luck and a propensity to give up HRs in high leverage situations and inability themselves to strike back with the long ball. Defense factors in here somewhere, of course. But a lot of this suggests the Tigers have been the victims of, well, just plain bad luck. 

[monkeytargets39]

9 minutes ago, SeattleMike said:

There has been a lot of kvetching on here about the Tigers lack of K ability by the bullpen. Looking at MLB's late/close stats reveals a few things. Disclosure: I don't know the exact parameters of the stat. Assume it's what a happens after the 7th inning in close (1-2 runs?) games.

Anyway, let's start with the offense. The Tigers are 29th in OPS in late/close situations, confirming my suspicions that the offense goes quiet at a rate much higher than league average. In fact the problem is more acute than I thought. And it's not Ks, for all those who want to blame Riley Greene for swinging from his heels, as Twitter likes to complain about. They are only 20th in most Ks late/close. Or one of the 10 most difficult teams to K in late/close situation. The problem: 28th in BA and 29th in HRs. 

On the pitching side, the K/9 rate is 14th in MLB. The BB/9 rate is 7th. The SO/BB ratio also puts them at 7th. The issue has been a 256 BA against, which is 24th. But the real culprit has been HRs. The Tigers have given up the third most long balls in close/late situations.

So, on both sides of the ball, lots of BABIP bad luck and a propensity to give up HRs in high leverage situations and inability themselves to strike back with the long ball. Defense factors in here somewhere, of course. But a lot of this suggests the Tigers have been the victims of, well, just plain bad luck. 

The main reason we want more Ks from the high leverage guys is because Ks don’t produce BABIP bad luck.  Drew Sommers is one of the couple of guys you could say is doing things very well across the board but has had horrible BABIP luck.  Waguespack on the other hand, has had incredible luck.

Jansen has the highest K rate on the team, but when opposing teams do make contact, a lot of it has been loud.  On top of that, when he misses out of the zone—they’re pretty big misses.  We need guys who can have good K rates AND low BB rates to both limit bad luck hits and keep undeserving runners off the basepaths.  Opposing players are going to run into a HR every so often, so make sure there’s no one on base when it happens.  That’s been the problem for Jansen/Finnegan/Vest

 

As for the offense, I definitely think you’re onto something with that too.  There haven’t seemed to have been many late rally’s like there have been the last couple years.  However if we are ahead and bring in the reliever to preserve the lead—at least you can argue the starter and the offense GOT us a lead and put us in a good position to go for the win regardless of when in the game we scored runs.  
 

I do think that the excessive pinch hitting makes late inning offense a hard thing to gauge with this team to tell if it’s a legit problem or just a lot of small sample sizes

Edited Tuesday at 09:34 PM by monkeytargets39

[chasfh]

36 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

Finnegan has never been suited to high leverage.  He went on a lucky sreak the first few weeks with the Tigers.  Teams usually put their high strikeout pitchers in high leverage positions and I think there's a reason for that.  I agree with you that there is a lot of randomness in bullpen performance that can't really be explained, but I'd like the Tigers to get some swing and miss relievers.  I'd like to remove some of the ramdomness.

He was last year. That’s why we rolled the dice again. People here liked the signing.

We did get Drew Sommers, and Drew Anderson and Kenley are above average. But yeah, I’d like more. I would guess it’s not because Scott Harris hates swing and miss.

[gehringer_2]

15 minutes ago, SeattleMike said:

There has been a lot of kvetching on here about the Tigers lack of K ability by the bullpen. Looking at MLB's late/close stats reveals a few things. Disclosure: I don't know the exact parameters of the stat. Assume it's what a happens after the 7th inning in close (1-2 runs?) games.

Anyway, let's start with the offense. The Tigers are 29th in OPS in late/close situations, confirming my suspicions that the offense goes quiet at a rate much higher than league average. In fact the problem is more acute than I thought. And it's not Ks, for all those who want to blame Riley Greene for swinging from his heels, as Twitter likes to complain about. They are only 20th in most Ks late/close. Or one of the 10 most difficult teams to K in late/close situation. The problem: 28th in BA and 29th in HRs. 

On the pitching side, the K/9 rate is 14th in MLB. The BB/9 rate is 7th. The SO/BB ratio also puts them at 7th. The issue has been a 256 BA against, which is 24th. But the real culprit has been HRs. The Tigers have given up the third most long balls in close/late situations.

So, on both sides of the ball, lots of BABIP bad luck and a propensity to give up HRs in high leverage situations and inability themselves to strike back with the long ball. Defense factors in here somewhere, of course. But a lot of this suggests the Tigers have been the victims of, well, just plain bad luck. 

at one point in the season the Tigers as a team were hitting below average on FBs. Since on average there is more velo coming out of other team's pens and esp in the 9th,  that would be another piece of the deficit late.

[Tiger337]

3 hours ago, chasfh said:

He was last year. That’s why we rolled the dice again. People here liked the signing.

We did get Drew Sommers, and Drew Anderson and Kenley are above average. But yeah, I’d like more. I would guess it’s not because Scott Harris hates swing and miss.

LOL, Why are you aways so defensive about Harris?  I never mentioned Harris.  

Finnegan is a servicable reliever.  He got luckly for a few weeks when he first came to the Tigers.  Now he's back to being Finnegan again.  Whether people liked the signing is irrelevant to this current debate.  It was OK to sign him, but he's not a great reliever.  

[NorthWoods]

 

[kdog]

Tork has essentially leveled off as a mid player with very little defensive value. He will go through some stretches where he hits for power, but then doesn't make contact..and then it will be reversed.

He's right handed so he can carve out a decent career. He will be good enough where you are scared to get rid of him but you can't expect him to be much better than this.

[RatkoVarda]

can still hope for a 1 WAR or more from Tork in 2027, and for an expected $6M salary, that is a reasonable cost.

obvi not a long term piece. 

biggest issue is potential blocking Valencia, Briceno, Keith, or maybe Liranzo or Anderson.

[gehringer_2]

3 hours ago, NorthWoods said:

 

🤯

[monkeytargets39]

57 minutes ago, RatkoVarda said:

can still hope for a 1 WAR or more from Tork in 2027, and for an expected $6M salary, that is a reasonable cost.

obvi not a long term piece. 

biggest issue is potential blocking Valencia, Briceno, Keith, or maybe Liranzo or Anderson.

I’m not worried about Tork blocking anyone.  If someone in the system can perform better than him, they’ll bench Tork

[Motor City Sonics]

Finnegan was good last year because he was new to the American League.    Well, the AL has figured him out now.  

 

[Motor City Sonics]

A.J. Hinch, in all the time he's been here, has had one good stretch (August 2024 - June 2025).  Other than that - his record is dogspit.    It's time to try something else.   Not now, but the next season - whenever that is. 

 

And I don't know what your thoughts are on this, but I think if the onwers and players piss away an entire season bickering over money while most Americans are heading into Depression-like despair,  I don't think baseball just bounces back "because it always does".   Nope.  It's not the same anymore..   First of all - young people don't give a crap about baseball.  Baseball is an "O.K. Boomer" sport.   Secondly - there are a lot more options to occupy one's time these days.   Thirdly,  No juiced-ball homerun chase is going to come to the rescue again.      Billionaires and Millionaires are going to be whining about how tough they have it - and the ones who really suffer will be the workers and businesses that rely only baseball traffic every year.    They'll shut down.      Kyle Tucker (aka Bobby Higginson -- seriously, compare their stats through the same age and the difference is thin) is getting 60 million a year and the players are going to whine?   Screw that.     I'm sure the billionaire owners will find a way to MAKE money off of a prolonged lockout.  They'll just lock everyone out until all those support businesses have to close down and the billionaires will swoop in and take that real estate for pennies on the dollar.    The Illitches need more parking lots.    Maybe we shouldn't go downtown and support them.  I do my research and avoid their lots.   "But just wait until you see all those great businesses we build around the new hockey arena, it'll practically be a new Downtown".      

Edited 6 hours ago by Motor City Sonics

[casimir]

10 hours ago, NorthWoods said:

 

BS is an appropriate pair of initials for this season in more ways than one.

[1984Echoes]

10 hours ago, RatkoVarda said:

...  biggest issue is potential blocking Valencia, Briceno, Keith, or maybe Liranzo or Anderson.

So the question(s) in my mind are:

Will Harris wait until someone pushes Tork out of his job?

Should he?

Or should he clear the path this offseason?

[Tiger337]

5 minutes ago, 1984Echoes said:

So the question(s) in my mind are:

Will Harris wait until someone pushes Tork out of his job?

Should he?

Or should he clear the path this offseason?

They need RHH, so I say keep him this off-season and figure it out later.  If somebody is ready to take his job, he could become platoon player/pinch hitter.  

[NorthWoods]

On 8/18/2026 at 9:01 PM, Tiger337 said:

LOL, Why are you aways so defensive about Harris?  I never mentioned Harris.  

Burner