04/24/2026 6:40p EDT Detroit Tigers at Cincinnati Reds

[gehringer_2]

12 hours ago, SoCalTiger said:

Hinch please straighten out your ship. Sloppy. Errors....

someone up thread said they miss Meadows - but they played most of last season without him - maybe they are missing McKinstry as much as anyone.

Of course pitchers' errors are another problem. Hinch's rep is that they work this stuff hard, but I guess it's not taking.

Edited 10 hours ago by gehringer_2

[Sports_Freak]

4 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

don't underestimate the smaller K zone. Walks are up all across the league, and the Tiger pitchers are actually about average overall. Of course given that Skubal is WAY below average that means everyone else is a bit above, but as a team they are not an outlier (yet?). These guys all need to pitch to the smaller zone - and I don't think anybody should expect to see last yrs ERAs. That said, the converse is that the offense has to better than last year as well because everyone else's will be.

Maybe so. But are teams now refusing to swing at pitches the Tiger bullpen throws? Vest was all over the place last night, even the smaller strike zone didn't matter. He was terribly wild. And that's not acceptable in one of our necessary bullpen arms. I know Lee said his inning splits are about the same but it really seems like the earlier he's used, the worse he is. Maybe it's just magnified, IDK. But his implosions are catastrophic.

[NorthWoods]

Verlander to the pen.

[Tenacious D]

Just inconsistent—you don’t know which version of each reliever will show up. Vest and Holton seem to encompass this the most—are you going to get their good version or the evil twin?

[chasfh]

5 hours ago, Klondike99 said:

Damn Harris! We need pitching and defense dammit 

😁

[SeattleMike]

4 hours ago, Tenacious D said:

This is probably a .500 team with our bullpen. I don’t see any help coming from within and teams don’t usually give up any players of worth prior to July.  Even then, we’d need to add 2-3 arms to be competitive.  Our saving grace is that we play in the AL Central and should be able to hang around most of the season.

Bullpens are insanely fickle. Wouldn't surprise me at all if they get hot for a month or two then revert back to the mean. Just hope they are on an uptick come September and October. My hope is Verlander returns and is decent, sending Montero to the pen, where he looked pretty good last fall. Then add Melton, who definitely has swing and miss stuff. 

[chasfh]

I'm not throwing in the towel on the Tigers at this point, I'm not accepting that we're fated to be a .500 team, and I'm loathe to accept that the Tigers bullpen is exactly what we will see the rest of the season or worse as we see now. It's April 25. We haven't even hit Sparky Day. I'm not about to throw Harris, Hinch, the coaches, and half the roster onto the fire just yet.

[SeattleMike]

2 hours ago, gehringer_2 said:

don't underestimate the smaller K zone. Walks are up all across the league, and the Tiger pitchers are actually about average overall. Of course given that Skubal is WAY below average that means everyone else is a bit above, but as a team they are not an outlier (yet?). These guys all need to pitch to the smaller zone - and I don't think anybody should expect to see last yrs ERAs. That said, the converse is that the offense has to better than last year as well because everyone else's will be.

To your point, the Tigers are 9th in MLB in run prevention (4th in AL) and 16th in runs scored. Run scoring is up a tick from last year (and that is comparing 2026 April to 2025 in its entirety, which suggests the gap will widen even further).

[papalawrence]

Cinncy is hot and they are talented. Det is 10-4 since their rough start. Last night stung, but Tork is going now. They're fine. Barring catastrophic injury I see them winning the Central. And with Skubal and Valdez, they're contenders.