Mark Whicker: Tigers could be this year's Orioles
Spencer Torkelson, who was chosen first overall in the 2020 MLB draft, belted 31 home runs for the Detroit Tigers in 2023, including 16 in the season’s final two months.
March 28, 2024
By Mark Whicker
Canadian Baseball Network
You can turn the newspaper upside down as many times as you want. (Especially since it’s a lot thinner than it used to be.)
At some point in 2023, you had to accept the fact that the Baltimore Orioles were in charge of the American League East, and in 2024 you’ll need to do it again.
In 2018, 2019 and 2021, the Orioles won a total of 153 games. They played 486. Last year they won 101 and lost 61, which was good enough to win a division that has been flipped on its head.
It’s not like all the bad Orioles were exchanged for the good Orioles, as if it were Black Friday at a U.S. shopping mall. The ‘21 team had Austin Hays, Ryan Mountcastle, Cedric Mullins, Anthony Santander and Jorge Mateo in the field just like the ‘23 team did. Dean Kremer and Tyler Wells pitched for both teams. Obviously the arrivals of catcher Adley Rutschman, a first-overall pick, and ‘23 Rookie of the Year Gunnar Henderson had a major effect, along with starter Kyle Bradish (whom Anaheim traded for Dylan Bundy) and closer Felix Bautista.
But the Orioles did what a lot of teams do. They were improving even when they weren’t winning. The daily losing wasn’t fun, but those players who were willing to learn from it did so.
And there’s no guarantee the Orioles will follow up with another division championship, with Bautista out for the season.
But it does provide hope for other fan bases. Few people go out of their way to attend games played by bad teams. It doesn’t mean they’re ignoring the situation. The ‘22 Orioles came on late to win 83 games, and when they proved they were still on that trajectory last season, Baltimore fans responded by showing up 1.93 million times, most since 2017.
Who’s next? Who’s this year’s stealth candidate?
There are several candidates, actually. The Pirates won 78 games last year and are looking forward to Paul Skenes, the first-overall pick in last year’s draft and a possible tower of power at the front of their rotation.
Kansas City also can produce green shoots of hope. Bobby Witt Jr. is already one of the best players in the American League, and the Royals might have a quality rotation in Cole Ragans, Brady Singer, Michael Wacha and Seth Lugo.
But you could win a lot of bets with the knowledge that the Detroit Tigers finished second in the American League Central last year. That’s a lot like being the runnerup in one of Vladimir Putin’s elections, but the Tigers were 78-84 and won 19 of their final 29 games.
It was the Tigers’ best season since 2016. In 2019, they were 43-119. They still aren’t a preferred free-agent destination, which is fine, because they hit the skids when their rich veterans aged out. The name of their game is to make sneaky trades and rely on the draft.
In 2018 they took Casey Mize, of Auburn, with the first pick in the draft. Let the team which drafts a pitcher beware. Mize has made 39 starts and has won seven games, and he pitched 10 innings in 2022 and none in 2023, thanks to back problems and Tommy John surgery. But he’s in this year’s rotation, and he’s popping the mitt again.
You write Mize’s name in pencil. You might be able to write Tarik Skubal’s with ink. Skubal, a former ninth-round pick, was 4-0 in five September starts and gave up three earned runs. Skubal pitched only 80 innings but had a WHIP of 0.896, which would have been the best in the league had he qualified.
The Tigers also got the well-deserved first pick in 2020 and chose Spencer Torkelson, from Arizona State. It has taken him a while to justify it. But Torkelson smashed 16 of his 31 home runs in August and September, and he had 34 doubles for the season.
Detroit plucked Alex Lange from the Cubs in a trade-deadline deal involving Nick Castellanos. Lange took over the ninth inning last year and saved 26 games. He also blew six saves, but held opponents to a .188 battingaverage and, significantly, came into the games when 18 men were on base. He permitted only one to score.
And Riley Greene, the fifth pick in the 2019 draft, has put in two foundational seasons. He hit .288 last season in 99 games and put up a .796 OPS, up from .688 in 2022.
Attention should also be paid to Kerry Carpenter, a former 19th-round pick who contributed 20 homers; Jake Rogers, a 28-year-old catcher who was part of the 2017 Justin Verlander trade with Houston, homered 21 times; and Reese Olson, a righthander whom Detroit swiped from Milwaukee in exchange for Daniel Norris, who compiled an excellent 1.119 OPS in 18 starts.
So is this the Tigers’ year?
Not necessarily.
But it’s more likely to be memorable than forgettable. Like the recent Orioles, the Tigers made a lot of subterranean progress, tunneling their way without much notice. We’ll see how they dance when somebody is watching.