Detroit Tigers Newsletter: 9 spring training stats to remember for Opening Day
If you say it three times while looking into a mirror, they say Chris Shelton appears behind you …
Spring training stats don’t matter! Spring training stats don’t matter! Spring training stats don’t matter!
Admit it — you looked behind you for a second to see if the Detroit Tigers’ one-time king of spring swings (and summer slumps) popped up.
(Or maybe that was just us.)
In any event, Sunday marked the virtual end of spring training — there’s one more game, Tuesday against the Tampa Bay Rays at their St. Petersburg home, but that’s mostly a formality — which means we can finally steal a glimpse at the meaningless numbers from the annual ultimate small sample size.
Hello, and welcome to the Numbers Never (Always) Lie Newsletter!
We don’t mean to make fun of “Redpop,” who powered his way to a ridiculous nine homers over the first 13 games of the 2006 season … and then hit nine more over the remaining 162 games of his MLB career (over parts of three seasons with the Tigers, Texas Rangers and Seattle Mariners). That burst of April power came, of course, after a shower of five homers in 73 Grapefruit League at-bats. Again, still a pretty small sample size.
Then again, the Tigers’ homer leader that auspicious spring was Curtis Granderson, with six in 71 at-bats. He went on to hit 19 regular-season homers in leading the Tigers to the World Series, then finished with 344 career homers. Likewise, young third baseman Brandon Inge blasted four homers in 69 at-bats that spring … then hit 27 homers in the regular season.
What we’re saying is, small sample sizes aren’t the best predictors … but they can give us the clues we might look back at in six months to say, “Why didn’t we expect that?” (Please do not bring up this newsletter in six months.)
LABOR DAZE: Detroit Tigers' Jack Flaherty: Slow free agent market leaves MLBPA 'little frustrated'
And so, with that in mind, here are eight Tigers — four up, four down — who had a statistically … intriguing spring.
Four up
RHP Jack Flaherty: The second-highest paid Tiger, thanks to his one-year, $14 million free agent deal, suddenly looks like a bargain after a spring in which he struck out 26 and walked just four in 18⅓ innings. Sunday brought his most impressive start yet, in which he struck out eight Rays with no walks over 4 2/3 innings (though he needed 87 pitches, 63 of them strikes, to do it). Flaherty himself was encouraged, telling the Freep’s Evan Petzold, "Last year, I would have some starts or an inning or a hitter that would be good, and then I wouldn't be able to repeat it. … This spring, I feel like I've been able to repeat things over and over and over again a lot better."
UTIL Andy Ibáñez: If playing time was decided on spring stats alone, this second-year Tiger (who turns 31 next week) would have third base locked up. Ibáñez went 12-for-43 with four walks, two doubles and five homers — that’s a slash line of .279/.333/.674 — while striking out just nine times. (For comparison, 13 Tigers struck out at least 10 times this spring as the team racked up 283 Ks in 32 games.) Of course, the hot corner is also the crowded corner, as Ibáñez was splitting time with free-agent signee Gio Urshela, returner Matt Vierling and prospect Jace Jung as well as …
UTIL Zach McKinstry: The CMU alum who’s out of options — meaning he makes the Tigers or likely heads somewhere else on waivers — didn’t put up eye-popping stats, but his .294/.435/.412 slash line is kinda what you want to see from a guy who can play multiple spots in the infield and outfield. Most impressively, McKinstry led the Tigers in walks, with 10 in 17 games, while striking out just seven times. That suggests a return to the zone judgement that produced an .832 OPS over the first two months of 2023, and not whatever it was that produced a .578 OPS over the final four.
CF Parker Meadows: The 24-year-old had his ups and downs last season, with a slightly below-average bat mostly made up for by a well-above-average glove. This spring, however, the bat carried its own weight, if we can torture a metaphor for a moment: Meadows posted a .373/.407/.706 slash line over 19 games, leading the Tigers in hits (19), extra-base hits (eight) and total bases (36, seven more than Ibáñez at No. 2). It wasn’t a perfect spring — he also struck out 11 times, with just three walks — but it seems to bode well for a strong start to the regular season, as Meadows himself noted with Our Man Petzold: “There are always adjustments to be made, but my swing feels good right now, and I'm looking forward to carrying it over to the season."
And then there’s the …
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Four down
SS Javier Báez: The good news? The 31-year-old didn’t lead the Tigers in spring strikeouts — only because of the presence of another hitter on this list. The bad news? He still struck out 14 times, good for a four-way tie for second. That came while mustering just six hits (two of them doubles), no home runs and just one walk — in all, a .128/.140/.170 slash line. It would have been worse if Báez hadn’t gone 1-for-3 with a double in each of his two games over the weekend. (Yes, he literally doubled his total bases this spring, to EIGHT, with two hits. Ugh.)
RHP Kenta Maeda: The Tigers’ other $14-million arm posted an ugly 5.82 ERA in 17 innings — but that’s likely the result of a small sample size inside a small sample size; Maeda had given up just six earned runs over 12⅓ innings in four starts before the Toronto Blue Jays tagged him for six more in 3⅔ innings Saturday. More importantly, Maeda got up to 90 pitches and struck out seven while walking just one, bringing him to 24 strikeouts and six walks on the spring. Overall, it was a good spring, but eternal vigilance is the price of handing a two-year deal to 50an oft-injured righty who turns 36 two weeks into the season.
1B Spencer Torkelson: Tork, of course, is coming off a season that proved the folly of basing expectations on a month in Lakeland, or even the first month of the regular season. Last year, he posted a .692 OPS with 15 strikeouts in 56 Grapefruit League at-bats, then doubled down with a .575 OPS in 97 March/April ABs. The rest of the way? .793 with 29 homers. So we’re trying really hard not to worry over his 2024 so far: A team-high 17 strikeouts and no homers in 48 at-bats, with a .146/.241/.250 slash line. It’s early, we know. We’ll check back in mid-May.
Besides, Tork has been busy organizing outings, such as a road trip to see bench coach George Lombard’s son play soccer in Orlando, according to the Freep’s Jeff Seidel. And, apparently, texting his uncle (who’s a third-division soccer coach in Germany). Priorities.
3B Gio Urshela: That’s probably also when we’ll know whether the one-year deal the Tigers gave this 32-year-old is going to work out. Remember, he’s coming off a broken pelvis last June, which … OUCH. That’s likely a big reason for his lackluster stats this spring; although he hit .306 (15-for-49), that came with just four doubles and no homers. Throw in his 11 strikeouts and no walks — which, c’mon, even Báez got ONE walk — and the door at third base certainly seems wide open for any one of the Tigers’ backup plans (especially if Jung, who had an .884 OPS this spring, continues to hit in Triple-A).
The Colt report
Of course, we only went through eight players’ spring stats and, well, we’re suddenly reminded that this IS a baseball newsletter — it just feels wrong not to have nine in a lineup. So bringing up the bottom of the order, here’s Colt Keith. The rookie with the guaranteed paycheck posted a .231/.281/.365 slash line bolstered slightly Thursday by his first home run of the spring.
Still, at least Keith made sure somebody in Lakeland had a good March: He plowed some of that signing bonus into a new Dodge Ram 1500: “I wanted something big and safe that's also fast, so I just got the best combination of those two things.”
Catcher interference
“The best combination” could also describe the Tigers’ catching tandem of Jake Rogers and Carson Kelly this spring. Each crushed three homers (in 39 and 38 at-bats, respectively) and walked four times. Rogers came out ahead on OPS, .931-.925, but Kelly showed a bit more discipline, striking out six times to Rogers’ 12. Both appear to be thriving under the tutelage of manager A.J. Hinch, whom you may remember from a few past newsletters as a catcher himself. That connection behind the place for the trio is paying off, according to Our Man Seidel. “When I call it a catching tandem,” Hinch told Seidel, “I say that on purpose because (Carson’s) going to play a lot and Jake's going to play a lot.”
Ryan’s mope
While Keith got confirmation he was headed north with the Tigers for Opening Day, a few of his teammates weren’t as fortunate. Some of the cuts made sense — Ryan Kreidler has perhaps the best glove in the Tigers infield and posted a .916 OPS, but he had options left, making him an easy demotion to Toledo. Not that Kreidler was pleased: "I think I should have made the team," Kreidler told Our Man Petzold, "but it's out of my control.”
Mann(ing) down
There were some unexpected cuts, too, as veteran right-hander Matt Manning was optioned to Toledo, the sixth option in a five-spot rotation due to his six home runs allowed over 16 innings. Manning also showed sharp stuff during the spring — 19 strikeouts, eight hits allowed and seven walks — but there was still work to be done: "He did give up a lot of homers,” manager A.J. Hinch told Our Man Petzold. “I think, when you talk about holding your stuff and your best shapes and your best locations, and even outside the box score, those are things that we looked into."
The ’pen is mightier
The position players are set (even though, as noted, we don’t know where a few of them will actually, y’know, play) and the rotation has been trimmed. That leaves only the bullpen to iron out, with four arms —Beau Brieske, Miguel Díaz, Alex Faedo and Joey Wentz — fighting for two spots. The deadline to get down to the final 26-man roster is Thursday, but the Tigers don’t plan to wait that long, according to Our Man Petzold.
Mark your calendar
Yes, all these cuts, and the end of spring training means the start of the regular season, aka OPENING DAY. The Tigers open the 2024 campaign on the road again this year with a visit to Chicago beginning Thursday. Left-hander Tarik Skubal is set to take the mound for the Tigers against hard-throwing lefty Garrett Crochet (whose alma mater, Tennessee, will take the Little Caesars Arena court for the NCAA tournament Sweet 16 on Friday). It’s tough to find many flaws in Skubal’s spring — as he told Our Man Petzold after his final start, "It has served its purpose. Get built up, get ready for a season. I felt like I did both those things." — as he scattered 12 hits and four walks while striking out 19 over 14 innings.
Happy birthday, Dennis Dale
Two-time Cy Young Award winner (and 1968 AL MVP) Dennis Dale McLain — you might know him as "Denny" — turns 80 on Friday. The righty took the AL’s top pitching award in back-to-back seasons (1968-69) on the strength of a 2.37 ERA with 461 strikeouts and 130 walks over 661 innings while going 55-15 over the two seasons combined. Cy Young, by the way, was ALSO a March 29 birth, back in 1867.) Although we don’t have McLain’s spring stats at hand for either season, we’ll note that his April 1968 featured seven earned runs, 29 strikeouts and eight walks in 32 innings over four starts. Y’know, just in case you wanted a benchmark for Skubal.
Other Tigers birthdays this week: Travis Fryman (55 on Monday), Jake Marisnick (33 on Saturday), Elvin Rodriguez (26 on Sunday).
TL;DR
And then, of course, there’s the most meaningless spring training stat of all: Wins (and losses). But, in the interest of full disclosure, we have to report that the Tigers have locked up second place in the Grapefruit League, with a 20-9 record (and a plus-38 run differential) going into Tuesday’s finale.
In fact, that’s the third-best record in baseball, behind only the Baltimore Orioles — Grapefruit champs at 23-6 (and plus-58 on runs) — and the Los Angeles Dodgers, who dominated the Cactus League with a 14-5 record in Arizona (and plus-48 on runs), then split a pair of regular-season games with the San Diego Padres in South Korea.
And not that it matters, but the Tigers’ 20-9 mark is a far cry from 2023’s spring, which featured a 14-16 record — for a .467 win percentage not far off their .481 mark of the regular season.
Just don’t say that while looking into a mirror, or “Redpop” will getcha.
Contact Ryan Ford at rford@freepress.com. Follow him on X (which used to be Twitter, y’know?) @theford.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Detroit Tigers Newsletter: 9 spring training stats to remember
