Picking the best Detroit Tigers since 2000 at every position isn’t too tough, though there are some surprisingly difficult choices.
Detroit Tigers’ Tarik Skubal talks pitching development
Ace pitcher Tarik Skubal joined our “Days of Roar” podcast as spring training began to discuss development of his pitches, more. Full episode out now.
You never know when history is going to strike at a Detroit Tigers game.
Well, let’s walk that back a bit … if Tarik Skubal is on the mound, you have to at least be on the lookout for history.
And, of course, the Tigers ace didn’t disappoint on Sunday, May 25, with his first career MLB shutout (not to mention his first complete game in ) … complete with a historic punctuation mark.
His first “Maddux” (a complete-game shutout with fewer than 100 pitches).
The fastest pitch by a starting pitcher to finish off a strikeout in the Statcast era (dating back to 2008): Skubal’s 102.6 mph four-seamer to set down Gabriel Arias
And, finally, the first Maddux (out of 443 that Baseball Reference has pitch counts for) with at least 13 strikeouts. (Anytime you can pass Cliff Lee AND Sandy Koufax for one record, you’re doing OK.)
Hello, and welcome back to the Purr-fect Game Newsletter, brought to you this week by the number 2 and the letter K(KKKKKKKKKKKK).
Skubal’s Maddux was also the 207th such game this century, which brings us around to our main topic.
Pablo Picasso has been cited as saying, “Good artists copy, great artists steal,” and folks, we aim to bring you the greatest newsletter possible.
And so, we’re going to steal … well, borrow an idea from the good folks at The Athletic, who last week dropped a list of the top MLB player at every position over the past quarter-century — an All-21st Century team, as it were — 25% of the way in (give or take a few games).
In case you missed it, a couple of Tigers made the cut — right-handers Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander — and another one — Miguel Cabrera — was snubbed.
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But it got us thinking about what the Tigers’ All-21st Century Team would look like. (Spoiler alert: Miggy made the cut for this one.)
Let’s run through it, position by position …
MGR: Jim Leyland
The Tigers’ most recent Hall of Famer (though he went in without a logo on his cap) starts us off with 700 wins in 1,297 games over eight seasons, plus four playoff berths (including three AL Central titles), two World Series appearances and, entertainingly, 30 mid-game ejections (including one featuring a pause for “God Bless America”).
Honorable mention: A.J. Hinch — the current skipper needs just 58 more wins this season to become the eighth manager in franchise history with 400 victories. His peers consider him among the best managers in the game.
C: Iván Rodríguez
We’ll start the position players with another Hall of Famer, as “Pudge” (who was inducted into Cooperstown in 2017 on the first ballot, with 76% of the vote) posted a .298/.328/.449 slash line over 4½ seasons (2004-08) with the Tigers. He also gets bonus points for signing a five-year (eventually), $53 million free-agent deal with the then-worst team in baseball.
As “Pudge” told reporters in February 2004: “I didn’t come here to lose games,” Rodriguez said. “We’re going to see this Detroit Tigers team in the playoffs very soon.” And sure enough, the Tigers rebounded from a then-AL-record 119 losses in 2003 to AL pennant winners in 2006.
Honorable mention: Alex Avila — no Tigers catcher has more games played (760) or home runs (77) hit in the 2000s.
1B: Miguel Cabrera
What, you were expecting Spencer Torkelson? Over 16 seasons (2008-23) with the Tigers, Cabrera — who’ll have to wait till 2029 for his trip to Cooperstown — put up a .304/.380/.510 slash line, with an OPS of .890 that ranks sixth in franchise history. Oh, and while he was a Tiger, he led the AL in home runs twice, doubles twice, RBIs twice, batting average four times, won two AL MVPs (though both came in his two seasons starting at third base to make room for Prince Fielder), made eight All-Star teams and was the first AL hitter with a Triple Crown (2012) since 1967.
Honorable mention: Prince Fielder — the son of Tigers great Cecil Fielder mashed 55 homers in his two nacho-stealing seasons in the D. (Tork has 62, but in about 3½ seasons.)
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2B: Plácido Polanco
This is probably the closest call, with Polanco’s 4½ seasons (2005-09) of a .773 OPS just edging out Ian Kinsler’s .764 over four seasons (2014-17). Head to head, Kinsler gets the edge in triples (18-13), homers (78-37) and slugging percentage (.436-.418), while Polanco had a better batting average (.311-.275) and on-base percentage (.355-.328). Polanco has has the edge in awards, with two Gold Gloves to Kinsler’s one, and the 2006 ALCS MVP award.
Honorable mention: Ian Kinsler — his 28 homers in 2016 are tied for the franchise’s single-season record for a second baseman (with Lou Whitaker in 1989).
3B: Brandon Inge
Uh, can we put Miggy — who, again, won two MVPs playing the hot corner — at 3B, too? No? OK, then we guess we’ll go with Inge, whose .724 OPS as a third baseman is merely fourth among Tigers third-sackers (behind Eric Munson’s .748, Nick Castellanos’ .755 and Cabrera’s 1.025). Still, Inge’s glove does a lot of work here, as his 18.6 bWAR as a Tiger includes 9.7 defensive bWAR at third base.
Honorable mention: Nick Castellanos — though we’ll note his OPS was nearly 70 points lower as a 3B than when he was playing anywhere else, with a glove to match.
SS: Carlos Guillén
Guillén — not the Tigers’ Spanish-language broadcaster — absolutely raked over his first four seasons (2004-07) with the Tigers, with a .311/.377/.508 slash line while playing short. That included a pair of All-Star nods (2004, 2007) and a 10th-place finish in AL MVP voting in 2006, and his .885 OPS at short was the best in baseball — ahead of Hanley Ramirez (.884), Miguel Tejada (.869) and, yes, Derek Jeter (.855) — over that span.
His final four seasons in Detroit weren’t as stellar, though; moved away from short, he had a .766 OPS in 2008-11.
Honorable mention: Jhonny Peralta — the misplaced “H” stood for “hitter,” as he had a .760 OPS while playing short for the Tigers and earned a pair of All-Star nods (2011, 2013).
LF: Bobby Higginson
Yeah, we’re surprised, too. Though Higginson’s talents didn’t quite translate from Tiger Stadium to the CoPa — his .884 OPS at The Corner became an .807 mark in the early days of an even more spacious “Comerica National Park” — his slash line of .286/.363/.470 in his 405 games in left from 2000-05 were better than we remembered in the revolving door of the Tigers’ roster (with 14 different players suiting up for at least 100 games in left since the start of 2000).
Honorable mention: Justin Upton — Not even two full seasons with the Tigers, thanks to a 2017 trade deadline deal, but he made an All-Star team and won a Silver Slugger (both in 2017) with an .846 OPS over 270 games in left.
CF: Curtis Granderson
The Grandy Man patrolled center for 663 games (just four fewer than Austin Jackson) from 2004-09 and posted an .830 OPS that included 102 homers and 57 triples — the latter tops among MLB center fielders over that span — and had an underrated glove while finishing 10th in AL MVP voting in 2007 and making the 2009 All-Star squad.
Honorable mention: Austin Jackson, who arrived from the Yankees in the three-team deal that sent Granderson to New York and landed another member of our team from Arizona (more on him in a bit), finished second in AL Rookie of the Year voting in 2010 and was worth 6.3 WAR on defense, nearly 1½ wins more than Granderson.
RF: Magglio Ordóñez
OK, THIS is the toughest call, as I typed Ordóñez and J.D. Martinez here several times each. It’s that close by the numbers, with Ordóñez and Martinez each accumulating 13.5 bWAR over their runs in the Tigers outfield (though Ordóñez played nearly 400 more games in left).
Martinez had the better OPS (.908-.865), but we’ll give Ordóñez the edge thanks to his, er, Magg-ical 2007 in which he led the AL with a .363 batting average and finished second in AL MVP voting. (Also, his homer to end the 2006 ALCS and send the Tigers to the World Series is arguably the most iconic Tigers hit of the century.)
Honorable mention: J.D. Martinez — he hit 99 homers in just 458 games as a Tiger, going from a waiver-wire pickup in March 2014 to an All-Star in 2015.
DH: Victor Martinez
V-Mart’s .785 OPS as a DH with the Tigers is actually 40 points behind the leader, Dmitri Young (albeit in an extra 630 or so games), but we’re still giving him the nod on the strength of his three great seasons (out of six as a Tiger).
Martinez had three incredible seasons, including his 2014, when he led the AL in OBP (.409), the majors in OPS (.974) and finished second in AL MVP voting. He also had three other seasons that , uh, probably shouldn’t come up in an All-21st Century list.
Honorable mention: Dmitri Young — Did you know he had 10 triples as a DH with the Tigers? That’s as many as the next three Tigers DHs (Luis Polonia, Brennan Boesch and Kerry Carpenter) have, combined.
Rotation: RHP Justin Verlander, LHP Tarik Skubal, RHP Max Scherzer, RHP Doug Fister, RHP Aníbal Sánchez
Verlander’s résumé during his 13 seasons (2005-17) with the Tigers
Scherzer, meanwhile, struck out 1,081 in 1,013 innings, made two All-Star teams and won one Cy Young (2013). Fister spent just 2½ seasons (2011-13) as a Tiger, but owns the second-best ERA (3.29, just behind Skubal’s 3.28) among 2000s Tigers starters with 300 innings, as well as the best FIP. We’ll close out the rotation with Sánchez on the strength of his 2013 ERA title (when he finished fourth in Cy Young voting behind Scherzer) and his Comerica Park strikeout record (17 against the Braves on April 26, 2013).
Honorable mention: David Price — he spent parts of just two seasons in Detroit — arriving at 2014’s trade deadline and departing at the 2015 deadline — for essentially just one full season of work … but what a run: a 2.90 ERA, a 1.222 WHIP and 220 strikeouts in 223⅔ innings.
So there’s our starting staff; but who’s going to close things out for this Tigers super-squad? Well, we’ll get to that in a bit. But first …
Odds and evens
The All-21st Century Tigers are one thing. But what about the 2025 squad? Let’s go to the algorithms …
Baseball Reference: This model is working off the final 45 games of last season and the first 55 of this one (meaning it’s still including the 31-13 finish of 2024), a span in which the Tigers have gone 66-34 — a 107-win pace over 162 games. And thus, bbref’s 1,000-simulation projection still LOVE the Tigers — the average projected record is still 100-62, with the Tigers still on pace for the top seed in the AL, a 99.8% chance of making the playoffs (down from 99.9% last week — guess that’s what losing three straight for the first time since March will do) and an 20.3% chance at winning the World Series, tops in baseball.
Baseball Prospectus: Eight games, with a 4-4 record (including a 3-1 mark vs. NL teams), and still PECOTA’s individual player projections merged with playing time projections and then a lot of simulations —so much math — have the Tigers winning 90.5 games (down from last week’s 91.8-win projection), though that;s just one game up on the Twins’ 89.4-win projection. BP’s playoff chances for the Tigers also dropped slightly, to 88% from 90.1% last week), though the World Series victory odds jumped to 7.1% (from 6.9% last week).
FanGraphs: Their projections —based on 20,000 sims, as always — saw the Tigers’ postseason odds plummet from 93.1% to … 93%. Still, the Tigers’ projected cushion in the Central over the Twins grew to five games, even as their odds of a World Series title dropped to 7.6% (from 8.4% last week).
Mark your calendar
It’s a mere six-game week, of which the Tigers have already played (and won) one, topping the Giants, 3-1, on Monday, May 26. The rest of the week features two more games vs. the G-Men squeezed into approximately 21 hours on Tuesday and Wednesday, followed by a three-game set against the Royals in Kansas City, Missouri, beginning Friday. And if you’re looking for your next chance at witnessing history (on TV, at least) — that is to say, the next Skubal start — it should arrive on Saturday with a pleasant 4:10 p.m. start.
Tigers birthdays this week: Jhonny Peralta (43 on May 28), Kirk Gibson (68 on May 28), Brenan Hanifee (27 on May 29), John Brebbia (25 on May 30) and Dean Chance (would have been 84 on June 1; died in 2015).
Two Tigers relievers celebrating birthdays this week? That brings us back to …
Closer: RHP Jose Valverde
He’s not No. 1 in saves (that would be Todd Jones, at 146) or innings (Fernando Rodney, at 330) or ERA (Tyler Holton, at 2.36, among the Tigers relievers with at least 100 appearances this century), but “Papa Grande” — that’s “Big Potato” in English — is arguably the best to close out games as a Tiger in the 21st century, with 3.22 ERA, 119 saves and 199 strikeouts in 223⅔ innings over four seasons (2010-13). That stint includes two All-Star nods and a ridiculous 2011 season in which he converted all 49 of his save attempts and finished fifth in Cy Young voting.
Honorable mention: Todd Jones — Just one pitcher in Tigers history (Mike Henneman, 154) has more saves than the 146 the “Roller Coaster” racked up in the 21st century, and no one can beat his 235 in his Tigers career.
Contact Ryan Ford at rford@freepress.com. Follow him on X @theford and on BlueSky at @theford.bsky.social.
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