Leading Off: Detroit Tigers
“Have faith in the Yankees my son…” “I fear both the Tigers of Detroit and the Indians of Cleveland” -Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea (Gregory Shamus / Getty Images)
The Teams
The Yankees are coming off a disgusting series with the Blue Jays. They scored 2 combined runs in the first two games but followed up with a respectable 5 (with 2 outs at home plate) in game 3. Glad to be done with that, but can they please figure out this “division opponents” thing? Sometime this year?
Either way, we should be happy with what the Yankees have shown recently. They went more than a month without losing a series, and have won 7 of their last 10 games. I’ll take that for the rest of the year, not going to lie.
The Yankees have played 16 games since they started their series at the Trop against the Rays. They have scored 5+ runs only 7 times in that span, despite winning 10 of those games. In both 2019 and 2020, scoring 5 runs would have been a below-average performance for this team. I find the drop off they’ve experienced at the plate very concerning, and I am not a fan of losing Aaron Hicks for the season or Luke Voit going on the IL, especially as I try to convince myself that the offense will figure itself out.
The Tigers are 19-31 and sit in last place in the AL Central. For as bad as the Yankees seem at times, the Tigers are worse. They own one of the few offenses in the league that is worse than the Yankees’, at 28th in runs per game. They’re only better than 7 teams (7 really bad teams) at preventing runs, too. Maybe they’re just the team the Yankees need to see. They’ve lost 5 of their last 6 games during which they played the Royals and Indians, and are basically a bad team that is not trying to be good.
G-Troit Rock City
Good news! I know this is hard to believe, but there really is good news. Remember this guy? He does fun stuff like hit bombs, mash taters, et cetera. He’s back!
For a team that is starved for offense, one of the best hitters in the league returning to the lineup will be a sight for sore eyes.
Yankee Killers
We know the Tigers are bad, and we know the Yankees swept them the last time the teams met, but even the lowly Tigers have some Yankee Killers.
We all know about Miguel Cabrera. His .937 career OPS against the Yankees is fourth among active players with at least 100 ABs against them, and first among active players with at least 200 ABs against the team. Sure, the future HOFer only has a Roman Quinn-esque OPS+ of 69 (nice), but we know he can still do damage. In Detroit (home games) this year, he is slashing .266/.373/.328 for a .701 OPS. That’s not elite, but it’s slightly above league average and is a better stat line than the reigning batting champ, David John LeMahieu, has posted this year. Don’t let this guy beat you, Yankees.
The other Yankee Killer on the Tigers, and this one surprised me, is Niko Goodrum. In 48 career PA against the Yankees, Goodrum is slashing .308/.426/.590 for an OPS of 1.015. That’s scary enough. For a guy with a .712 career OPS, it’s pretty weird that he’s doing this. Goodrum has started hitting the ball hard this year, so maybe he’s figuring it out at the plate, but he has never posted an above-average season. Come on. He’s on the TIGERS.
Let’s get into the pitching matchups.
Game 1: Gerrit Cole vs Casey Mize
Casey Mize, the former #1 overall pick who debuted last year, will face the Yankees for the first time in his career on Friday, and this season, he’s lived up to his billing as a future front-line starter. He throws a relatively average fastball, with respect to both velocity and spin, but it plays nicely with his 88 MPH slider and 87 MPH splitter. Mize throws three pitches with whiff rates over 25% (fastball, slider, curveball), and has posted a 3.42 ERA so far this year.
His peripherals are not great, and that might just come down to him being a young pitcher who is still figuring out the Majors. He’s been better at limiting hard contact this year, but his expected stats are not great, he does not strike many guys out, he’s known to walk batters, and he does not generate a ton of swings and misses. Mize feels like a guy the Yankees can get to with their patient approach. There’s bound to be a pitch to drive in there somewhere.
Gerrit Cole, on the other hand, currently sports the best K/BB ratio in the league, the best FIP in the league, and an ERA under 2.00. I hardly ever even need to preview Gerrit Cole in these articles. Like, what do you expect from the guy? He’s a monster! The last time he faced Detroit, he struck out 12 batters in 6 scoreless innings and was pulled after only 87 pitches. Pretty dominant stuff. If he strikes out at least 8 batters on Friday night, which he has failed to do in each of his last 2 starts, he will eclipse 100 strikeouts in 11 starts, and find himself within range of his 2019 pace, when he led all of baseball in strikeouts.
Game 2: Deivi Garcia vs Spencer Turnbull
This was supposed to be the matchup of the guys who threw no-hitters on back-to-back nights, but with Corey Kluber’s 2-month long trip to the IL now in its first few days, Deivi Garcia will take his spot.
It’s nice to see things finally turning around for Spencer Turnbull (no pun intended). He’s pitched very well for much of his career, and has little to show for it. His FIP has never been above 3.99, and it’s now below 3.00 for the second time in his 4-year career. All he’s gotten for his trouble is a season in which he led the league in losses (he went 3-17 in 2019) and a career ERA of 4.33.
Ok… Maybe that’s not all he’s gotten. Back on May 19, Turnbull no-hit the Mariners in a beautiful 9 K, 2 BB performance that etched his name permanently into baseball’s record books. Good for him.
Unlike Mize’s, Turnbull’s peripherals are phenomenal. The gap between his ERA and FIP that plagued him for much of his career is going away, and he’s becoming a reliable starter (maybe an understatement) at the Major League level. The only knock on Turnbull is that he doesn’t strike many guys out. That’s fine when you’re as good at producing soft contact as Turnbull is, though. He doesn’t walk guys, throws an above average fastball and curveball (both velocity and spin), and does not allow hard contact. This is EXACTLY the type of guy with whom the Yankees would struggle. The good news is that when he faced the Yankees back on May 1, he allowed 5 H and 4 R in just 5 IP. The bad news is he has a 2.22 ERA since then, and a 1.69 ERA in his last 3 starts.
Deivi Garcia, it is good to have you back. It’s a shame that Corey Kluber had to get injured to bring Deivi back into what we can only assume is a reasonably secure spot in the rotation, but man do I love watching this guy pitch.
Deivi turned 22 a couple of weeks ago, and you already know how excited this team is about him. He’s the #2 prospect in the organization (#1 pitching prospect) and a top-60 prospect in all of baseball.
When we first saw Deivi last year, he burst onto the scene and was terrific. In his first 4 starts he pitched to a 3.28 ERA with 24 strikeouts in 24.2 IP. It was awesome. He was just a 21-year old having a great time with his “dad” Erik Kratz. In September he pitched 7 innings against Toronto in back-to-back starts to secure two wins for the Yankees, which to this point is the highlight of his MLB tenure. The only true clunker on his record is a 3.0 IP, 6 ER performance against Boston last year. Without that, his 2020 ERA moves from 4.98 to 4.03.
We’ve seen Deivi once this year when he tossed 4 innings of 2-run ball against the Orioles in a 4-2 loss on just 65 pitches.
I am so excited to have him back on the mound for this team. I get that I should be fair and give him the same treatment I gave the Detroit guys and say that his peripherals are bad but like… All the data we have on this guy is from when he was 21. I’m not going to act like we can know everything we need to know about a pitcher to determine if he’s good or not from some starts he made when he was 21.
Have fun with this, which is basically a reel of Deivi’s fastball playing up nicely because his curveball is devastating.
Game 3: Jameson Taillon vs Tarik Skubal
Tarik Skubal is the #3 prospect in Detroit’s system (which is very strong), one spot ahead of Casey Mize. He’s also one of the top-25 prospects in all of baseball. Frankly, it would be kind of cool if he had drawn Deivi Garcia to go opposite him, but it is not to be. Like Mize and Garcia, Skubal should not be judged on his poor peripherals. He only has 18 career appearances to his name, and sure, he leads the league in losses and home runs allowed this year and his FIP is higher than his ERA and his Baseball Savant card looks like this…
…but I’m not going to judge him quite yet. As expected, he is a reasonably hard thrower who generates an above-average number of swings and misses. Like Garcia, he is still figuring out how to limit hard contact, and like Mize, he needs to cut down on walks, but the raw tools are there, and I wouldn’t like the Yankees to be on the other end of things when Skubal starts to figure it out.
His last time out against the Yankees, he only managed 3 IP in which he allowed 4 ER on 77 pitches en route to a 10-0 Yankees win. He gave up homers to Clint, Judge, and Hicks, and I would be fine with him providing a similar performance on Sunday.
Jameson Taillon will start opposite Skubal, and he’s been an enigma this year. His 5.06 ERA and 4.51 FIP are both… pretty bad… but it continues to feel like he’s just on the cusp of figuring things out. On the peripherals side, he’s got some hard contact issues but strikes guys out at an above-average rate, is good at limiting walks, and throws relatively hard with very high spin. The swings and misses are there, it’s just about not letting guys hit rockets when they put the bat on the ball. When he saw the Tigers earlier this month, Jamo went 5.0 IP allowing just 3 H and 1 ER. I’d take that again this weekend.
I know Mike Fiers isn’t on the Tigers anymore, and I kind of like him now for breaking the news about the Astros being cheaters (I promise my opinion is more complex than that), but it feels appropriate to leave you with this.
Let’s go Yankees.
