The Tigers Have Collapsed, but Not Because of Their Rotation

In early February, just before camps opened, the Tigers added both Framber Valdez and Justin Verlander to their rotation. After a rather underwhelming winter full of speculation as to whether they would trade two-time Cy Young winner Tarik Skubal, a pending free agent, the moves kept them in win-now mode, making them the favorites in the AL Central. Yet injuries to Skubal, Verlander, and several position players have hamstrung Detroit, and after playing .500 ball through the end of April, the team crashed and burned in May, losing eight series in a row while going 6-22 due to an utterly inept offense. At this point, the Tigers have dug themselves a big enough hole that trading Skubal may be a necessity.

This past week was particularly bleak. First, the Tigers dropped two out of three at home to the Angels, the only AL team who had a worse record than them. After Thursday’s 7-1 defeat, the two were both 22-35, and the Tigers followed that by getting swept by the White Sox over the weekend. On Friday night, after Troy Melton and Will Vest held Chicago to one run through eight innings, Kyle Finnegan allowed the tying run in the ninth. And then, once the Tigers retook the lead with a run in the top of the 10th, Drew Anderson served up a walk-off two-run homer to Miguel Vargas. It was Detroit’s seventh walk-off loss this season, the most in the majors. On Saturday, the Tigers were trounced, 7-1, and then on Sunday, when manager A.J. Hinch pulled starter Keider Montero after he’d thrown six scoreless innings on just 65 pitches, Anderson came in and served up a game-tying solo shot to Colson Montgomery, then yielded three more singles and the go-ahead run. The Tigers lost 2-1, for their 21st loss in 25 games. They’re now 5-13 in one-run games — the most losses of any team in that context — and, at 22-38, are tied with the Rockies for the majors’ worst record.

This is just about the last thing anyone expected of the Tigers. Led by Skubal, they claimed back-to-back Wild Card berths in 2024 and ’25, surging over the final two months of the former season to snag a playoff spot, then spending most of last year in first place, though they faded late and lost the division title on the final day. Both times, they won their Wild Card Series before being bounced in a five-game Division Series, including last year’s squeaker against the Mariners, which took until the 15th inning of Game 5 to decide.

Detroit’s offseason was a relatively slow one, as the club retained Finnegan and second baseman Gleyber Torres (who accepted the qualifying offer), added free agent Kenley Jansen, then limited itself to minor moves until Skubal’s arbitration hearing in early February. The back-to-back Cy Young winner received a record-setting $32 million contract for 2026, $13 million more than the Tigers had offered him. With the signings of Valdez on a three-year, $115 million deal, and Verlander for one year and $13 million (with $11 million deferred), they pushed their payroll to within $3 million of the first Competitive Balance Tax threshold of $244 million and made themselves the division favorites. As of Opening Day, the Tigers were projected for 84.1 wins — the lowest total of any of the six division leaders — with a 45.8% chance of winning the Central and a 60.2% chance of returning to the postseason.

Though they beat the Padres in their first two games of the season, the Tigers soon went on a rollercoaster ride, with a 2-9 plunge followed by an 8-1 climb. They leveled off, finishing April with a 16-16 record, good enough to tie the Guardians for the division lead. Alas, by that point, the injury bug had started to bite, and now it’s eaten a hole in Deroit’s season.

Despite losing Verlander, Skubal, and Casey Mize to injuries, the Tigers rotation has pitched comparatively well, putting up a 3.85 ERA (fifth in the league) and a 3.58 FIP (third), in part because Skubal and Mize have been their best starters when available. Skubal made seven starts and posted a 2.70 ERA and a 2.08 FIP before landing on the injured list on May 4 with loose bodies in his left elbow and undergoing surgery two days later. Mize has made nine starts with a 2.27 ERA and a 2.38 FIP, but he left his April 28 start in the third inning due to a Grade 1 adductor strain. After returning in mid-May, he continued to pitch well, allowing just two runs in 16 2/3 innings, but he departed Wednesday’s start against the Angels after four innings and returned to the IL with inflammation in the same adductor. After making just one start, Verlander went on the IL on April 4 due to inflammation in his left hip. While the 43-year-old righty felt as though he could have pushed through it, his slower-than-expected recovery led the Tigers to transfer him to the 60-day injured list on May 10.

Montero, a 25-year-old righty, has done a very good job filling in for Verlander, posting a 3.69 ERA and a 3.94 FIP. Despite striking out just 17.8% of hitters, he’s done a better job preventing runs than either Valdez (4.39 ERA, 4.15 FIP) or Jack Flaherty (5.81 ERA, 4.61 FIP), the two constants in the rotation. While Valdez has induced batters to chase a career-high 33.2% of pitches outside the zone, his curveball in particular has been less effective in the zone, and his whiff rate on the pitch (in and out of the zone) has dropped from 43.7% to 32.1%, helping to drag his strikeout rate from 23.3% to 18.3%. Flaherty, who has struggled with his slider, has given up harder contact while walking far more hitters (12.0%, up from 8.7% last year), and has failed to complete five innings in seven of his 12 starts.

As they did in late 2024, the Tigers have tried to overcome their rotation injuries by using openers, in this case Tyler Holton, Burch Smith, and Brenan Hanifee. During Mize’s first absence, the Tigers went 3-2 when using an opener in May. Upon his return and that of Melton, who had been out since late February with an elbow strain, the team mothballed that strategy, at least temporarily.

Melton has allowed just two runs in 12 2/3 innings over two starts since returning, and more help is on the way. Verlander threw a 62-pitch simulated game on Wednesday and is scheduled to make a rehab start with Triple-A Toledo on Tuesday. Skubal became the first high-profile athlete on whom Dr. Neal ElAttrache used the NanoNeedle Scope 2.0, a relatively new device that’s about half the diameter of a traditional arthroscope, causing less swelling, less pain, and a faster recovery from the procedure. He threw his first bullpen session 12 days after surgery, and tallied 39 pitches over 2 2/3 innings in a simulated game last Tuesday. He’s slated for another sim game on Monday and could begin a rehab assignment soon, with beat reporter Evan Woodbery of MLive recently suggesting a June 12 rehab start and a June 17 return to the Tigers as a best-case scenario for Skubal, though the Tigers haven’t publicly committed to a timeline.

The bullpen has been middling at best, with a 4.29 ERA (seventh in the AL) and a 4.22 FIP (ninth), and the team’s late-game relievers have had some issues. The 38-year-old Jansen surpassed Lee Smith for third on the all-time saves list with his 479th save on April 14, but after converting seven of his first eight chances while allowing just one run, he blew three of his next four, taking the loss each time while allowing seven runs in 8 1/3 innings. He left last Wednesday night’s game with two outs in the ninth due to groin tightness, then was placed on the IL with pelvic inflammation. Vest, a setup man who spent half of May on the IL for forearm inflammation, has been tagged for a 7.41 ERA; he blew two saves in the span of six days recently, one in the ninth inning against the Guardians on May 20, and then another in the eighth inning against the Angels on Wednesday, when he gave up a grand slam to Vaughn Grissom on his 34th pitch. Finnegan, who’s also pitched in a setup role, has a 2.03 ERA but a 5.06 FIP while walking more batters (16.8%) than he’s struck out (13.3%) in 26 2/3 innings. As for Anderson, he’s started once, served as a multi-inning reliever in most of his other appearances, and even notched a couple of saves. He had been on a roll before the Chicago series, allowing just five runs and one home run over his previous 25 1/3 innings. Including his one start, he’s logged 38 innings with a 4.03 ERA and a 3.71 FIP on the season.

Jansen and company certainly share a lot of responsibility for the team’s struggles in one-run games, but Detroit’s biggest problem has been an increasingly decrepit offense that’s scoring a major league-low 3.72 runs per game, with a very respectable March and April followed by an abysmal May:

In their last 19 games, the Tigers have averaged just 2.52 runs, scoring more than four just once; they haven’t scored more than six runs in a game since May 3. While left fielder Riley Greene (.301/.391/.426, 134 wRC+), shortstop/third baseman Kevin McGonigle (.286/.390/.410, 130 wRC+), and catcher Dillon Dingler (.226/.313/.458, 115 wRC+) have been quite effective overall, Greene and Dingler were the team’s only two regulars with a wRC+ of 100 or better in May; everybody else besides McGonigle had a wRC+ of 82 or lower. First baseman Spencer Torkelson (.214/.317/.403, 104 wRC+ overall) has cooled off after a strong start, going from a 123 wRC+ and a 28.3% strikeout rate in March and April to an 82 wRC+ with a 36.3% strikeout rate in May. Third baseman/designated hitter Colt Keith is in the midst of a power outage, batting .280/.324/.342 (88 wRC+) without a homer this season; he sank from a 114 wRC+ in March and April to 57 in May. Beyond that, injuries to Torres, Parker Meadows, Zach McKinstry, Javier Báez, and Kerry Carpenter have been a significant part of the story, costing the team depth in both the infield and outfield.

On April 9, Meadows and Greene collided in pursuit of a fly ball, with Meadows getting the worst of it: a concussion, a laceration on the right side of his mouth that required five stitches, and a fractured radius bone in his left arm, requiring surgery and landing him on the 60-day injured list. It was yet another blow for the 26-year-old center fielder, who was limited to 58 games and a 75 wRC+ last year due to a nerve issue in his right arm and a right hamstring strain. Since he went down, most of the playing time in center has gone to Matt Vierling, who has hit a dismal .211/.281/.349 (76 wRC+).

On April 15, McKinstry — who broke out to make his first All-Star team last season — was involved in multiple collisions against the Royals, bruising his left hip and suffering what he described as “a Grade 3 oblique tear off his pelvic bone” that was initially projected to sideline him for six to eight weeks. While he rehabbed more quickly than expected and returned only three weeks later, he has hit just .123/.234/.138 (9 wRC+) since then while playing regularly, sharing time at second base with 23-year-old rookie Hao-Yu Lee in place of Torres, who has been out since straining an oblique on May 2. Lee hasn’t helped much, batting .192/.232/.295 (45 wRC+). Torres hit a slaptacular .259/.389/.328 (113 wRC+) before going down; his recovery has been slower than expected, though on Saturday he began a rehab assignment at Toledo.

Báez sprained his right ankle while trying to slide into first base on April 28 against the Braves, the same game Mize departed early. He had been splitting time between center field and shortstop while scuffling at the plate (.256/.280/.397, 86 wC+). With inflammation still preventing him from running full speed and limiting his activity, he’s scheduled to see a specialist soon.

Carpenter hit just .216/.299/.451 (107 wRC+) with subpar defense (-4 DRS and -4 FRV in just 25 games) before spraining the AC joint in his left shoulder when he crashed into a Kauffman Stadium sidewall on May 9. He returned to the lineup as the DH on Sunday, going 1-for-2 before getting platoon pinch-hit for against lefty Chris Murphy. Both while Carpenter was out hurt and when he’s been in the lineup as the DH, Wenceel Pérez has gotten the bulk of the playing time in right field. Pérez was solid last year (103 wRC+, 1.7 WAR), but he’s been dreadful both at the plate (.167/.228/.304, 48 wRC+) and in the field (-4 DRS, -3 FRV) this season.

All told, the Tigers have gotten sub-replacement-level work at second base (-0.5 WAR), right field (-1.0), and DH (-1.0), and haven’t been much better at either first base (0.1) or center field (0.3). Between Lee, McKinstry, Pérez, Vierling, and reserve outfielder Jahmai Jones, Detroit has given 604 plate appearances — about 27% of its total — to five players who have combined to hit .179/.247/.293 (51 wRC+) while netting -2.9 WAR. A team would need to clone Skubal to survive that.

The pending return of Torres, and some positive regression from Torkelson, Carpenter, and Keith should help a bit, but right now, this hardly looks like a club capable of digging its way out of a 16-below-.500 hole — a tall task for anyone. Hinch’s job doesn’t seem to be in particular danger yet, but the vultures are circling when it comes to the prospect of a Skubal trade. Rival executives don’t sound entirely convinced that the Tigers will move him, however, particularly because they play in a league where just five teams have a winning record. For what it’s worth, they enter this week with 9.5% Playoff Odds and a 4.9% chance of winning the division, and the August 3 trade deadline is still about two months away. Even so, this isn’t how the Tigers planned it at all, and they may have to swallow hard and dismantle a roster they hoped would justify keeping their ace.