Detroit Tigers: After strong start, Francisco Liriano disappoints with Tigers

With the season drawing to a close, we are going to provide year-end grades to each Detroit Tigers player who donned the Olde English D in 2018.

The Detroit Tigers have nearly completed the first year of what looks to be a multi-year rebuilding process. While the team was hard to watch at times, there is still plenty to evaluate from this season as we look ahead to the next few years.

As with any team, there were a lot of excellent performances, surprise performances, and of course disappointing performances. Here at Motor City Bengals, we are going to be evaluating each player who suited up for the Detroit Tigers this season. We will analyze how they performed, what their future holds in the Motor City, and we will provide them a grade.

Note: the grade will be relative to what was expected of them. So a player who performed well above expectations may earn a B or an A, even if their actual season numbers are not that elite. If you disagree, feel free to drop us a comment. We would love to have discussions about these!

After grading Jordan Zimmermann (here) and Michael Fulmer (here) earlier in the week, we turn our attention to one of Detroit’s other rotation stalwarts this season.

Francisco Liriano

The Detroit Tigers signed Francisco Liriano for two reasons. Reason one was to eat up innings for a team that was lacking depth in the rotation. Liriano was relatively successful in this endeavor, pitching 133.2 innings across 27 appearances, 26 of them starts. His 26 starts was second on the team, behind Matthew Boyd’s 31.

Reason two was to deal him at the trade deadline, with the intention of acquiring some young talent to stash away in the minor leagues. While that plan was executed perfectly by Al Avila with fellow one-year rentals Mike Fiers and Leonys Martin, they were not able to reach a deal with Liriano.

Part of that is that while he threw a lot of innings, they weren’t particularly good. Liriano finished the 2018 season with a 4.58 ERA, a 1.50 WHIP and a 7.41 K/9. His 4.92 BB/9 was an issue, as was his 1.28 HR/9.

His numbers against left-handers were excellent, although there wasn’t a big enough market for a starter-converted-LOOGY for Liriano to gain any traction on the trade market. He will hit free agency again in 2019, and will likely sign another similar deal.

Grade

Liriano more or less did what was expected of him this season, although it would have been nice for him to pitch well enough to get traded, a la Fiers. Still, he put together some competitive innings when he was needed.

Grade: D+

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