Detroit Tigers: What We Learned About the Tigers in Week 1

The first week of the MLB season is in the books and the Detroit Tigers are 4-3. Let’s look at some of the headlines that drove the Tigers’ narrative in week 1.

The Detroit Tigers head into this weekend’s series against the Reds a game over .500. Lead by JaCoby Jones, Detroit has been in most games with the exception of Monday’s game against Kansas City.  Overall, we can safely assume that a vast amount of fans were not expecting this type of start. For these weekly recaps, we will go over the highlights, stats, and media bits.

Highlights:

• Apparently, Doc Brown was in the house last night as Miguel Cabrera hit two home runs for the first time since September 30th, 2016. He entered the game in a major slump, entering the game batting .091. With his two home runs, it was the 40th time in his career he had a multiple home run game.  With those two home runs, he sits at 480 for his career.

• Detroit after last night’s game, now lead the league in home runs hit with 15. One stat that the Tigers wish they were not first in was in strikeout percentage. They are striking out at 32.3% clip.  In our stats portion, we will show some numbers tied to that K%.
• Joe Jimenez leads the league in saves with 4. The bullpen heading into last night’s game had retired 26 straight betters. Nice recovery from Monday’s outing in which they gave up 10 runs.
• What a start for JaCoby Jones. He is batting .409 with 3 home runs with an OPS of 1.367 and leads the team in hits early on in the season with 9
• Gregory Soto. That’s it, just Gregory Soto starting the season on fire.

Stats:

• In the Tigers’ comeback win on Wednesday night, the Tigers’ bullpen did not register a strikeout in 4 scoreless innings, the first time this season they achieved that.
• Jeimer Candelario and Christin Stewart are combined 2-for-34 with 19K’s 4BB. Stewart is responsible for the two hits, one of which was a home run that came on Tuesday.
• Despite Jack Morris’s apparent disgust for the shift, Detroit is one of league leaders early on in the season in shifting their defense the most.

Media Bits:

Ron Gardenhire joined Jamie & Stoney on 97.1 The Ticket  and had some straightforward advice when asked about the Dodgers’ continued grudge against the Astros

 “It’s crazy. That’s out of hand, just let it go. It’s over with, it’s past, we have to move forward. We got enough going on in this world with what we’re dealing with right now and trying to play this baseball season. That stuff, it’s not going to bring it back, it’s never going to change what happened. They paid for it, the manager paid for it and you just have to move forward. All that stuff, staying with it, ‘You did this, you did that,’ it doesn’t matter. There’s been a lot of stuff that’s happened in baseball that wasn’t good and you just move on, and that’s what I think should happen. That’s silly stuff.”

Check out the audio here:  Also, we wish nothing but good vibes for Jamie Samuelson in a speedy recovery.

Tigers’ radio voice Dan Dickerson spoke with Casey Ford of 97.7 WQXO about the season far. (Starts around the 13:17 mark)

Podcasts:

• Locked on Tigers, the daily podcast hosted by Chris Castellani has been discussing the Tigers on a daily basis in addition to doing his post-game videos since the season has started.
• Brandon Day and the crew on this week’s BYB Podcast discussed the early returns that the Tigers season may be fun.
• Chris Brown and I talked to John Moore of Motor City Hardball.com about the early parts of the season, the Joe Kelly suspension, and keeping this in perspective early on this season.

Random Thoughts To Close Out the Week:

The St.Louis Cardinals are coming to town on Monday but you give a bit of pause upon reading the Cards and Brewers game was postponed after positive Covid-19 results. This comes on the heels of last night’s news that the league will start staging seven-inning doubleheaders starting on August 1.

MLB will push this season through, come hell or high water. Look at the situation with the Marlins. How do you even count stats in this strange hybrid of the season?  All that of a growing headache aside, it is good to see Detroit play competitive baseball.  To describe the season in a nutshell it is simple as what my father once said to me, almost on a daily bases, Que sera, sera.