Detroit Tigers: Favorite Playoff Team Bracket Challenge

For fans of college basketball and the University of Michigan, you are pretty stoked for March Madness. So it got us thinking of how we could get involved with the Detroit Tigers. After talking it over in the MCB Slack, Sebastian, our co-contributor historian, came up with a great idea.

We would like to present the 16-team favorite Detroit Tigers playoff team bracket challenge. This challenge will start this afternoon and run until the end of March. There will be four regions: Greenberg, Trammell, Cobb, and Kaline.

Thanks to the expanded playoffs, this allowed for the perfect amount of teams to be used. There are some really good teams that come to mind that I was thinking about but because they did not make the post-season, they did not qualify. The first one:

1988 Detroit Tigers

Detroit was looking to repeat as AL East champs and took over first place on June 20. However, they were never able to pull away as they finished 36-41 in the second half of the season. After being elected the starting shortstop for the 1988 All-Star game, Alan Trammell was out with a bruised left elbow. He would miss time again due to a groin pull to start September and then to top it off, missed the final nine games of the season after he was hit in the right forearm by Blue Jays pitcher David Steib in mid-September.

Despite all of the injuries, Trammell finished with an impressive slash line of .311/.373/.464 and an OPS of .836. A few more games of Trammell in the lineup could have made a difference.

1961 Detroit Tigers

They won 101 games but the Yankees won 109 with one of the best teams ever assembled. Detroit would go 8-10 against New York. This was the era in which all the teams were all in one division and the winner would go to the World Series.  The Tigers had some great seasons from Norm Cash (9.2 WAR), Al Kaline, (8.4 WAR), Rocky Colvato (7.6 WAR), and outstanding pitching from Frank Lary and Hall of Famer Jim Bunning.

Let’s go over the matchups with the first bracket up and that is the Greenberg region. The seeding was based on the regular-season winning percentage.

No. 1 1934  Detroit Tigers vs No. 16 2012 Detroit Tigers

This is where it gets tricky when you have two totally different eras here at play. The 2012 team had to face two teams before they got into the World Series while the 1934 squad won the AL pennant.

The 1934 squad features two 20-game winners in Tommy Bridges and Schoolboy Rowe. The lineup is loaded with four Hall of Famers in Mickey Cochrane, Hank Greenberg, Goose Goslin, and  Charlie Gehringer. They would lose to the Cardinals in a great seven-game series.

The 2012 squad features one of the deeper Tigers’ pitching rotations with Justin Verlander leading the way.  Miguel Cabrera and Prince Fielder both were the power bats in the lineup. Click the link below to vote.

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No. 5 1935  Detroit Tigers vs No. 12 1945 Detroit Tigers

In the second matchup of the Greenberg bracket, we have the first World Series champions in Detroit, the fifth-seeded 1935 squad, take on the 12th-seeded 1945 squad in the battle of two World Series winners. The 1945 squad featured Hall of Famer Hal Newhouser as the staff’s ace.  Fresh off his stint in the military,  Greenberg was back in a Tigers uniform. Click below to vote.

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2. 1909 Detroit Tigers vs 15.1972 Detroit Tigers

Hughie Jennings’s 1909 squad lost to the Pirates in seven games and the Tigers were playing at Bennett Park then. Billy Martin’s team took the eventual World Series champs Oakland A’s to five games in a highly charged ALCS. The last bit of the 1968 squad gave it their best but the A’s were just loaded with names like Reggie Jackson, Vida Blue, and Catfish Hunter. Vote below to pick your squad.

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6. 1907 Detroit Tigers vs 1940 Detroit Tigers

Both the 1907 and 1909 squads were pretty much the same nucleus of players led by Hall of Famers Ty Cobb and Sam Crawford. Along with Matty McIntyre, the Tigers had one of the best outfielders in all of baseball at the time.

The 1940 team had a good mix of young players like Birdie Tebbets and Rudy York and a pair of veterans who helped the Tigers win a pair of AL pennants in the ’30s in Charlie Gehringer and Hank Greenberg. Bobo Newsom and Schoolboy Rowe anchored the staff, who would lose to the Reds in seven games.

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No. 8 1908 Detroit Tigers vs No. 9 2006 Detroit Tigers

I smell an upset here. The 2006 squad is very special to a lot of people because if you are like me, the 1984 squad was more of a faint memory as a child and this team was your first introduction to winning baseball as an adult. The 1900s were the dead-ball era.

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No. 4 1968 Detroit Tigers vs No.13 2013 Detroit Tigers

The battle of two AL Cy Young award winners in Denny McLain and Max Scherzer. Both rotations were pretty good and the Tigers’ offense in 1968 was among the best in the American League. This might be a close vote.

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The first bracket goes until March 18th at midnight when we close the polls. Due to our first time attempting something like this, we apologize for all the clicks away from the site.  On March 19, we will drop the Elite Eight.