The Detroit Tigers Guide To The Sweet 16

We won’t pretend the Detroit Tigers have your undivided attention right now. Spring training doesn’t matter, and not everyone cares about exit velocity.

It’s getting warmer outside, and there’s still that whole pandemic thing happening, though thankfully COVID-19 shots are becoming more available.

But above all else, we are smack in the middle of the best time of the year for college basketball. It’s hard to care about the 8th inning of a meaningless Detroit Tigers game when brackets and bragging writes are on the line.

So, in an effort to needlessly shoehorn baseball into your basketball experience, we’ve decided to offer a rooting guide to the Sweet 16 based solely on each school’s ties to the Detroit Tigers.

Detroit Tigers Sweet 16 Matchup 1: Oregon St. vs. Loyola Chicago

Notable Detroit Tigers:

Loyola Chicago: None

Oregon State: Matthew Boyd, Jordan Lennerton, Jonah Nickerson, Chris Wakeland

This is the first game of the weekend, but it’s a tough one for us, because Loyola Chicago doesn’t have a baseball program. The closest we can get is John Hyde, a left-handed pitcher the Tigers drafted but didn’t sign in 1968, who attended Loyola Academy in Wilmette, IL.

Oregon State, on the other hand, has been something of a baseball powerhouse the last few decades. The Detroit Tigers have drafted four Beavers, including the hirsuit Canadian frontiersman you see above, Jordan Lennerton. He spent parts of eight seasons in the Tigers’ minor-league system, and he was even their representative at the 2013 Futures Game. And then there’s Matthew Boyd, this year’s Opening Day starter.

Winner: Oregon State, by default.