Detroit Tigers: A Brief History of Tigers from Canada

The Detroit Tigers head to Canada tonight for a three-game series against the Toronto Blue Jays.

The last time the Tigers traveled to the Great White North was March 2019, for the first four games of the season. Jordan Zimmermann and Matt Moore started games for Detroit in that series split, with Daniel Stumpf and Victor Alcántara picking up wins. So yes, it’s been awhile.

Perhaps younger Detroit Tigers fans don’t particularly care much about the Toronto Blue Jays, but for much of the 1980s they were one of Detroit’s biggest AL East rivals.

Toronto boasted All-star position players like Jesse Barfield, Tony Fernandez, and Lloyd Moesby, and their starting pitchers Dave Stieb and Jimmy Key were as good or better than Detroit ace Jack Morris.

The 1987 season still stirs up bitter memories for fans of both teams. The Blue Jays lost the division to Detroit by dropping their final seven games, including three consecutive one-run affairs against the Tigers to end the year.

Meanwhile, Toronto outfielder George Bell narrowly took home the AL MVP award over Detroit shortstop Alan Trammell, which Tigers fans viewed as an injustice. WAR does support the Tigers fans (Tram 8.2 WAR, Bell 5.0), but Bell hitting .308 with 47 home runs and 134 RBIs was pretty loud.

All the elements of a great rivalry were there. But then Tigers turned into a very bad team, and the Blue Jays turned into a very good team. Then all it took was a divisional realignment, and the rivalry was dead for good.

So we thought we’d use this weekend’s series to highlight some of our neighbors to the north (or the south, if you live in certain parts of Michigan). Yes, we know Blue Jays fans can get a bit rowdy when they come to Comerica Park. And yes, the Leafs suck.

But that doesn’t mean we can’t celebrate some of the best Detroit Tigers from Canada. There have only been 18 of them, with Jacob Robson the most recent, so this shouldn’t take too long. We’ll begin with the first Detroit Tigers players from Canada…

Detroit Tigers from Canada – Frank O’Rourke and Matt Stairs

Just 16 position players from Canada have managed to play 1,000 career games in the big leagues, and two of them saw some time on the Detroit Tigers. Frank O’Rourke was a glove-first infielder who played from 1912 to 1931, suiting up for six teams. But the best season of his career was 1925, when he hit .293 with career highs in home runs (5) and doubles (40) for the Detroit Tigers. He played second base for the team that year, but in 1926 he was displaced at the position by a young man named Charlie Gehringer.

Matt Stairs was a hired assassin. A stout lefty built like a jug of maple syrup, Stairs walked, struck out, and hit bombs. He went undrafted and didn’t see regular playing time in the big-leagues until he was 29, but nevertheless went on to hit 265 home runs while playing for 12 teams over 19 seasons. He is the all-time leader in pinch-hit home runs.

A mid-September addition for the Detroit Tigers in 2006, his 14-game stint with the club was his shortest with any team. The Tigers dropped their last five games of the year to lose the division, but in the final game of the season, and Stairs’ final game with the team, he hit a huge, game-tying home run in the 8th inning to keep hope alive.

Stairs’ run with the Tigers wasn’t the shortest by a native of Canada. Fans may remember catcher Max St. Pierre getting into six games in 2010, or Dustin Molleken’s four-game run in the middle of 2016. But we’ll finish our list with the longest-tenured Canadian for Tigers. He also happens to be the best…

Detroit Tigers from Canada – John Hiller

The best player from Canada in Detroit Tigers history is left-handed pitcher John Hiller. He might also top the lists of the most underrated Detroit Tigers in history, and the most remarkable stories in Detroit Tigers history. But those are articles for another day.

Hiller was born in Toronto and grew up in Scarborough, Ontario, but he dropped out of school in the 11th grade when a Tigers scout offered him $400 a month to play baseball. He made his way to Detroit for the first time in 1965, throwing just six innings. He was up for good by 1967, and he was a huge part of the 1968 World Series championship team, posting a 9-6 record with a 2.39 ERA over 128 innings.

He continued as solid member of Detroit’s pitching staff through 1970. But then Hiller, just 28, suffered a series of heart attacks.

He missed the entire 1971 season, had experimental intestine surgery, and was released by the Tigers before being re-signed as minor-league pitching instructor in 1972. He learned a new changeup while pitching to minor-leaguers, and the Tigers took him north to throw batting practice.

But by the middle of the year the club was desperate for pitching, and they enlisted Hiller to help. He ended up with a 2.03 ERA over 44.1 innings. And then in 1973 he produced one of the greatest seasons by a relief pitcher in MLB history.

John Hiller led the American League with 60 appearances and set a MLB record with 38 saves, while maintaining a 1.44 ERA over 125.1 innings.

According to Baseball Reference, it was good for 7.9 WAR. That remains the highest bWAR ever for a pitcher who threw fewer than 140 innings in a season. Remarkably, it’s also the 4th highest bWAR ever for a pitcher who threw fewer than 200 innings in a season.

Hiller made his lone all-star team in 1974, and he continued as a highly effective workhorse reliever through the 1978 season. He began to struggle in 1979, though, and he retired by May of 1980.

He remains the Detroit Tigers franchise leader in games pitched, with 545, and there’s a world out there where he might even be a Hall-of-Famer. If that seems a bit much, consider this:

It’s possible that, in a different era, or in different circumstances, or with better facial hair, John Hiller would be enshrined in Cooperstown. Instead, he’s merely the best Canadian in Detroit Tigers history.

Thanks Canada.