How the 2021 Detroit Tigers defied the odds

The paint is now dry on the 2021 Detroit Tigers season, and it’s hard not to see a picture of success.

This is all relative, of course. The Detroit Tigers finished under .500 for the 5th consecutive year, and they never seriously challenged for the division or a playoff berth.

But for the first time in years fans saw signs of real progress, and the club has significantly outperformed its preseason expectations:

The Tigers outdid even the most optimistic projections by seven games. That’s all the more remarkable when we consider Matthew Boyd, Spencer Turnbull, and Julio Teheran — three-fifths of the rotation heading into the season — combined for just 25 starts this year.

The Tigers have had their share of pleasant surprises this year. Projection systems probably didn’t see them getting 41 home runs from their catchers, or Wily Peralta developing a devastating new pitch, or Akil Baddoo being one of the best Rule 5 Draft picks in recent history.

But that doesn’t seem like enough to outperform their preseason predictions by THIS much. And what’s more, the Detroit Tigers are even outperforming their actual production.

Wait, what does that mean?

The Detroit Tigers are Over WAR

The stat Wins Above Replacement (WAR) might still be a bit confusing or obtuse for fans, but, like it or not, it has become the common language of public player evaluation.

But WAR can also be used as a quick-and-dirty way to evaluate how well teams have performed. The basic theory is that a team composed entirely of replacement-level players would, through the sheer randomness of baseball, still manage to win about 48 games in a 162-game season.

If we start with a baseline of 48 wins, we can then head over to FanGraphs and look at the total offensive and pitching WAR for each team, add them both to 48, and get a decent approximation for how many games a team should have won.

Don’t worry, we did the work for you.

Below you’ll see a table with the three teams who under-performed the most relative to their fWAR totals this year:

That feels about right. In Arizona and Baltimore we have the two worst pitching staffs in baseball by ERA, while the Nationals just set a record for the most blown saves in one season.

Now let’s check in on the three teams who over-performed the most relative to their fWAR totals this year:

Well, would you look at that? Your scrappy 2021 Detroit Tigers managed to win about ten more games than should be expected. But what can explain this? We have some ideas:

The Detroit Tigers Defensive Numbers are Bad

We have to clarify here. We don’t mean the team’s defensive numbers were bad (more on that soon), but that the defensive component at FanGraphs somehow incorrectly penalized the Detroit Tigers defense.

So let’s begin with the ugly numbers. The Detroit Tigers ranked dead last in 2021 by FanGraphs’ defensive metrics, and it wasn’t particularly close. The Tigers earned a -62.1 rating, while the Angels finished 29th at -40.3. Detroit posted the fifth lowest rating for any team in the last five years.

But something about that feels a bit funny. There were times this season when the Tigers seemed like an atrocious defensive squad, particularly early on when Willi Castro was manning shortstop and Wilson Ramos was the everyday catcher, but overall they didn’t look like a historically bad defense.

Eyes can be very deceiving, of course, but advanced defensive metrics feel pretty inadequate, too. And it’s hard to know which one to use. FanGraphs bases their defensive ratings on Ultimate Zone Rating (UZR), while Baseball Reference relies on Defensive Runs Saved (DRS), and Baseball Savant uses Outs Above Average (OAA).

None of these systems view the 2021 Detroit Tigers as a good defense, but while UZR thinks they were the worst defensive club this year, DRS views them as merely the 4th worst, while OAA has them ranked 20th.

So, if this is just a classic case of UZR error, what would Detroit’s fWAR totals look like if the Tigers were a bad or even average defensive team in 2021? Fortunately, we can make that comparison.

By wRC+ we have four very similar teams here, but they finished with wildly different WAR totals based on their defensive rankings. If the Tigers were merely a bad defensive team, like the Mariners, they would’ve produced about 3 more WAR.

If Detroit was secretly an average defensive team, like Cleveland, that would add 7 WAR to their totals. And if UZR somehow screwed up and the Tigers were actually a plus defensive team, like the Phillies, then we’d have our explanation for how the club outperformed their WAR by 10 wins.

A mistake that large seems unlikely, of course. But then again, FanGraphs ranked Philadelphia the 9th best defensive club this year while DRS saw them as the absolute worst defensive team in baseball.

So yeah, maybe these defensive stats still need some work.

Have the Detroit Tigers Been Lucky?

Luck always plays a huge role in baseball, and it can be hard to quantify, but we have a few weapons at our disposal. We can look at Detroit’s run differential, their expected weighted on-base average (xwOBA) vs. their actual weighted on-base average (wOBA), their performance in close games, and how they fared in “clutch” situations.

• The Tigers had a -59 run differential, which suggests a 75-87 record
• Tigers hitters had an xwOBA of .306 and an actual wOBA of .306
• Tigers pitchers allowed an xwOBA of .332 and an actual wOBA of .324
• The Tigers went 23-23 in one-run games, and 12-8 in extra-inning games
• Tigers hitters ranked 14th in clutch performance
• Tigers pitchers ranked 1st in clutch performance

The run differential is within reason, and their performance in close games isn’t a red flag (the Mariners, for instance, had a -51 run differential, but went 33-19 in one-run games, and 14-7 in extra innings).

But that clutch performance really stands out. You can read the definition of Clutch here, but it essentially compares performance in high-leverage situations — those times when the game hangs in the balance — to context-neutral situations.

Detroit Tigers pitchers really stepped up their game at the most important times this season. Casey Mize, for instance, was significantly better with men on base (3.90 FIP) than with the bases empty (5.31 FIP). That helped him to the 7th best Clutch rating among pitchers with 100 innings this year. Wily Peralta finished 4th in Clutch rating among pitchers with 80 innings.

Unfortunately, clutch performance is not considered a repeatable skill, so Mize, Peralta, and the Tigers could just as easily be on the negative side of the ledger next year.

It seems a fair amount of the extra wins in 2021 were the result of luck. But of course there’s that old saying about luck…

The Detroit Tigers Had Great Coaching

This page doesn’t have any charts or graphs on it, and we won’t get too deep into numbers. Nope, this one is 100% about feels.

There’s not any one great way to measure the impact of a coaching staff on wins, but it was clear to anyone who watched the 2021 Detroit Tigers that A.J. Hinch and his coaches were a huge upgrade.

Hinch never appeared unprepared, or caught off guard by something another manager did. His willingness to go with his best relievers in the biggest spots of the game was a welcome change from defined bullpen roles.

And Hinch always seemed to put his players in the best position to succeed. Detroit finished the season with 66.8% of their plate appearances coming with a platoon advantage, the second highest percentage in the Majors.

We can’t forget about pitching coach Chris Fetter, who somehow pieced together a solid rotation from a group of rookies and retreads.

Before he went down with injury, Spencer Turnbull was showing the best command and control of his pro career. Michael Fulmer and Kyle Funkhouser took big steps forward in the bullpen. And Tyler Alexander, Alex Lange, and Wily Peralta all made huge leaps thanks to new pitches or increased pitch usage.

Detroit Tigers fans can’t expect this level of over-performance in 2022. But as long as this coaching staff remains in place, they know their team won’t be out-prepared, and their coaches won’t stop looking for ways to get better.