Detroit Tigers Hard Knocks

Tigers center fielder Derek Hill makes a leaping catch at the wall. Raj Mehta-USA TODAY Sports
Tigers center fielder Derek Hill makes a leaping catch at the wall. Raj Mehta-USA TODAY Sports
1 of 3
Next

The hardest hits from the Detroit Tigers starting lineup.

The Detroit Tigers are just 11 days from beginning their season, but Detroit sports fans have once again been drawn in by the NFL’s unstoppable attention machine. The Detroit Lions will be the focus of this season of Hard Knocks, HBO’s annual behind-the-scenes look at NFL squads.

We understand the morbid curiosity of wanting to peek behind the curtain of the worst franchise in professional sports, but, with all due respect to our friends at Side Lion Report, perhaps the maddeningly perpetual optimism of Lions fans should be directed elsewhere before Lucy yanks away that football for the 65th consecutive year.

We have an alternative for you. Why not watch Detroit Tigers register some actual hard knocks?

It’s fun to watch baseball players hit the ball hard, so below we have video of the hardest hits from each member of the presumed starting lineup for the 2022 Detroit Tigers, a team that is actually worth watching. Enjoy!

Detroit Tigers Hard Knocks – Akil Baddoo

Akil Baddoo’s hardest hit ball with the Tigers was a scorching line out against the Rays last September, but this was his hardest actual hit. It came against future Hall-of-Famer Zack Greinke, leaving Baddoo’s bat at 109.8 MPH, and traveled an estimated 450 feet before landing.

Detroit Tigers Hard Knocks – Robbie Grossman

The 2021 Detroit Tigers got off to a brutal start, and their record was just 9-24 after a home loss to the Minnesota Twins on May 7th. Much was made about the team’s performance from May 8th on (they went 68-61 over the rest of the year), and that turnaround officially began with this hit. Robbie Grossman kicked off the bottom of the 1st inning by taking a 2-0 pitch from Jose Berrios and crushing it 110.9 MPH into the right-field seats. It remains the hardest contact of Grossman’s career.

Detroit Tigers Hard Knocks – Javier Báez

Javier Báez only has fewer than 20 at-bats in a Tigers uniform, so his chances for hard knocks have been slim. And yet he’s already made some awfully strong contact. His hardest hit ever came last year when he was still with the Cubs, but the double you see above ranks as the 14th hardest hit ball in his career. Báez’s frozen rope off Hyun Jin Ryu was 112.3 MPH off the bat and it scooted to the wall in about 4.5 seconds.

Detroit Tigers third baseman Jeimer Candelario and first baseman Miguel Cabrera celebrate after defeating the Pittsburgh Pirates. Charles LeClaire-USA TODAY Sports
Detroit Tigers third baseman Jeimer Candelario and first baseman Miguel Cabrera celebrate after defeating the Pittsburgh Pirates. Charles LeClaire-USA TODAY Sports /

Detroit Tigers Hard Knocks – Jeimer Candelario

Jeimer Candelario isn’t necessarily known for his power production, but he has plenty of pop in his bat. He put that raw power on display late in 2019, blasting this Reynaldo López pitch an estimated 448 feet for a home run. The home run doesn’t seem all that impressive on TV, mostly because the camera can’t seem to locate the ball. But, given that Candelario hit it at 114.2 MPH, it’s fair to wonder if the ball simply vaporized.

Detroit Tigers Hard Knocks – Miguel Cabrera

Statcast began tracking exit velocity in 2015, and it’s safe to assume the hardest hit of Miguel Cabrera’s career came in the decade before that. Miggy wrapped up his fourth batting title in 2015, and in the process hit a ball 115.6 MPH against Jered Weaver and the Angels, but there’s no footage of it. The hardest Cabrera hit with accompanying video is this 2-run single, which was 114.4 MPH, but we thought the 113.8 MPH, 459-foot home run you see above would be slightly more entertaining to watch.

Detroit Tigers Hard Knocks – Jonathan Schoop

Here’s another case where the video perhaps isn’t quite as impressive as the Statcast numbers. Jonathan Schoop has tremendous raw power, but his aggressive approach also results in an awful lot of weak contact, so he doesn’t often get mentioned as one of the league’s big boppers. But the missile you see above is the hardest hit in Detroit Tigers history (since 2015 at least) and it left Schoop’s bat at a stunning 117.1 MPH. Just 46 players have hit a ball that hard in the Statcast era.

Riley Greene congratulates Spencer Torkelson. (Photo by Dustin Bradford/Getty Images)
Riley Greene congratulates Spencer Torkelson. (Photo by Dustin Bradford/Getty Images) /

Detroit Tigers Hard Knocks – Riley Greene

So Riley Greene is pretty good. He’s been our number one prospect in the Detroit Tigers system for the past two years, and it’s because of things like this. Greene has just 23 balls in play tracked by Statcast, which makes sense, because he hasn’t played any official MLB games yet. But the rocket above is the second hardest-hit ball in Detroit Tigers history, at 115.8 MPH. At the time it was the hardest, and there’s a good chance he tops it this year.

Detroit Tigers Hard Knocks – Spencer Torkelson

Spencer Torkelson also has just 23 balls in play tracked by Statcast, but he has yet to truly scorch a ball, topping out with this 105.1 MPH single.  There aren’t many videos of Torkelson hits at the MLB film room, so we went with the hard single you see above, which left his bat at 98.5 MPH. We suspect it won’t take him too long to top 110 MPH at the big-league level, but if you’re aching for some Tork Bombs, feel free to watch all 30 of his blasts from last year.

Detroit Tigers Hard Knocks – Tucker Barnhart/Eric Haase

Tucker Barnhart is going to be Detroit’s starting catcher, and he’s a great defender who is capable of making some hard contact. In fact, the hardest hit ball of his career came this spring, but it was a groundout to shortstop. This piece is about hard knocks, and we know what you want to see. So enjoy the Eric Haase crush job above, a 113.2 MPH launch against his former team that went an estimated 442 feet and probably put a decent dent into the outfield bleachers.

Will Detroit Tigers finish the Rookie of the Year trifecta?. dark. Next

Next