MLB Network gets Tigers fans in their feels with comparison to last great rotation

There's an AJ Hinch quote from 2021 that Tigers fans should put on a t-shirt ASAP, if we haven't already. It's a quote that made the rounds last season, during Detroit's late-summer surge. After his first season with the Tigers, Hinch said, "If the Tigers' organization does a really good job, we're going to re-establish ourselves as a winning franchise and develop a winning culture. If you want to be a part of it, then you'll come. If you don't, then we'll beat you."

A lot of teams like to say that they've "built something special." It's one of those maxims that gets thrown around a lot, like saying a player is "in the best shape of his life" going into spring training. Both are typically over-exaggerations, neither usually proves to be true — but the Tigers certainly look like they're proving it this season.

With their win over the Brewers on Monday, they became the first team in the American League to win 10 games and have won four straight series against the Mariners, White Sox, Yankees, and Twins. En route to Monday's victory, (almost) everything went right for Detroit. The offense, which scored nine runs by the end of the ninth, was clicking. Tarik Skubal did exactly what fans expected him to.

Even national outlets that have dismissed the Tigers have to give this team their flowers. MLB Network aired a segment on the team last week, and their comparison between this year's rotation and Detroit's 2013 rotation shows exactly how far they've come.

MLB Network compares Tarik Skubal-led 2025 Tigers starters to Detroit's powerhouse 2013 rotation

Skubal and Justin Verlander are easy, close enough to 1:1 comparisons as two homegrown Cy Young winners, but Greg Amsinger went on to describe Max Scherzer and Jack Flaherty as "the angry righties," Casey Mize and Aníbal Sánchez as "guys with no-hit stuff but who had an erratic moment," Reese Olson and Doug Fister as "tricky righties," and Jackson Jobe and Rick Porcello as "baby, high upside righties."

Mize and Jobe recalling Sánchez and Porcello might be the most prescient comparisons here, but Mize and Sánchez are kind of going in opposite directions. Sánchez placed fourth in Cy Young voting in 2013 (losing out to teammate Scherzer) for his 2.57 ERA, 182 inning season, but never recaptured that magic through five more years with the Tigers. Mize's resurgence has been on the most hopeful parts of these first few weeks of games, and hopefully it's only up from here.

If this Tigers rotation does end up looking like the one from 2013, then Detroit will certainly have what Dan Plesac said could be "the best rotation in the American League Central," if not the best one in all of baseball.