Detroit Tigers all-time starting rotation by WAR

The Detroit Tigers are one of the baseball's most storied franchises. Since 1901, the Tigers have been a fixture in Major League Baseball with numerous Hall of Famers having played for them including Ty Cobb, Hank Greenberg, Al Kaline, Alan Trammell, and Jack Morris.

Going a step further than just identifying the greats is determining the Tigers' Mount Rushmore on both sides of the ball. The offense is fairly straightforward as guys like Cobb, Kaline, and Greenberg stick out like sore thumbs as all-time baseball greats. However, choosing the best pitchers in Detroit Tigers history is actually surprisingly tricky.

Here is the Detroit Tigers all-time starting rotation by WAR

If you ask any Tigers fan for their top 5 Tigers pitchers, you will likely get a bunch of different answers. Many will point to Denny McLain and his 31 win Cy Young season to argue for his inclusion. Max Scherzer's five seasons in Detroit are fondly remembered especially when you add in what he has done the rest of his career. Older fans will probably give Jim Bunning some love for his time with Detroit on some pretty bad Tigers teams.

To remove some of the subjectivity from this discussion, it is probably best to use a somewhat neutral measure like WAR. For this list, Baseball-Reference's WAR calculation gets the nod mostly because of how powerful their search database is for this sort of thing. Each player will also be limited to the WAR they accumulated in a Tigers uniform and must have started at least 60% of their appearances. Many folks will be upset that Jack Morris didn't make the cut, but his 37.7 rWAR finished in a very strong sixth place.

Anyways, those are the rules in a nutshell. Here is the Tigers' all-time starting rotation.

Dizzy Trout - 44.3 WAR

The Tigers' #5 starter, Dizzy Trout, may not been particularly familiar to younger Tigers fans as he pitched for Detroit from 1939 to 1952. He started 305 games for the Tigers and posted a 3.20 ERA and 3.40 FIP in his 2,591.2 innings of work.

For the less analytically inclined, Trout still has a strong case for inclusion as he won 20 or more games twice in his career, made a pair of All-Star teams, nearly won MVP in 1944, won a World Series ring in 1945, and was the model of consistency on the mound for well over a decade.

Trout's success on the mound is somewhat funny because his strikeout rate with Detroit was a very low 4.2 K/9. A product of a different time in baseball history, Dizzy relied on pitching to contact and did it better than almost anyone else during his time in the big leagues.

One final note on Trout: for a pitcher, he could actually hit pretty well. Dizzy connected for 20 home runs in his career while putting up a very reasonable (for a pitcher) .213 average while driving in 110 runs in his career. Sometimes a pitcher just has to take matters into his own hands.

Mickey Lolich - 46.7 WAR

Coming in at #4 is Mickey Lolich who probably would have been on most fans' lists regardless of how they evaluate players. Lolich was a fixture in the Tigers' rotation from 1963 to 1975 while putting up a 3.45 ERA and 3.19 FIP in well over 3,000 innings for Detroit. He also had some of the peripherals that modern fans will appreciate more, particularly his 7.2 K/9 and 2.7 BB/9 in his Tigers career.

Again, traditional baseball fans have a lot to like in Lolich as well. He won 207 games, was a three time All-Star, finished in the top 3 in Cy Young voting twice, and was an absolute innings workhorse with six straight seasons where he pitched more than 270 innings.

Lolich may honestly be most fondly remembered for his work in the 1968 World Series. Lolich was the original Mad-Bum as he pitched in three games in that Fall Classic including having to face off against Bob Gibson in Game 7 after throwing two complete games earlier in the series. However, Lolich matched Gibson pitch for pitch through six innings, the Tigers finally broke through in the seventh, and Detroit completed the World Series comeback.

In short, Lolich should be an auto-include in any all-time Tigers rotation. He is the Tigers' franchise leader in strikeouts and third in innings pitched while checking the metrics boxes needed to warrant inclusion here.

Tommy Bridges - 51.6 WAR

Tommy Bridges is another name who has begun to be forgotten in recent years, but he has a firm grasp on the number three spot in this rotation with his career 51.6 rWAR. A Tiger from 1930 to 1946, Bridges threw more than 2,800 innings for Detroit with a 3.57 ERA and 3.90 FIP during his Tigers tenure.

Bridges also has the counting stats to bolster his case as he won nearly 200 games, played his entire career with Detroit, made six All-Star teams, and led the league twice in strikeouts in 1935 and 1936 which, again, points to the era he played in as he averaged just 5.3 K/9 in his career.

If one is looking for a defining moment in Bridges' career, they need not look any further than the 1935 World Series. Detroit was looking to clinch the title with Bridges on the mound and he delivered despite having to pitch his way out of a tough spot in the ninth inning to give the offense a chance to walk it off and take home the crown.

Bridges may not be a household name like a lot of other former Tigers pitchers, but frankly he probably should be. What is even wilder is that he would have likely added to his numbers, but he missed the 1944 season while he served in the U.S. Army during World War II. He did manage to return for 1945 and promptly won another World Series.

Justin Verlander - 56.6 WAR

It has been a few seasons since Justin Verlander was traded by the Tigers to the Astros in a rare blockbuster waiver wire move, but wow was he good for Detroit from 2005 to 2017. In 2511 innings in a Tigers uniform, Verlander posted a 3.49 ERA and 3.48 FIP with 2373 strikeouts. Altogether, that totaled 56.6 rWAR and earns him the #2 starter spot in the Tigers' all-time rotation.

Verlander's career accomplishments are unimpeachable as he won Rookie of the Year in 2006, the Cy Young and MVP in 2011, made six All-Star teams as a Tiger, led the league in strikeouts four times, and had numerous high finishes in Cy Young races in addition to his 2011 win all while with the Tigers.

The only blemish on Verlander's tenure in Detroit was that he wasn't ever able to win a World Series ring there despite having a couple of shots at it. The guy misses bats, throws a lot of strikes, and has been one of the best pitchers of this era of baseball.

We still have to wait to see where Verlander stands all-time amongst pitchers in baseball history because he is still going strong after 18 seasons in the league. However, the surefire Hall of Famer locked in his spot in the Tigers' all-time rotation regardless of where he ends up in MLB's pitching pantheon.