Detroit Tigers: Designing the perfect arsenal based on the 2023 pitching staff

Designing an arsenal based off Detroit Tigers pitchers.

Everyone's seen the memes and pictures where they build the best player in the sport using tools from all sorts of athletes within. I.e., Miguel Cabrera's swing, Aaron Judge's power, Aroldis Chapman's fastball velocity, etc. Let's build the "perfect" arsenal for a Detroit Tigers pitcher, using individual pitchers from the entire pitching staff.

The perfect arsenal does not exist in this regard, and a pitcher utilizing all of these individual pitches would probably get rocked, but given the Detroit Tigers' off-season is likely to be a bland one, why not have some fun and do some thinking? If you take these five individual pitches and teach them to the perfect player, it would be ideally make for a tough look for hitters.

For the Detroit Tigers faithful out there, think about which players have the best stuff on the staff. Which players have the nasty pitches, get some tough swings from opposing hitters, and have that stuff to miss bats? This is not some foolproof assignment. For example, if you taught a whole staff to throw the Mariano Rivera cutter, Joaquin Benoit splitter, or Greg Maddux slider, it won't work the same for each arm, and it won't be some pathway to success.

The point is that this article is about fun and what could be. It's analytical but for fun. There's much more to pitch design and creating an arsenal that works for a pitcher than just picking the outliers. Plus, other factors like tunneling, mechanics, arm action, etc., play a role.