Detroit Tigers slide in latest MLB Power Rankings

The 2022 MLB regular season is off and running and our Detroit Tigers have had their ups and downs as they are off to a 4-5 record.

On Monday, The Athletic dropped their latest MLB Power Rankings and the Tigers checked in at No. 21, which is down four spots from when they were No. 17 a week ago.

http://gty.im/1391832933

Here is what The Athletic has to say about the Tigers.

21. Detroit Tigers

Record as of 4/18: 4-5
Last Power Ranking: 17

After spending a few days in Detroit and coming away thinking the Tigers could be pretty decent this season, I checked in with Cody Stavenhagen’s Twitter feed expecting to see breathless musings of Spencer Torkelson’s feats of strength. Instead, I got this:

• Injury update on Javier Báez.
• Injury update on Andrew Chafin.
• Injury update on Casey Mize.
• Another injury update on Báez
• Rehab update on Michael Pineda.

And those were all within 21 minutes of one another (and said nothing of the wait to get Riley Greene’s broken foot healed, and it was before Matt Manning got hurt). The Tigers still have the makings of an interesting team. Middle-of-the-pack maybe — they’re ranked here for a reason — but at the very least, they could be a factor if a few things break in their favor (like Torkelson living up to the hype, and Austin Meadows returning to form). Gotta get and stay, healthy, though. That’s been a challenge.

Up next for the Tigers is the New York Yankees, who check in at No. 7 in The Athletic’s latest power rankings.

http://gty.im/1240014180

In case you were wondering, the Top 5 in the Power Rankings is as follows:

1. Los Angeles Dodgers (7-2)
2. Toronto Blue Jays (6-4)
3. New York Mets (7-3)
4. San Francisco Giants (7-2)
5. Chicago White Sox (6-3)

To see the full rankings, please click here.

Nation, where would you rank the Detroit Tigers compared to other MLB teams?

Fantasy Baseball: 3 Things We Learned in Week 2

Welcome back to the 3 Things We Learned Series for the 2022 MLB season! This weekly piece will look at the trends, patterns, and interesting statistical touchpoints of the MLB season in order to help you make actionable fantasy decisions.

Baseball fans love their stats. We devour them, dissect them, and build our fantasy rosters around them. Each week of the 2022 baseball season, we will be gifted with another statistical sample size of pitches, plate appearances, and playing time. Knowing it often takes hundreds or even thousands of pitches or batted-ball events for trends to normalize, how should fantasy managers adjust to the ebbs and flows of weekly player performance?

Each week during this season, this piece will look at trends that have emerged over the past week and determine if it is signal or noise moving forward. What is prescriptive in helping build winning fantasy teams and what can be ignored as small sample size noise? Hopefully, we can make sense of what has just happened to help us make smarter roster and free agent budget decisions.

Let’s take a look at some of the data from the second scoring period of the 2022 MLB fantasy baseball season.

To read more, please click here.