Framber Valdez threw 84 pitches Monday night against the Tampa Bay Rays.

The Rays swung at 41 of them.

They missed exactly zero.

That is not a typo, and it produced one of the strangest pitching performances the Detroit Tigers have seen in the pitch-tracking era. Valdez became the first Tigers pitcher since tracking began in 2008 to induce 41 swings without a single whiff during Detroit’s 4-1 loss at Comerica Park. MLB.com’s Jason Beck detailed the unusual outing

The previous Detroit high was 33 swings without a miss against Kenny Rogers in 2008. Across MLB, no pitcher had allowed at least 41 swings without generating a whiff since Génesis Cabrera reached 44 for St. Louis in 2019.

And somehow, Valdez still gave the Tigers six innings.

Framber Valdez Had No Whiffs, But It Wasn’t a Disaster

There are outings where a pitcher fails to miss bats because everything he throws is getting hammered.

This was not quite that simple.

Valdez allowed four runs, three earned, on eight hits and two walks. He did not record a strikeout, marking the first time in his nine-year career that he completed at least six innings without one. Tampa Bay did plenty of damage when Valdez elevated, including Jonathan Aranda’s sixth-inning home run, but Detroit’s defense also converted enough of the contact into outs to get Valdez through a quality start.

Valdez was not particularly bothered by the empty strikeout column.

“No strikeouts, but it doesn’t mean I was not effective,” Valdez told MLB.com through team translator Carlos Guillen. “I just did my best to get them to hit ground balls.”

For most pitchers, that explanation might sound like an attempt to put lipstick on an ugly pitching line.

For Valdez, there is actually some evidence behind it.

Baseball Savant’s current Statcast numbers show that Valdez has generated a 54.5% ground-ball rate this season. His sinker accounts for roughly 45% of his pitches, so getting hitters to put the baseball on the ground is not Plan B. It is central to how he pitches.

That is part of what made Monday so weird.

Valdez is not a pitcher who needs 12 strikeouts to be effective. He also isn’t normally incapable of making anyone miss.

His curveball has generated a 31.9% whiff rate this season, while his slider sits at 44.0%, according to his Statcast pitch data. Tampa Bay managed to make contact with everything anyway.

Rays Made Valdez Work Differently

Tampa Bay entered the night as one of the American League’s toughest teams to strike out, and Valdez adjusted accordingly.

He even brought back a cutter he had not used in a regular-season game since 2023 while trying to change looks.

“They’re very aggressive. They’re very fast, too,” Valdez said after the game. “I did my best to have them hit ground balls as much as they could.”

That worked well enough to keep Detroit within reach.

Kevin McGonigle was particularly busy behind him, recording nine plays at third base, including a diving stop on Yandy Díaz that helped turn one of Tampa Bay’s many balls in play into an out. McGonigle has already become one of the young players carrying a larger share of Detroit’s season, something that was evident when he recently pushed back against those writing off the Tigers.

Manager A.J. Hinch thought Valdez survived the contact reasonably well until pitches began leaking into more dangerous locations.

“They just got a lot of at-bats on him,” Hinch said. “He’d held them down enough, but anytime he elevated, it got hit pretty hard.”

That is probably the fairest assessment.

Zero whiffs sounds disastrous. Three earned runs over six innings does not.

Both can be true.

The Bigger Concern for Detroit

The strange pitching line would be easier to appreciate as baseball trivia if the Tigers were winning.

They aren’t.

Monday’s loss dropped Detroit to 61-70, extending its losing streak to six games and making it nine losses in the last 10. The Tigers were already watching their postseason position deteriorate before returning home, and another respectable starting-pitching performance did not change the result.

Valdez was signed during the offseason to be one of the veterans capable of stabilizing Detroit’s rotation after the organization made a major financial commitment to him. The original three-year deal represented one of Detroit’s biggest offseason investments.

Monday was not what anyone pictured when that contract was signed.

It also wasn’t the train wreck that 41 swings and zero misses might suggest.

For one night, Valdez essentially tried to win a Major League game without fooling anybody.

The bizarre part is how close he came to making it work.