The White Sox own the Tigers
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Recap: White sox vs tigers
A.J. Reilly: These last three games against the Chicago White Sox. First, they were swept, at home, by a division rival. That’s not great at all. But they weren’t just swept, they were put in their place by a team that had come in losing 11 out of their last 17, a team whose manager walked a player in a one, two count and gave him a free base intentionally.
This is the team that came into Detroit and said, nope, you’re still worse than we are. Outscored them 27 to 6 in three games. It was so bad on Wednesday afternoon. The Detroit Tigers didn’t even use their bullpen after the sixth inning and had Harold Castro, Kody Clemens, and Tucker Barnhart, all throw one inning each, using position players to pitch.
Because it wasn’t worth it to expend the efforts of the bullpen any further. And it was really disappointing. 14 strikeouts in game two, terrible baseball. They lost Monday night, 9 to 5. Then they turn around and lose 5 to 1 on Tuesday and then 13 to nothing Wednesday, and it was just brutal.
And I think this is who they are. Unfortunately, a team that’s probably not going to sniff 500 because in every aspect of the game, this week against the White Sox, they were bad. They didn’t have a starter go longer than four innings. Our starting pitchers gave the Tigers 11 innings over 3 games.
They didn’t even average 4 innings for the series. It was brutal, bad and it was terrible. Faedo got roughed up Wednesday first time. Okay. We can maybe give him a pass cuz he was bound to have a clunker at some point like Skubal. Against the Blue Jays. I get that Drew Hutchinson was called up to make a bullpen start on Tuesday.
Rony Garcia is not great either. On Monday it was just bad. It was just bad. And when the bullpen came in, they weren’t much better. But I think that this is who the Tigers are and I told you that we would get to some numbers. So let’s look at these numbers. I like statistics because, I watch the games and I analyze what I see based on what, the eye test, but the numbers really.
They don’t score runs. They have 72 weighted runs created as a team, which is 28% lower than the MLB average at a hundred. That’s how bad this offense is, but it gets worse. They have a 24.3% strikeout rate, which is fifth-worst in the MLB. They have a 6.6% walk rate, which is second-worst in the MLB.
And then when we talk about, when they do put the ball in play, they have a 0 9, 7 isolated power metric, which is the worst in MLB. It is something that takes singles out of the equation and just measures how a team produces extra base hits. And what that metric says is the tigers don’t hit for extra base hits.
They had 12 hits in game one. Two of them were for extra base hits. They had nine hits in game two. One of them was for extra bases. They had four, a grand total of four hits in game three, zero for extra bases. They have 31 home runs as a team. Aaron Judge has 24 by himself. And if you think that it could be like maybe they run the bases.
Nope. Base running team in the majors, metrically negative 10.7 BSR. Which is a weighted base running category that determines how they add runs to their ledger based on the way that they run taking into account stolen bases, caught stealing, taking extra bases, all the good base running metrics.
They’re the worst team in baseball actually costing themselves about 10.7 runs over the course of the season. And like we said, in this series, the pitching wasn’t any better. They were just bad. Could not put the White Sox away with two outs and you gotta give the White Sox credit.
Look, the White Sox did exactly what they’re supposed to do when you play a team that’s worse than you, you step on their throat and tell ’em that they don’t match up.
And they did the White Sox offensively with two outs score. Half of their runs for the series with two outs, 13 out of their 27. So just a little bit less than half with two outs, four outta nine runs in the game. One was with two outs, three out of five runs in game two.
I’m sorry, four out of nine in game 1 were with two outs. Three outta five in game 2 were with two outs and you would think, oh Wednesday, they just knocked the ball out of the park.
Yeah, they scored 13 runs. They probably were getting those well before two outs. Nope. Almost half of their runs on Wednesday came with two outs. Six out of those 13 runs they scored on Wednesday were with two outs. The pitching could not put this offense away and I’m telling you. and I said this to one of my friends earlier, this team just did the White Sox.
A huge favor. This team came in struggling and had won six outta the last 17 games. We have already mentioned that and we just told them, guess what? You’re a pretty good ball team. Guess what? You can hit the ball. Yoan Moncada hadn’t homed in 23 games. Guess what he did in the first inning on Wednesday? Hit a three-run homer with two out.
We gave them the opportunity to just prove to themselves that they should be the best team in the Al Central. And we let them get out of Detroit with a lot of confidence. And that is now going to be a scary team. They got Joe Kelly back in the bullpen, even though Liam Hendriks is on the 15-day DL or IL, I’m sorry that Tim Anderson‘s gonna be coming back at some point, that team is going to be getting very good, very shortly.
And probably going to use this series, this sweep of the Detroit Tigers as a way to jumpstart this season and become the potential contender that they are. And they have no one else to thank, but the Detroit Tigers who just basically gift-wrapped them a three-game series and said, man, we don’t want it. Just go ahead.
Just walk out of Detroit with three wins under your belt. We’re not even gonna really be competitive. Now the Tigers had opportunities. Sure. And game 1 really took a turn. Probably left Rony in a little bit too long in that fifth inning, but still, just non-competitive baseball is what these last three games.
So we take a breath and we try to move on because baseball is a long season and the Tigers are welcoming in a team in the Texas Rangers who are, I would say middle. They were a better team coming in than the White Sox at this point. Just record-wise, right? They’re 29 and 33 as they sit right now.
But this is a team that can run the base. This is a team that, as far as that weighted runs category goes, is just slightly below MLB average at about 3% below average, 97 weighted runs created. So it’s gonna again be a very tall task for eight Tigers team that has lost four straight. Has an incredibly we’re talking, hanging on by the skin of their teeth, pitching staff who stood on their head and have done a great job.
And I know that over the course of this show, I’ve talked and I’ve said that, I’m not necessarily too worried about the offense because water does find its level, the numbers, are making me regret those words a little bit. So as a man that owns up to what he says I have to say maybe I was.
But when I look at this pitching staff that stood on its head, literally hanging on by the skin of its teeth, and really the only reason why the Tigers have been competitive, it’s thinning out and it’s getting dangerously thin. We’ve seen when starters can’t give us five, six innings. We don’t stand a chance.
And one of the more concerning things for me is when I’m watching a game and it’s the first inning and the team, the other team scores. First, the opposing team scores. First, you almost get this sense of deflation like here we go again. You don’t see the team claw back. You don’t see them grind out at-bats and get runners on and move runners over and push across runs to make the game competitive. And that’s concerning.
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