Dating back to May 8th, the Detroit Tigers are 49-39. That’s the same record as Atlanta. That’s half a game ahead of Boston, Cincinnati, and San Diego. That’s better than Toronto, and widely better than Philadelphia. It’s percentage points back of Oakland for the eighth-best record in baseball over that stretch. It’s an impressive record, and with it coming largely by way of production from a young, club-controlled core, there’s excitement for next season.
The excitement is justified. That’s a good record, the Tigers have the 14th-best run differential in the league over that stretch so it’s not an outrageous record, a lot of the production is young, and they’ll hopefully have a healthier Matthew Boyd next year than this year—though Spencer Turnbull’s Tommy John recovery will hurt.
But at the same time, there are red flags. That run differential/record gap does exist. The current schedule-independent projections, which account for Turnbull’s absence but expect some innings from Boyd, indicate the roster grades out as the seventh-worst in the majors. And that schedule-independent piece betrays something crucial as well: The Tigers have an easy schedule this year. They play in the AL Central. Their interleague partner this year has been the NL Central.
To be completely fair, the Tigers actually have a winning record over this May-8th-to-today stretch against playoff contenders. I believe it’s 13-11. But that’s just 24 games out of 88 in total that have been played against playoff-caliber competition, when right now 16 of the league’s 30 teams are still in the race. An average schedule would feature nearly twice as many games against playoff hopefuls.
The schedule will be easy again next year. But it’s unlikely it’ll be this easy. It’s hard to envision the Twins being less competitive than they’ve been this year. It wouldn’t be stunning to see Cleveland improve. There’s an expectation Kansas City will at least mildly get better. Even the White Sox may be a stronger team next year than they are this season, given how many injuries they’ve suffered and where they sit on either side of the aggregate aging curve. Elsewhere on the slate, instead of getting to play the NL Central, a pit of mediocrity with three good pitchers at the top, the Tigers are going to have to deal with the NL West, something that could cost them something like four or five games in a crowded wild card race.
The pieces are there for the Tigers to make a 2022 playoff push. But those pieces aren’t quite enough. It will take more. Some of that could come from within—Spencer Torkelson and Riley Greene are both top ten prospects on FanGraphs, Matt Manning seems to have had some bad luck in his ten starts so far. But Torkelson and Greene would have to be some kind of rookies to make the difference all by themselves.
We’ll see what the offseason holds.
