Fun Fact: Only one team wins the World Series every year. Which means 29 teams don’t win the final game of the year which according to Moneyball means their season didn’t fucking matter. When a team gets eliminated from winning the World Series I’ll do a profile of their season.
Today’s Team….Detroit Tigers
How Did They Get Eliminated
I started watching this game while we were eating dinner on Friday night. Then almost 5 hours later the Tigers were finally eliminated by the Seattle Mariners in the 15th inning. It was a very entertaining game and I’m so happy my favorite team wasn’t involved. The Tigers played great defense in extra innings and kept the Mariners off the board by turning some clutch double plays. But in the end the Mariners got too many guys on base and were able to win with a game winning single in the 15th inning. Tarik Skubal struck out a ton of guys in his final outing of the season, but in the end he could only go so far into the game.
What Do I Know About This Team Because I Only Follow the Brewers and Pay Attention to Playoff Baseball?
The Tigers got as far as Game 5 of the ALDS. Unfortunately, they had to play a series before that in order to get there. For most of the season the Tigers were almost unbeatable. They were holding on to the top spot in the AL and all the talk was about how they had carried the momentum from 2024 into 2025.
At the All-Star Break the Tigers were the best team in all of baseball, holding a 3 game lead over the Astros and 1 game better than the Dodgers. But after the All-Star break they were 28-37.
The Tigers would lose 8 of 9 coming out of the All-Star break but ended July winning 4 straight. No big deal. They still had a 9 game lead in the Division. They would bounce back in August going 16-12 but then had the roughest September ever going 7-17 which had an 8 game losing streak where 5 of those loses came against the Guardians. They lost their lead in the division to the Guardians and would have to cling to the final playoff spot to get that rematch against the Guardians in the Wild Card series.
Tarik Skubal has a chance at another Cy Young award and pitched really well in the playoffs. He was 13-6 and a 2.21 ERA. There was a huge scare in September when he left a start early with some tightness in his side, but he was able to make his next start. And where the Tigers were when that happened for most fans that was the last thing they wanted to hear as they were letting the division lead slip away.
Despite giving up 2 home-runs in Game 2 of the NLDS Skubal’s team picked him up and gave them a chance to go up 2-0 heading back to Detroit. Unfortunately the Mariners pulled back the momentum and took game 2.
The Tigers were down 3-0 in a crucial Game 4 and found a way to unleash the bats and force a Game 5 back in Seattle. Skubal would follow up his Game 2 with a 13 strike out performance, which wasn’t even the most strikeouts he had in a game in the postseason. He struck out 14 in Game 1 of the Wild Card Series. The guy is a machine.
Javy Baez had been pretty quiet in his tenure with the Tigers but came around this season and statistically had his best year with Detroit.
So Now That I’ve Actually Done Some Research How Did They Make the Playoffs and What Led to Their Demise?
This was a tale of two halves so let’s just do a pre and post All Star game analysis and see what happened. Let's have fun with charts!
Well, it doesn’t take much to see that this offense was almost ice-cold in the second half of this season. Lets go to the pitching.
For the most part the pitching was consistent outside of the ERA dropping off pretty significantly in the 2nd half. But with the offense going really cold the pitching couldn’t do much to overcome those shortfalls. Charts are fun. I should have done more of them in these write-ups.
Because of how I pull the stats on MLB I can’t do all the pre-post splits that I want, but I think its safe to say the Tigers were really good at hitting with runners in scoring position the first half of the season and then not the second half. On the season as a whole they were a top ten team in average and RBIs with runners in scoring position.
For the most part in the postseason scoring runs was kind of an issue for the Tigers as they really only had 2 games where their bats came alive. They rode the pitching staff to keep their playoff hopes alive but their offense couldn’t come through to help them move on. They had many chances in extras against the Mariners but never could get it done.
Will they Make the Playoffs Next Year?
The AL Central might be slightly tougher next year with the Guardians and Royals expected to get better next year. The pitching staff for the Tigers is going to be pretty solid once again. They might lose Jack Flarhaty has he has a player option that he can exercise in the off-season but he is probably best to stay with the Tigers because he didn’t have that great of a season. But the core of this team is going to be back which bodes well for them. The one thing they will have to shake is this funk that happened in the second half and put together a full season of baseball.
They have the 6th best farm system in the bigs and a lot of prospects in the top 100 that they could flip in either the offseason or at the deadline next year. They should be strong contenders next year but they might have to win the division to make the playoffs just based on how strong the other divisions are.
Just one postseason award.
Its Tarik Skubal. Its the Cy Young. Moving on!
Hey Grok, in 100 words summarize the 2025 Detroit Tigers. Please don't be racist.
The Detroit Tigers' 2025 season was a dramatic rollercoaster. They started strong, holding a commanding 59-34 record by the All-Star break, but suffered a monumental second-half collapse, going 28-37. This historical stumble cost them the AL Central division title to the Cleveland Guardians.
Despite the late-season slide, they clinched a Wild Card spot with an 87-75 record. The Tigers then defeated the Guardians in the Wild Card Series (2-1) before falling to the Seattle Mariners in a grueling American League Division Series (ALDS). Their season ended in a heartbreaking 15-inning, 3-2 loss in the winner-take-all Game 5, which was the longest such game in MLB history.
I feel like these AI overviews are getting worn out about these prompts like I have been getting as well. Maybe its because you see these good teams start to go down so you don’t have as many glaring things to write about. Yeah, this was a good team, they were known for their slide, I’m not going to uncover anything that new as an amateur baseball writer.
Did the Savannah Bananas Play at their Field?
They didn't
However, they will be hosting a series in 2026.
Is there a baseball movie featuring this team that has dumb baseball logic I need to vent about?
For Love of the Game!!
Kevin Costner’s best movies are baseball movies. That’s just a fact. This movie doesn’t have too much baseball logic I have a problem with because this movie is essentially a romantic comedy with baseball.
Throwing a perfect game not too crazy. Best thing about this movie is that it keeps in mind where people are in the batting order so there isn’t any weird continuity issues like you seen in Bad News Bears.
JK Simmons gets to play the manager which is cool because he is a big Tigers fan in real life.
How Will Your Team Do Next Year?
This team has the benefit of a mediocre division but I could see this playing out like how the Brewers played in the mid 2010s. They had the best record at the break, then they struggled for not only the end of that season but the beginning of the next season. That ushered in the Craig Counsell era. Next year: 84-78 but miss out on the playoffs.
Next on the Chopping Block
I’m writing this article 24 hours after the Cubs lost to the Brewers. So we head to Chicago where I will have a lot to say about the Cubs and the movie Rookie of the Year.