The Grapefruit League calendar started off with a nice throwback to the Detroit Tigers 2024 stretch drive on Saturday. They were in an early hole, but the bullpen shut down the Phillies and the Tigers farmhands forged a comeback that ended with a Justice Bigbie walkoff single. On Sunday, they’ll make their televised debut on the FanDuel Sports Network as they take to the road against the New York Yankees.
Casey Mize, looking to build on a decent return from UCL reconstruction last year, leads the way as the Tigers’ starting pitcher. Right-hander Sean Boyle, a non-roster invitee, will take the mound for the Yankees.
Things haven’t gone as hoped yet in Mize’s career, but he’s generally been a pretty solid, average major league starting pitcher. He just hasn’t been able to stay healthy. The timing of the injury really split his short major league tenure in half, and after returning to post a 4.49 ERA/3.95 FIP last season, he’s in position to finally take the next step. If it’s going to happen, 2025 is the year.
While the splitter has been obsessed over, the ongoing challenge for Mize is to find a slider that plays well against his much improved fourseam fastball. Mize was throwing pretty hard last year, with good extension and nice vertical movement. He still struggled to get whiffs on the slider and the split. Something has got to improve there this season or the former first overall pick may be confined to a workman like career as a depth starter.
Mize has discussed the slider quite a bit, saying he’s worked on three different variants with slightly different grips and release cues at Driveline Baseball this offseason. That’s the main thing to watch for against the Yankees. If Mize can just stay healthy and get a full season of work in as a starter, there’s still a solid chance he takes another step and becomes a central rotation piece for years to come. The competition is just getting tougher these days with two spots open and Jackson Jobe, Kenta Maeda, Keider Montero, Brant Hurter, and others to contend with.
Parker Meadows and Spencer Torkelson started on Saturday, so you can perhaps expect them to be on the bench on Sunday against the Yankees. We may get looks at Riley Greene, Colt Keith, and Gleyber Torres in this one. A.J. Hinch likes to play to the moment a bit.
Saturday’s recap
Like most spring games, particularly still in February, there wasn’t too much to take away from the first game of the year other than a good time and the return of Dan Dickerson and Tigers radio.
Kenta Maeda backed up reports from camp of improved velocity and looked good in his two innings of work. The veteran struck out four against the better part of the Phillies lineup in this one. He got whiffs on the splitter and the breaking ball both.
Matt Manning’s velocity was good in the 95-97 mph range in his two innings, but he was a little wild and walked four hitters to help the Phillies to their early lead.
Outfielder Ben Malgeri, looking to get some run as a depth outfielder as he moves to Triple-A this season, and Spencer Torkelson, who started at first base, had the two hardest hit balls for the Tigers at 107.2 and 106.8 mph off the bat for a double and a single respectively. Ryan Kreidler and Hao-Yu Lee weren’t far behind. Catching prospect Eliezer Alfonzo came through with probably the biggest hit of the game until Bigbie’s game ender. In the bottom of the sixth, Alfonzo’s two-run double made it 6-3. Malgeri singled in Alfonzo and the Tigers were back in it.