Detroit News

Chris McCosky | The Detroit News Lakeland, Fla. — He earned his second All-Star berth at age 30, just three years ago. As recently as 2010, he was plus-10 defender behind the plate. As recently as 2015, he threw out base-stealers at a 44 percent clip. His pop time to second base, last year, at age

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The fans have spoken. In a Detroit News poll with 1,057 votes, Detroit-area sports fans picked the Tigers to edge out the Lions as the local team most likely to finally compete for a championship and break the long drought of the four rebuilding franchises. ►Tigers: 33.43% ►Lions: 32.96% ►Pistons: 19.46% ►Red Wings: 14.15% The

Chris McCosky | The Detroit News Lakeland, Fla. — Every day, it seems, the Tigers are either adding or in talks to add more pitching. Veteran Wily Peralta agreed to a minor-league deal Thursday night. And on Friday, as talk swirled of a possible reunion with Rick Porcello, Tigers general manager Al Avila ended up with a very different

Chris McCosky | The Detroit News Lakeland, Fla. — On Friday, for the first time this spring, Tigers manager AJ Hinch was late to his morning Zoom call with the media. Now, in the recent past, whenever the manager was late to a press conference, it usually meant there was a roster move or some other

Chris McCosky | The Detroit News Lakeland, Fla. — So there was Tyler Alexander, minding his own business, intently paying attention to the morning pitchers’ meeting when all of a sudden all eyes were on him. He’d become the center of attention, an abject teaching point. “It was cool, I guess,” the Tigers’ left-hander said Friday. “I’m a pretty

Associated Press |  The Detroit News Minneapolis — The Minnesota Twins and right-hander Matt Shoemaker finalized a one-year, $2-million contract Friday, another experienced addition to the rotation on the first day of workouts for pitchers and catchers at spring training. Shoemaker, an Eastern Michigan alum and Trenton native, will start his ninth major-league season, after spending two

Associated Press |  Associated Press Windermere, Fla. — Former All-Star baseball player Johnny Damon was arrested Friday in central Florida on a charge of resisting an officer after he was pulled over for suspicion of driving under the influence, according to court and jail records. Damon, 47, was booked into the Orange County Jail early Friday after

Chris McCosky | The Detroit News Lakeland, Fla. — Every day, it seems, the Tigers are either adding or in talks to add more pitching. Veteran Wily Peralta agreed to a minor-league deal Thursday night. With right-hander Taijuan Walker signing with the New York Mets on Friday, the door is now possibly open for a reunion between

Chris McCosky | The Detroit News Lakeland, Fla. – The Tigers on Thursday agreed to terms on a minor-league deal with veteran right-handed reliever Wily Peralta. Eventually the 31-year-old will join the Tigers’ big-league camp, but he is sorting through visa issues. MLB Network’s Jon Heyman, who first reported the deal, said Peralta would earn $1.5

Chris McCosky | The Detroit News Lakeland, Fla. – Yes, AJ Hinch likes versatility. He likes options both with his starting lineup – a day to day lineup, not an everyday lineup. Yes, he’s not big on setting hard-and-fast job descriptions, especially with his bullpen and certainly not in February. But don’t get it twisted. “I don’t

Chris McCosky | The Detroit News Lakeland, Fla. — It can’t be right. Buck Farmer is entering his eighth big-league season with the Tigers? It seems like just yesterday he was jumping four levels of the farm system and making his big-league debut for the last Tigers playoff team in 2014. “It is kind of mind-boggling

Chris McCosky | The Detroit News Lakeland, Fla. — Manager AJ Hinch didn’t sugarcoat it. He not only established an  agenda and objectives for his pitching staff Wednesday, the first day of pitcher-catcher workouts, he challenged them to be the catalysts for the Tigers’ turnaround. “It was invigorating,” Tigers veteran lefty Matthew Boyd said of Hinch’s first

Chris McCosky | The Detroit News Lakeland, Fla. — Tarik Skubal and Matt Manning — the fifth- and third-ranked prospects in the Tigers system per MLBpipeline.com — were throwing off neighboring bullpen mounds on the back fields of Joker Marchant Stadium on Wednesday. Skubal, 6-3, left-handed, coming almost old-school over-the-top with mid- to upper-90 mph heat and

Not a single one of Detroit’s four professional teams can even sniff contendership right now, and that’s all right. We’ve all suffered this long, what’s another year or two while we wait for one of these teams to figure it out? In the meantime, we’ve compiled the worst teams in Detroit sports history for your

We don’t need to rehash the reasons for the misery, do we? Whether it’s a deserved fate or a quirk in timing, Detroit’s pro sports teams are historically bad right now, and that’s not even the story. The story is, how do they get out of this, and who gets out quicker? As the Tigers report

Chris McCosky | The Detroit News Lakeland, Fla. — AJ Hinch called it the elephant in the room, but shoot, this particular elephant has been shadowing Grayson Greiner every spring. “We’ve got Wilson Ramos (signed for one year at $2 million) and then a bunch of people competing for the same job,” Hinch told his catchers Wednesday.

Chris McCosky | The Detroit News Lakeland, Fla. — Manager AJ Hinch didn’t sugarcoat it. He not only established an  agenda and objectives for his pitching staff Wednesday, the first day of pitcher-catcher workouts, he challenged them to be the catalysts for the Tigers’ turnaround. “It was invigorating,” Tigers veteran lefty Matthew Boyd said of Hinch’s first

Bob Wojnowski | The Detroit News Can’t see the whole story? Sign in or subscribe. You probably won’t see everything you crave from the Tigers this season. You won’t get a look at all the prized prospects. You won’t get a taste of playoff contention. You might not even get to sit in the stands, although

Chris McCosky | The Detroit News Lakeland, Fla. — Al Avila walked out onto the field at Joker Marchant Stadium on Tuesday smiling from ear to ear. Usually when he conducts the first big-league staff meeting of the spring with his manager and coaches, it’s a tedious affair, in the stuffy board room inside the administration building,