After six weeks of watching their shadows in the Florida sunshine, the Tigers made their annual migration north from spring training Tuesday afternoon. And when the plane landed in Detroit, they were in for a pleasant surprise. “We got in and it was like 70 degrees — it was a little bit of a teaser,” said
DETROIT — Akil Baddoo finally had his “Welcome to the big leagues” moment. It took an entire Spring Training, a team flight north to Detroit, and a few steps towards the vast outfield at Comerica Park to get there. “It is really big,” Baddoo said, his eyes widening as he recalled it later Wednesday morning
Nothing is back to normal. Not totally. But we are getting closer. You can feel the optimism. Vaccines are going into arms. Spring is here, even if there are days when it doesn’t feel like it, and the Detroit Tigers will kick off their season Thursday against the Cleveland Indians at Comerica Park. Ironically, if
Detroit Tigers left-hander Gregory Soto is a special arm out of the bullpen. Entering the 2021 season, his third year in the majors, the 26-year-old is trying to lock down the coveted closer role. His resume explains everything: A 100 mph fastball, a nasty wipeout slider and — the drawback, like so many Tigers closers before
We’re fewer than 24 hours away from the start of the 2021 MLB season, when the Detroit Tigers kick off their year against Cleveland and reigning American League Cy Young Award winner Shane Bieber. Rogelio posted our season predictions earlier, but this post is a bit more focused. We want to point you toward five…
Detroit – Akil Baddoo walked down the steps that lead from the Tigers’ clubhouse to the dugout before the team’s workout at Comerica Park on Wednesday and for the first time looked out onto the massive expanse of manicured green lawn. For a rookie outfielder who has never played a game above High-A, it was
Hear it straight from the players’ mouths, Opening Day is a big deal. Miguel Cabrera, Matthew Boyd, and JaCoby Jones each bring a vet’s perspective, but young guys like Willi Castro and Grayson Greiner know there’s plenty of reasons to be excited heading into the 2021 season.
When the Detroit Tigers hired AJ Hinch as manager in late October, the future plans became undeniably clear. You don’t hire a former World Series champion to start from scratch. This isn’t 2017, when the Tigers succumbed to the rebuilding process by trading away Justin Verlander, Justin Upton, J.D. Martinez, Alex Avila and Justin Wilson. So far,
Our Slack channel has provided a place to work out ideas and opinions about the Detroit Tigers. Today’s question in our channel was I asked our contributors their thoughts about the upcoming 2021 season and give us their “hot take predictions” on where Detroit is heading in 2021.
Lakeland, Florida – When we all have been staring too many times at masked faces the past 12 months, it was soothing to look across a Lakeland baseball field in March, 2021. Not as inspiring was studying a particular sector of the Tigers’ regular lineup. The outfield. Robbie Grossman. JaCoby Jones. Victor Reyes. On some
Well it’s been quite a year, folks. We don’t know about you, but 2020 and early 2021 have sorely tested our ability to predict what’s going to happen next, and we’ve been humbled in the process. Usually, we just have our bad baseball predictions to humble us. 2020 wasn’t our worst year in terms of
Baseball in the snow? It doesn’t happen often but when it does, there are some great moments! Check out two here from Indians-Orioles and Andy Pettitte putting on a great display. Don’t forget to subscribe! https://www.youtube.com/MLBClassics Follow us elsewhere too: Twitter: https://twitter.com/MLB Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mlb/ & https://www.instagram.com/mlbvault/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mlb TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/share/user/656… Visit our site for all
The Detroit Tigers are approaching the point in their rebuild where identifying the key contributors to the next successful era of Tigers baseball is of paramount importance. It has become very trendy in Major League Baseball (I’m looking at you White Sox) to sign young players to extensions to create cost certainty and hopefully generate…
By Steve Adams and Anthony Franco | March 30, 2021 at 10:38pm CDT The Tigers will open the season with Miguel Cabrera lined up at first base, manager A.J. Hinch told reporters this morning (Twitter link via Jason Beck of MLB.com). “I think he gives us the best chance to win at first base,” Hinch
Detroit Free Press Show Caption Hide Caption Detroit Tigers GM Al Avila: ‘From Day 1, we emphasized winning’ Detroit Tigers general manager Al Avila discusses Tuesday, March 30, 2021, the progress he saw from his team in spring training. Evan Petzold, Detroit Free Press For the first time since 2019, Detroit Tigers fans — if
The Detroit Tigers are like an Abbott and Costello routine come to life… Me: Who’s on first? Tigers manager AJ Hinch: Everybody. Me: Everybody? Hinch: Yes, everybody. Me: At first? Hinch: Right. [ Miguel Cabrera will start at first base on Opening Day ] Me: Let’s start over. Let’s say Castro is at shortstop. He gets
Detroit — For general manager Al Avila, it must feel a little bit like coming to the end of a long, dark tunnel and seeing, at last, some light. Thursday will be Avila’s 20th Opening Day with the Tigers and his sixth as the general manager. But it might well be the first one in
No one can see the future, not even those guys on Shark Tank. But that didn’t stop some of us at the Free Press from peering into the gloom to try and figure out what’s in store for the Detroit Tigers during the 2021 season. Five Free Press sports writers — Evan Petzold, Carlos Monarrez,
The last time a player wearing a Tigers uniform did it was on a Tuesday night in September 1974, at Baltimore, where a crowd that might or might not have been as large as the 11,492 listed watched a game between Detroit and the Baltimore Orioles. Leading off the Tigers’ fourth, Al Kaline stroked a
Last year, we saw Albert Pujols tie and then pass Willie Mays for fifth-most home runs all-time and Mike Trout reach 300 career home runs to become the Angels’ all-time leader, among various career milestones. With each new baseball season, there are always more milestones to look out for — and 2021 is no exception.