This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider.
You can subscribe to the newsletter for one year for $59.95 using your PayPal account or major credit card.
--
The Joe Sheehan Newsletter: Tarik and the Tigers
Vol. 17, No. 49
June 30, 2025
Tarik Skubal ended the baseball week Sunday night with his latest masterpiece, striking out 13 Twins in seven one-hit innings. He lowered his ERA to 2.15, and leads the AL in pitching WAR both vanilla (Baseball Reference) and chocolate (FanGraphs). He’s not running away with the Cy Young Award just yet, as this has been a great season for starters in the AL. Garrett Crochet, Max Fried, Jacob deGrom, and Hunter Brown can all push Skubal for the hardware. Still, Skubal is the favorite to become the first pitcher to win consecutive Cys since deGrom did it in 2018 and 2019, and the first AL pitcher to go back-to-back since Pedro Martinez in 1999 and 2000.
Skubal isn’t quite at the level of peak Pedro, who put up two ten-win pitching seasons at the height of the double-expansion offensive era. Still, Skubal bears some resemblance in his ability to do the two things that most contribute to pitching success: striking batters out and limiting walks. He is first among qualified starters in strikeout rate at 33.4%, and second in walk rate to Zack Littell at 3.4%. No other qualified starter is under 4%. Combine the two, and you get a 30% K-BB%. Just nine pitchers have ever done that in a full season.
The Best (highest single season K-BB%, qualified starters, 2020 never counts)
Year K-BB%
Gerrit Cole 2019 34.0%
Pedro Martinez 1999 34.0%
Chris Sale 2017 32.1%
Pedro Martinez 2000 30.8%
Justin Verlander 2019 30.5%
Corbin Burnes 2021 30.4%
Justin Verlander 2018 30.4%
Max Scherzer 2019 30.3%
Randy Johnson 2001 30.3%
When I circle back to the idea, I think I’ve been wrong, and Pedro Martinez is actually the best pitcher who has ever lived. I’ve stumped for Clayton Kershaw and Roger Clemens, and if you completely ignore volume there’s Jacob deGrom. Martinez’s two-year peak may be the best since the 60’6” distance was set back in 1893. Whenever I make charts like this, I end up losing five minutes just staring at his Baseball Reference page and inevitably pulling up this game.
Skubal is edging into this picture because he combines unhittable stuff with excellent control. Just three qualified pitchers throw more pitches in the zone than Skubal does (57%), and no one gives up less contact on those pitches (24%). The ability to throw not just competitive strikes, but dominant ones, is the hallmark of greatness. Skubal struck out 13 men last night, and needed just 93 pitches to do so, because hitters swing at his pitches more than they do anyone else’s -- 55% of them, to be exact. When Skubal doesn’t throw strikes? They also swing, as he induces the third-highest chase rate in the game.
The little contact he allows isn’t very damaging. Among 107 pitchers who have allowed 200 batted balls this year, Skubal has the 12th-lowest rate of pulled fly balls allowed, and the 14th-lowest rate of barrels allowed. He’s allowed the lowest max-EV in the sport -- no ball has been hit harder than 110.2 mph off of him.
He strikes you out a third of the time. You can’t draw walks off of him. When you do make contact, it’s not very good -- no high-end exit velos, few pulled fly balls. Tarik Skubal has become a nearly perfect modern pitcher.
Skubal is the biggest single reason the Tigers have the best record in baseball (well, tied with the Dodgers) and the largest lead of any team -- 11 1/2 games over the Guardians, now 12 1/2 over the Twins after wins the last two days. FanGraphs gives them a 99.2% chance to make the playoffs, and with just six teams above .500 in the AL, that might be low.
The Tigers are third in baseball in run differential at +99, and they have the third-best third-order record in the game. No team has blown out its opponents more often -- 20 times, the Tigers have won by at least five runs. They have the fifth-best offense in baseball by wRC+, the second-best starters’ ERA, fifth-best FIP, sixth-best fWAR. By any measure, they have an above-average, though not elite, defense.
It’s about depth. The Tigers have had 12 players come to bat at least 100 times this year, and of those, nine have been above-average hitters. The other three were sent to the minors in June. When I last wrote about the Tigers, I emphasized the injury “luck” that had opened the door for Spencer Torkelson and Javier Baez to save their careers and Dillon Dingler to start his. Those three are still playing well.
The Tigers have seen some of their injured players return, with mixed results. Wenceel Perez, never a top prospect, has a .286/.340/.604 line at 25, and he’s hitting the ball much harder than he did as a rookie. Parker Meadows, whose defense was a critical piece of last year’s late run, has returned with a .187/.274/.320 line, though he’s again catching everything. Scott Harris’s bargain buy of Gleyber Torres has produced a .284/.386/.437 line, that OBP being a career high and top ten in all of MLB. Torres will almost certainly be an All-Star.
I like the way Harris and A.J. Hinch have churned the roster, always looking to pick up edges, not being overly committed to the players on hand. They’ve used 25 hitters this year, tied for fifth in baseball but first among teams currently above .500. This should help them when it comes time to build a playoff roster; there are modern playoff teams that simply don’t have enough useful position players to fill out a postseason bench, when you generally go to a 14/12 roster split. The Tigers can recall Justyn-Henry Malloy for OBP, or Andy Ibañez as a lefty-killer, or even Akil Baddoo as an extra outfielder and pinch-runner.
Unlike last year, Skubal fronts a more traditional starting rotation. Jack Flaherty has made 16 starts, Casey Mize 14. Jackson Jobe started ten times before he blew out his elbow, Reese Olson nine times before injuring his right ring finger. As injuries have piled up, though, Hinch has been more willing to return to pitching chaos. He’s used an opener for Keider Montero the last three times the righty’s turn has come up, and for Sawyer Gipson-Long in three of his five appearances. When Olson returns, he may be handled carefully, used with an opener, but it’s likely that the Tigers, down the stretch, will have a conventional starter in at least four of every five games.
The weak spot, coincidentally, is the bullpen. Starter/reliever splits are a bit fraught now, given the way teams will use openers and tandems and bullpen games. Back on June 21, Brant Hurter faced eight batters before giving way to Gipson-Long, who faced 25. In the stats, Hurter is a starter and Gipson-Long a reliever, and that is a complete reversal of what we’re trying to learn with starter/reliever splits. So when I point out that the Tigers’ bullpen is 13th in ERA, 18th in FIP, and 23rd in fWAR, I have to include a salt lick.
What if we try to get at the question of bullpen quality differently? Say, look at leverage. Tigers’ pitchers throwing in high-leverage spots in last three innings of a game (and extras) have allowed a 146 wRC+ -- worst in all of baseball. They have the highest walk rate allowed in those situations, and remember, we’re mostly narrowing this down to true relievers. Take a look at the individual numbers. Seven Tigers relievers have made at least 20 appearances; just one has a FIP below 3.00, just three below 3.50. This is an average-minus bullpen right now.
Tommy Kahnle and Will Vest closed out last night’s game. The 3-0 victory was their first by three runs or fewer since June 12, but in the last three wins like that, it’s been Kahnle in the eighth and Vest in the ninth. That is a mid-tier closeout pairing, and there’s some shakiness behind the two of them. With hitters to spare and a pretty good starting rotation, Harris has to be in the market for a power arm, or two, preferably ones that aren’t rentals.
The focus does shift to Harris, who will be in a buyer’s position for the first time since become the Tigers’ president of baseball operations in 2022. With his team a near-lock for the playoffs and in good position for a first-round bye, Harris can go into the market focused less on the final two months and more on his playoff roster. Does he want to add a starting pitcher who might be better in a playoff series than Mize, Olson, or Montero? The bullpen definitely needs at least one more guy who misses bats. Baez and Zach McKinstry have played well and are good stories, but is that what you want to go into October with on the left side of the infield?
The good news is that what Harris needs are support pieces rather than core ones, which means he won’t have to trade from the top end of his farm system. The Tigers have two of the top 20 prospects in baseball in outfielder Max Clark and infielder Kevin McGonigle, and neither should be available for less than a long-term solution at third base. One interesting quirk is that the team has two bat-first catching prospects in Thayron Liranzo and Josue Briceno, and they already have what looks to be an average or so catcher in Dillon Dingler in the majors. Liranzo or Briceno could end up as one of the top prospects traded at this deadline, and they would both fit in a Red Sox system if they Sox choose to move Alex Bregman.
For now, though, Tigers fans can sit back and enjoy the ride. They’re watching their best team in more than ten years, built around homegrown talent, and running away with the AL Central.
