Can the Tigers storm into the MLB playoffs? What to know about Detroit’s furious fight for a wild-card berth

With the stealth, dexterity, and working silence of a Parisian cat burglar, the Detroit Tigers have sidled back into the American League playoff race. 

Tuesday night’s 11-0 ritual disemboweling of the Colorado Rockies pushed the Tigers to 74-71 on the season and also brought them to within three games of the third and final wild-card spot in the American League. This is a notable reversal for a club that as recently as Independence Day was a season-worst nine games under .500. 

So how has A.J. Hinch’s club sneaked back into contention beneath our very eyes, and what are their chances of making the playoffs for the first time in a full decade? Let’s have a quick look at the suddenly relevant Detroiters.  

The surge comes in part after a deadline sell-off

On the morning of the July 30 trade deadline, the Tigers were 52-56, in fourth place in the AL Central, and 13 games behind the first-place Cleveland Guardians. On the wild-card front, the Tigers were 6 1/2 games out of the final spot and behind five other teams in that queue. All of that means the Tigers were playoff longshots, and that’s why president of baseball ops Scott Harris positioned them as sellers leading up to the deadline. And sell they did.

Two days prior to the deadline, they shipped off catcher Carson Kelly to the Texas Rangers, and then on deadline day Harris flipped Jack Flaherty, one of the most coveted starting pitchers on the block, to the Los Angeles Dodgers just before the bell. As well, veteran reliever Andrew Chafin went to Texas on July 30, and outfielder Mark Canha was dealt to the San Francisco Giants. In terms of Wins Above Replacement, or WAR (what’s this?), all those moves amounted to roughly 4 1/2 wins out the door. That’s quite a hit, which makes the Tigers’ return to relevance in recent weeks all the more surprising. 

Run prevention has driven their surge

Since that July 4 low point noted above, the Tigers are 35-23. That comes to a winning percentage of .603, and that’s tops in the AL over that span. Pitching and defense, broadly speaking, has been the story for the Tigers in recent weeks. Since July 4, the Tigers have allowed just 204 runs in 58 games – the fewest of any team in Major League Baseball across that stretch. That’s impressive in any context, and it’s more impressive still considering they’ve been without Flaherty and Chafin for most of that time. 

Of particular note is the work of lefty high-leverage reliever/occasional opener Tyler Holton. Since July 4, he’s pitched to an ERA of 0.46 in 39 innings. Across those 39 innings, he’s walked just five batters and permitted only one home run. The bullpen as a whole since July 4 has put up an ERA of 2.98, and just 10 1/3 of their 293 1/3 innings over that span came from the now-departed Chafin. On the rotation front, Tarik Skubal has continued to pitch like the Cy Young candidate he is, and the pitchers presently behind him in the Detroit rotation have either thrived across limited samples or fared well enough by back-end standards. 

On offense, Riley Greene continues to be the pace-setter in terms of overall value. As well, Parker Meadows and Kerry Carpenter have combined to slash .300/.355/.560 with 28 extra-base hits in 207 at-bats over these last two months-plus of note. 

They’re still not likely to make the playoffs 

With less than three weeks to go in the regular season, any lead is a substantial one. And that’s the case for the Minnesota Twins‘ three-game lead over Detroit in the race for the last playoff spot in the AL bracket. The Tigers have done laudable work for several weeks running, but they greatly disadvantaged themselves earlier in the year when they went 21-34 in May and June combined. 

As well, the remaining schedule isn’t entirely in the Tigers’ favor. Of their 17 regular-season games left to play, nine come against the Baltimore Orioles and Kansas City Royals – two of the AL’s best teams who still figure to be going full bore for playoff-berth and seeding purposes when the Tigers play them. Detroit also has no more remaining games against the Twins, which means no more chances to directly whittle down Minnesota’s lead. The schedule isn’t all bad news for the Tigers, though, as they still have two games left against Colorado, and then they end the regular season with three games against the Chicago White Sox, one of the worst teams ever to trip over all three bases en route to being thrown out at the plate by 40 feet. That’s a metaphor, but it might well have actually happened. 

All of these considerations add up to this: SportsLine right now gives the Tigers just a 10.9% chance of reaching the playoffs. That figure is higher than it’s been in some time, but it’s still low. All that said, the reality is they’re right now playing relevant baseball in Detroit, and that’s worth talking about, which we just did.