Who will fill out Tigers’ starting rotation?
Manning, Mize, Olson in battle for final two spots
LAKELAND, Fla. – The Detroit Tigers are looking at every combination for the starting rotation.
There aren’t any wrong answers.
Some answers might be better than others, but arguments could be made for any combination of three pitchers to be in the five-man Opening Day starting rotation. Matt Manning, Casey Mize and Reese Olson are battling for the final two spots, with three spots already filled by Tarik Skubal, Kenta Maeda and Jack Flaherty.
“There are days it’s impossible to break down fairly,” manager A.J. Hinch said. “From a pitching standpoint, we have a week left, there’s a much larger number of candidates than even optimistically we could have asked for.”
The Tigers won’t utilize a six-man rotation or tandem starters.
Either Manning, Mize or Olson is expected to be optioned to Triple-A Toledo.
Sending down one of the pitchers is going to be a tough decision, but barring an injury in the final week of spring training games, it’s a decision that will need to be made by Hinch, president of baseball operations Scott Harris and general manager Jeff Greenberg before Opening Day on March 28.
All three of them understand it’s a fierce competition.
“It’s a hard team to make,” Manning said March 3. “I’m just doing me.”
“I’m in a competition right now,” Mize said March 8. “I know that.”
“I’m trying to focus on what I can control,” Olson said Sunday. “I’m just trying to do what I do.”
The Tigers assumed one of the three starters would underperform, or one of the six starters would suffer an injury. Neither of those things have happened through five
weeks of spring training.
Manning, 26, has a 3.75 ERA with four walks and 15 strikeouts across 12 innings in four games; Mize, 26, has a 3.38 ERA with seven walks and 10 strikeouts across 102⁄3 innings in four games; Olson, 24, has a 3.68 ERA with four walks and 14 strikeouts across 142⁄3 innings in five games.
“These guys, they’re all doing it,” Hinch said.
The three pitchers are showing out beyond the box score, too.
Manning, the No. 9 overall pick in 2016, is finally missing bats with his fastball and improved secondary pitches, and his fastball has ticked up in velocity; Mize, the No. 1 overall pick in 2018, is sharpening the command of his fastball, which also ticked up in velocity, in his return from elbow surgery and back surgery, and his slider has been dominant recently; Olson, optimized by the Tigers’ pitching department after being acquired at the trade deadline in 2021, remains as steady as ever with his wicked secondary pitches protecting his hittable high-velocity fastball, and when he locates his fastball, he becomes unstoppable.
The Tigers don’t have anything to gain by optioning Mize and Manning, but that’s not the case with Olson, who has 123 days of service time. He is currently on the borderline for Super Two status if he stays on the majorleague roster for each of the next two seasons, but if he gets optioned to Triple-A Toledo for a few weeks, he won’t have any chance of qualifying for Super Two status.
From a performance standpoint, there isn’t a wrong order when ranking the competitive trio of Manning, Mize and Olson. Everyone has MLB experience, including Olson’s 1.44 ERA in September last season, and nobody has done anything to hurt their chances in spring training.
But the Tigers can’t put all three into the Opening Day starting rotation.
Three starters for two rotation spots is at the forefront of the final week in spring training, but there are other roster decisions that will need to be made by Hinch, Harris and Greenberg leading up to March 28 against the Chicago White Sox, such as three relievers for two bullpen spots with right-hander Beau Brieske, right-hander Alex Faedo and lefthander Joey Wentz.
“There are still roles to be played out,” Hinch said. “There are still leverage innings to grab ahold of. There are decisions that we have to make that we’ll communicate to the guys, but it’s nice and competitive.”