Nine spring training stats to remember for Opening Day
Ryan Ford
If you say it three times while looking into a mirror, they say appears behind you …
Spring training stats don’t matter! Spring training stats don’t matter! Spring training stats don’t matter!
Admit it — you looked behind you for a second to see if the Detroit Tigers’ one-time king of spring swings (and summer slumps) popped up.
(Or maybe that was just us.)
In any event, Sunday marked the virtual end of spring training — there’s one more game, Tuesday against the Tampa Bay Rays at their St. Petersburg home, but that’s mostly a formality — which means we can finally steal a glimpse at the meaningless numbers from the annual ultimate small sample size.
We don’t mean to make fun of “Redpop,” who powered his way to a ridiculous nine homers over the first 13 games of the 2006 season … and then hit nine more over the remaining 162 games of his MLB career (over parts of three seasons with the Tigers, Texas Rangers and Seattle Mariners). That burst of April power came, of course, after a shower of five homers in 73 Grapefruit League at-bats. Again, still a pretty small sample size.
Then again, the Tigers’ homer leader that auspicious spring was Curtis Granderson, with six in 71 at-bats. He went on to hit 19 regular-season homers in leading the Tigers to the World Series, then finished with 344 career homers. Likewise, young third baseman Brandon Inge blasted four homers in 69 atbats that spring … then hit 27 homers in the regular season.
What we’re saying is, small sample sizes aren’t the predictors … but they can give us the clues we might look back at in six months to say, “Why didn’t we expect that?”
(Please do not bring up this newsletter in six months.)
And so, with that in mind, here are eight Tigers — four up, four down — who had a statistically … spring.
Four up
best
intriguing
The second-highest paid Tiger, thanks to his one-year, $14 million free agent deal, suddenly looks like a bargain after a spring in which he struck out 26 and walked just four in 181⁄3 innings. Sunday brought his most impressive start yet, in which he struck out eight Rays with no walks over 4 2/3 innings (though he needed 87 pitches, 63 of them strikes, to do it). Flaherty himself was encouraged, telling the Freep’s Evan Petzold, “Last year, I would have some starts or an inning or a hitter that would be good, and then I wouldn’t be able to repeat it. … This spring, I feel like I’ve been able to repeat things over and over and over again a lot better.”
RHP Jack Flaherty:
If playing time was decided on spring stats alone, this second-year Tiger (who turns 31 next week) would have third base locked up. Ibáñez went 12-for-43 with four walks, two doubles and five homers — that’s a slash line of .279/.333/.674 — while striking out just nine times. (For comparison, 13 Tigers struck out at least 10 times this spring as the team racked up 283 Ks in 32 games.) Of course, the hot corner is also the crowded corner, as Ibáñez was splitting time with free-agent signee Gio Urshela, returner Matt Vierling and prospect Jace Jung as well as …
UTIL Andy Ibáñez:
The CMU alum who’s out of options — meaning he makes the Tigers or likely heads somewhere else on waivers — didn’t put up eye-popping stats, but his .294/.435/.412 slash line is kinda what you want to see from a guy who can play multiple spots in the infield and outfield. Most impressively, McKinstry led the Tigers in walks, with 10 in 17 games, while striking out just seven times. That suggests a return to the zone judgement that produced an .832 OPS over the first two months of 2023, and not whatever it was that produced a .578 OPS over the final four.
UTIL Zach
Chris Shelton
McKinstry:
The 24-year-old had his ups and downs last season, with a slightly below-average bat mostly made up for by a well-above-average glove. This spring, however, the bat carried its own weight, if we can torture a metaphor for a moment: Meadows posted a .373/.407/.706 slash line over 19
CF Parker Meadows:
games, leading the Tigers in hits (19), extrabase hits (eight) and total bases (36, seven more than Ibáñez at No. 2). It wasn’t a perfect spring — he also struck out 11 times, with just three walks — but it seems to bode well for a strong start to the regular season, as Meadows himself noted with Our Man Petzold: “There are always adjustments to be made, but my swing feels good right now, and I’m looking forward to carrying it over to the season.”
And then there’s the …
Four down
The good news? The 31year-old didn’t lead the Tigers in spring strikeouts — only because of the presence of another hitter on this list. The bad news? He still struck out 14 times, good for a four-way tie for second. That came while mustering just six hits (two of them doubles), no home runs and just one walk — in all, a .128/.140/ .170 slash line. It would have been worse if Báez hadn’t gone 1-for-3 with a double in each of his two games over the weekend. (Yes, he literally doubled his total bases this spring, to EIGHT, with two hits. Ugh.)
The Tigers’ $14million arm posted an ugly 5.82 ERA in 17 innings — but that’s likely the result of a small sample size inside a small sample size; Maeda had given up just six earned runs over 121⁄3 innings in four starts before the Toronto Blue Jays tagged him for six more in 32⁄3 innings Saturday. More importantly, Maeda got up to 90 pitches and struck out seven while walking just one, bringing him to 24 strikeouts and six walks on the spring. Overall, it was a good spring, but eternal vigilance is the price of handing a two-year deal to 50an oft-injured righty who turns 36 two weeks into the season.
SS Javier B áez :
RHP Kenta Maeda:
other
Tork, of course, is coming off a season that proved the folly of basing expectations on a month in Lakeland, or even the first month of the regular season. Last year, he posted a .692 OPS with 15 strikeouts in 56 Grapefruit League at-bats, then doubled down with a .575 OPS in 97 March/April ABs. The rest of the way? .793 with 29 homers. So we’re trying really hard not to worry over his 2024 so far: A team-high 17 strikeouts and no homers in 48 atbats, with a .146/.241/.250 slash line. It’s we know. We’ll check back in mid-May.
That’s probably also when we’ll know whether the one-year deal the Tigers gave this 32-year-old is going to work out. Remember, he’s coming off a broken pelvis last June, which … OUCH. That’s likely a big reason for his lackluster stats this spring; although he hit .306 (15-for-49), that came with just four doubles and no homers. Throw in his 11 strikeouts and no walks — which, c’mon, even Báez got ONE walk — and the door at third base certainly seems wide open for any one of the Tigers’ backup plans (especially if Jung, who had an .884 OPS this spring, continues to hit in TripleA).
Of course, we only went through eight players’ spring stats and, well, we’re suddenly reminded that this IS a baseball newsletter — it just feels wrong not to have nine in a lineup. So bringing up the bottom of the order, here’s Colt Keith. The rookie with the guaranteed paycheck posted a .231/.281/.365 slash line bolstered slightly Thursday by his first home run of the spring.
And then, of course, there’s the most meaningless spring training stat of all:
But, in the interest of full disclosure, we have to report that the Tigers have locked up second place in the Grapefruit League, with a 20-9 record (and a plus-38 run differential) going into Tuesday’s finale.
In fact, that’s the third-best record in baseball, behind only the Baltimore Orioles — Grapefruit champs at 23-6 (and plus-58 on runs) — and the Los Angeles Dodgers, who dominated the Cactus League with a 14-5 record in Arizona (and plus-48 on runs), then split a pair of regular-season games with the San Diego Padres in South Korea.
And not that it matters, but the Tigers’ 20-9 mark is a far cry from 2023’s spring, which featured a 14-16 record — for a .467 win percentage not far off their .481 mark of the regular season.
Just don’t say that while looking into a mirror, or “Redpop” will getcha.
Contact Ryan Ford at rford@freepress.com . Follow him on X (which used to be Twitter, y’know?) @theford .