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- Four Numbers, Monday Aug 31: 27, 134-155, 60 and 41A new Monday column. One number for each Detroit club. The Tigers have blown more saves than they have converted and only 2 other teams in baseball can say that. The Lions open in 13 days against a schedule whose opponents went 134-155 last year. The Pistons won 60. The Red Wings won 41 again.
- Graded: Pick No. 18. The unnamed starter turned out to be Tyler GlasnowThe call was Dodgers win, High, and the one thing named as a risk was that Los Angeles had not announced a Sunday starter. They handed it to Tyler Glasnow, who went 7 innings on 85 pitches. Detroit got 2 hits, which ties its season low. Final: Dodgers 6, Tigers 1.
- Series preview: Minnesota has allowed 156 more runs than Detroit and is still ahead of them in the standingsDetroit is 63-72 having allowed 525 runs. Minnesota is 64-72 having allowed 681. The whole difference is what happens in a one-run game: Detroit is 13-23 in them and has converted 27 of 55 save chances, 2nd worst in baseball. Monday: Tigers win, Low. The series: Detroit takes 2 of 3.
- Graded: Pick No. 17. The bullpen the pick was built against threw 3.2 shutout inningsThe call was Dodgers win, Low, and the argument underneath it was Detroit's bullpen: 27 saves, 28 blown. Saturday the Detroit pen threw 3.2 scoreless and Los Angeles blew it in the 9th. Kevin McGonigle walked it off. Final: Tigers 2, Dodgers 1.
- The Lions finish 2-1 or 1-2 today, and 25 years of data says the difference is about 1.4 winsDetroit is 1-1 and plays at Indianapolis at 1:00. Across every 3-game NFL preseason since 2000, teams that finished 2-1 averaged a .554 regular season and teams that finished 1-2 averaged .473. That is 1.4 wins over a 17 game year and it survives a permutation test at p = 0.04. It is also almost certainly noise, and the reason why is sitting in the same table.
- Pick 18: Detroit has scored 3 runs a game for two weeks and the outfield is in the trainer's roomOver the last 11 games Detroit has scored 33 runs, gone 2-9, and lost Riley Greene, Kerry Carpenter and Matt Vierling to the injured list. Los Angeles is 81-54 and 7-3. Framber Valdez is a 4.35 ERA with a 1.41 WHIP. Dodgers win, High, and the only thing that scares me is that Los Angeles has not named a starter.
- Graded: Pick No. 16. Skubal went 6 and the bullpen gave both runs backThe call was Dodgers win, High, on Tarik Skubal's return to Comerica and a Detroit club that had been outscored badly since Riley Greene went down. Skubal threw 6 innings and gave up the only Detroit run. Los Angeles scored twice off the Detroit bullpen. Final: Dodgers 2, Tigers 1.
- Pick 17: Blake Snell has made 4 starts all season and 3 of them are this monthBlake Snell has made 4 starts all season and 3 of them came after August 11. Keider Montero has 133.2 innings and hasn't started since August 18. Saturday at 1:10 is a rust game that probably gets decided by 2 bullpens, and Detroit's has 27 saves and 28 blown. Dodgers win, Low.
- Series preview: Skubal comes back to Comerica, and the Dodgers have not had a winning month since JuneTarik Skubal makes his first start against Detroit on Friday night. Los Angeles is 24-23 since July 1 and has been outscored by 14 over those 2 months, while Detroit is 25-22 and plus 63. The Tigers are also 3-11 since Riley Greene went down. Friday: Dodgers win, High. The series: Los Angeles takes 2 of 3.
- Graded: Pick No. 15. Peralta went 6 shutout innings on the road and Detroit got 2 hitsThe call was Tigers win, Low, built on Freddy Peralta giving up 15 home runs on the road against 7 at home. He gave up 2 hits and no runs in 6 innings at Comerica. Detroit was shut out on 2 hits. Final: Rays 3, Tigers 0.
- Graded: Pick No. 14. Right about the starter, wrong about the bullpenThe call was Rays win, Low, built on Jackson Jobe not lasting and Detroit's bullpen having to cover four innings. Jobe went 4.1 on 86 pitches, exactly as forecast. Then the bullpen with the most blown saves in baseball threw 4.2 scoreless. Final: Tigers 4, Rays 1.
- We're the only team in the league with a short week and a bye inside the first 6 weeksDetroit's bye lands in week 6, which is the 3rd earliest in the NFL, and the Thursday night trip to Buffalo in week 2 is the earliest short week anybody in the league plays. Run all 32 schedules and Detroit is the only club that gets both of those inside the first 6 weeks. What it leaves behind is 12 straight games to close, tied 3rd most in the league.
- Pick No. 15: Freddy Peralta has given up 15 home runs on the road and 7 at homePeralta has thrown 72.2 innings at home and 62.1 on the road this season. Home runs allowed: 7 and 15. Wednesday is a road start, against a Detroit club that is 10-4 in Troy Melton's starts while being 61-70 overall.
- Pick No. 14: Jackson Jobe is not going to pitch long enoughJobe has thrown 71, 74 and 86 pitches in his 3 starts back and has not finished the 6th. Ian Seymour has gone at least 4.2 innings in each of his last 6 with 44 strikeouts in 33.2. The pick is about who hands the ball to a bullpen first, and Detroit's has 28 blown saves and 3 roster moves in the last 3 days.
- Graded: Pick No. 13. The best pitcher in the series pitched like itThe call was Rays win, Low, on Drew Rasmussen being the best arm in the series by a distance. He went 6 innings, 3 hits, 1 run, 5 strikeouts and no walks. Framber Valdez went 6 and struck out nobody, the first time that has happened to him in 26 starts. Final: Rays 4, Tigers 1.
- Series preview: the Rays and the Tigers have scored exactly the same number of runs587 runs each, through 130 games each. Detroit has allowed 29 fewer and is 16 games worse. Detroit is 11.9 wins under its run differential, the biggest deficit in baseball, and Tampa Bay is 7.4 over, the biggest surplus. Tonight: Rays win, Low. The series: Tampa Bay takes 2 of 3.
- Graded: Pick No. 12. The split fired the wrong way on the first tryThe call was Tigers win, Low, built on Noah Cameron being a 5.17 pitcher at Kauffman and a 3.33 pitcher everywhere else. He threw 5 shutout innings at Kauffman. Troy Melton, the 1.49 counter-argument, gave up 3. Final: Royals 5, Tigers 2, and Kansas City did it one run per inning for 5 straight innings.
- Pick No. 12: the Royals' Friday starter is a different pitcher at KauffmanNoah Cameron has a 5.17 ERA at home and 3.33 on the road, the 4th largest home-worse gap among 97 qualified starters. Troy Melton counters at 1.49 over 14 starts. The call is Detroit, and it is Low because 8 of the 10 meetings this year were decided by 1 run and Detroit is 12-22 in those.
- Series preview: Detroit at Kansas City, the tightest matchup in baseball8 of the 10 Tigers-Royals games this season have been decided by 1 run, the most of any of the 391 pairings in baseball, and no pairing in a full season has topped 7 since the balanced schedule arrived in 2023. Detroit is 29th of 30 in one-run games and dead last in save conversion. Detroit takes 2 of 3.
- Graded: Pick No. 11. Right team, wrong reason, and the wrong reason is the storyThe call was Pirates win, Low, and the argument was that a lineup missing 6 outfielders wasn't going to touch Paul Skenes. Detroit chased Skenes in the 5th, scored 3, and led going to the ninth. Kenley Jansen gave up 2 solo homers. Final: Pirates 4, Tigers 3.
- Boston, Miami, Philly, the Knicks. It's the 3rd hardest opening in the league and we're still favored in 2 and a half of themDetroit's first 4 games of 2026-27 draw the 3rd toughest set of opponents in the NBA by last year's records. Run the same 4 games through Detroit's own 60-22 and it comes out at 2.47 expected wins, which is the 9th easiest opening in the league. The part that's actually rough is that 3 of the 4 are on the road.
- Pick No. 11: 6 outfielders on the injured list, and Skenes at homeDetroit has 6 outfielders on the injured list and scored 1 run on 5 hits Tuesday. Jackson Jobe makes his 3rd start since coming off a 60-day IL from Tommy John. Paul Skenes has a 3.44 ERA at PNC. The call is Pittsburgh, and the reason it isn't a High is that Skenes has an ERA of 5.62 since July 1.
- Graded: Pick No. 10. I bet on the tail and got the medianThe call was Tigers win, Low, built on Braxton Ashcraft's blowup rate: 5 of his 24 starts had cost Pittsburgh 5 earned runs or more. He threw 8 innings on 80 pitches and gave up 1. Final: Pirates 4, Tigers 1.
- Pick No. 10: the better ERA belongs to the guy who has never blown one upBraxton Ashcraft strikes out nearly twice as many per inning as Keider Montero and has the worse ERA. The reason is the tail: 5 of his 24 starts have cost Pittsburgh 5 earned runs or more, against 1 of Montero's 20. Pittsburgh's late-inning trio has also worked 4 of the last 6 days.
- Graded: Pick No. 9. The first High, and the starter lasted 3 inningsThe call was Tigers win, High, on the argument that Carmen Mlodzinski's 3.79 ERA belonged to a reliever and his starting line did not. He got 9 outs, Pittsburgh needed 6 innings from its bullpen, and Detroit scored 8. Final: Tigers 8, Pirates 5.
- Everybody who isn't DeBrincat, Larkin or Raymond scored 139 goals. That's 4th fewest in the leagueDetroit's top 3 scorers put up 100 goals last season, 9th most in the NHL. The other 26 skaters managed 139, about 23 below what an average team gets out of its non-stars. Whatever happens with the captain, that part doesn't move.
- Pick No. 9: Pittsburgh's starter has a 3.79 ERA and it belongs to a different pitcherCarmen Mlodzinski's season line reads 3.79. Split it by the job he was doing and it is 2.15 out of the bullpen and 5.47 as a starter, and he has cleared 6 innings once in 11 tries. Detroit is scoring 5.64 a game in August with 4 outfielders hurt. The first High on this board.
- Graded: Pick No. 8. Anderson went 5, which is the thing I said would make me wrongThe call was White Sox win, Low. Final: White Sox 7, Tigers 5. The entry ended by naming the condition that would beat it: Anderson goes 5 and the pen holds. Anderson went 5, a season high, and beat the ceiling the whole pick rested on. The pen did not hold. Half a wrong pick collected in full.
- Series preview: Detroit at Pittsburgh, and both of these teams should have more wins than thisDetroit is 10.7 wins below what its run differential expects, the biggest shortfall in baseball. Pittsburgh is 4.8 below, the biggest in the National League. Then the simulation says a gap Detroit's size turns up in 55 percent of seasons where nobody was unlucky at all. Detroit takes 2 of 3.
- Graded: Pick No. 7. I said the correction was not something I could schedule, and it showed up in the next startThe call was Tigers win, Low. Final: White Sox 4, Tigers 3. Troy Melton gave up 9 hits and 4 doubles in 4.1 innings and his season BABIP moved 26 points in one afternoon, the biggest single-start jump of his year. The thing I named as the scare was the lefty, and Detroit scored all 3 of its runs off the lefty.
- Pick No. 8: Drew Anderson has never finished a 5th inningDetroit gives Drew Anderson his 5th start Sunday against Sean Burke, who has a 2.99 ERA and has gone 6 or more innings in 7 of his last 11. Anderson has never recorded more than 14 outs in a big league game this season, against a Detroit median of 17. The first pick on this board that isn't Detroit, and the numbers that argue against it are the ones this site has been leaning on all month.
- The 2008 Lions are the one season holding Detroit's preseason trend line downTwo people asked for these charts. Detroit's 25 seasons plotted as a scatter give a correlation of +0.28 between August and the season that follows, which sounds like something until you take 2008 out and it jumps to +0.51. The most famous proof that the preseason means nothing is the single dot doing the most work to prove it.
- Pick No. 7: Troy Melton has been about to regress for 13 straight startsMelton has the lowest batting average on balls in play of any starter in baseball at .196, and it has sat between .155 and .197 for 11 straight starts without ever moving toward the .286 median. His FIP says 3.62 and his ERA says 1.46. Chicago counters with a lefty who has hit 21 batters, 7 more than anybody else. Tigers, Low.
- Graded: Pick No. 6. I said nobody would let Jobe see the lineup a third time and Chicago made sure he didThe call was Tigers win, Low. Final: White Sox 9, Tigers 5. Jackson Jobe faced 23 hitters in 3.2 innings, which is 5 batters into a third trip through the order, and it happened in the 4th because Chicago would not stop hitting. Detroit's bullpen was the better one again and it did not matter.
- You were right about 2008. Here is what happens when you put it back in.The preseason backtest ran 2015 to 2025 and left out the 2008 Lions. The data goes back to 2000, so here is all of it: 798 team-seasons. The 2008 Lions are the worst season in it, the answer barely moves, and the one fun line from the first version does not survive.
- Pick No. 6: Nobody's really starting this oneChicago's opener has 1 start in 44 appearances and hasn't gone past 3 innings all year. Detroit's starter has thrown 5 innings all season. Chicago's bullpen has thrown more innings than its rotation, which only 1 other team in baseball can say, and it's not an accident. Tigers, Low.
- Graded: Pick No. 5. Detroit shut out Cleveland without striking anybody out, which has happened 7 times since 2000The call was Tigers win, Low. Final: Detroit 3, Cleveland 0. The Detroit staff faced 32 hitters over 9 innings and struck out none of them. That's the 7th zero-strikeout shutout in 27 seasons, and Detroit has 3 of the 7.
- Detroit's outfield is 3 men down. Here's what that's actually worth, and it's less than it soundsGreene, Vierling and Carpenter are all on the injured list with Detroit half a game out and 42 to play. Measured against the players actually replacing them, the 3 of them together are worth about 1.5 wins the rest of the way, and 79 percent of that is Greene alone. The catch is Carpenter, who's having the worst year of his career and is probably better than his line says.
- Pick No. 5: Nobody runs on either of these guys, and that costs Cleveland more than DetroitKeider Montero and Parker Messick are 2nd and 3rd of 58 qualified starters at stopping people from even trying to steal. Between them, 3 attempts in 259 innings. Detroit never runs anyway, so the lockdown lands almost entirely on Cleveland. Tigers, Low.
- Graded: Pick No. 4. The first miss, and the catcher I told you wouldn't be out there caught all 9 inningsThe call was Tigers win, Low. Final: Cleveland 6, Detroit 4. I told 2 commenters the running lane they wanted was closed because Patrick Bailey would be catching. Bailey never left the bench. Austin Hedges caught the whole game, Detroit reached 1st base 8 times, and nobody went.
- Pick No. 4: You asked if Detroit should run on Cleveland. They should, and tonight is probably the wrong nightCleveland is 4th worst in baseball at throwing runners out and Detroit attempts fewer steals than any team in the sport. But that Cleveland number is 2 catchers averaged together, and the one who can't throw has become the backup. Detroit takes it anyway, Low.
- Graded: Pick No. 3. Detroit beats Cleveland for the first time all year, and the scary pitcher was the one who brokeThe call was Tigers win, Low. Final: Detroit 6, Cleveland 4. Drew Anderson faced 17 batters, which is exactly what the entry said would happen, and Tanner Bibee gave up 5 earned runs after coming in with a 1.80 ERA against Detroit.
- The Wings got handed the hardest schedule in hockey, and it barely mattersDetroit plays 45 games against last season's playoff teams, tied for most in the NHL. Then you look at the spread and the whole league fits inside 3.5 points of opponent quality. The number that actually should worry you is 92 points on a minus 17 goal differential.
- Somebody said the whole season is the blown saves. So I counted the leads instead.Detroit has led after 7 innings 57 times and lost 11 of those games. The league holds 90.2% of those leads. At that rate the Tigers would have about 5 more wins, which puts them in first place. The claim checks out.
- Pick No. 3: Detroit released this pitcher in April 2024. Tuesday he starts against the team standing between them and OctoberDrew Anderson was let go by the Toledo Mud Hens two years ago, spent four years in Japan and Korea, and is now the Tigers' answer to trading Tarik Skubal. He has never faced more than 18 batters in a major league game. He gets Tanner Bibee, who has a 1.80 ERA against Detroit this year, in a game Detroit has to have.
- The Tigers are 0-6 against Cleveland with the worst offensive matchup in baseball. I went looking for the reason and found out there probably isn't oneDetroit has scored 11 runs in six games against the Guardians, 1.83 a game against a season average of 4.58. Out of 294 team-opponent pairs in baseball, that is the single worst. Then I shuffled who played whom two thousand times, and pure chance produced a worst matchup more extreme than Detroit's in 74 percent of the shuffles. The tell is that the same Tigers own the other tail too.
- The Pistons just made the biggest two-year climb in the NBA since 1993. I went looking for the crash that is supposed to follow itDetroit went 14-68, then 44-38, then 60-22. That is a gain of 46 wins in two seasons and nothing in thirty-four years of standings matches it. The fear is that a climb that steep has to come back down. Fifteen teams have climbed anything like it, and what they did next runs both ways with no signal in it. What does predict next season is duller: Detroit is a 60-win team now, and 60-win teams give back about five.
- Graded: Pick No. 2, Tigers at Giants. Correct in ten innings, and wrong about both pitchersThe call was Tigers win, Low confidence. Final: Detroit 3, San Francisco 1 in ten. The pick landed and the two arguments holding it up both fell over inside the first seven innings.
- Graded: Pick No. 1, Tigers at Giants. Correct, 8-0, and the reasoning was only half rightThe call was Tigers win, Low confidence. Final: Tigers 8, Giants 0. Record moves to 1-0. The pick was right and one of the two things it leaned on did not happen at all.
- Are the Tigers bad at close games, or unlucky? Five seasons say both, and mostly the second oneReaders pushed back on the regression argument: losing close games might be who this team is, not luck waiting to reverse. That is testable. Across 150 team-seasons, a close-game record carries about 61 percent of the repeatable signal an ordinary stretch of schedule carries. Not zero, and not close to all of it. For Detroit it is worth about two wins over the last 45 games, and the reader objection that actually survives is a different one.
- Fourth place, best team in the division, and half the schedule left against the teams aheadThe Tigers have the best run differential in the AL Central and the fourth-best record in it. Twenty of their remaining forty-six games are against the three teams they are chasing, which is the most concentrated stretch run in baseball. Here is the case for the comeback, and the three numbers that argue against it.
- The Lions open Thursday and I am not putting it on the board. Here is the receipt.Every NFL team, every preseason from 2015 to 2025. Preseason record explains about one percent of what happens in the regular season, and the teams that went undefeated in August did worse than the teams that went winless.
- Pick No. 2: the luckiest pitcher in baseball starts Sunday, and I am taking him anywayTroy Melton has a 1.58 ERA and the lowest BABIP of any starter in Major League Baseball. One of those numbers is real. Logan Webb has a 5.45 ERA over his last six starts, which is why the call still goes to Detroit.
- Pick No. 1: the unluckiest team in baseball plays the worst team in CaliforniaDetroit has been robbed of ten wins, more than any team in baseball, and the culprit has a number. Jackson Jobe throws 100 again on Saturday.
- I tested my own method on 1,743 games before asking you to trust itPicking single baseball games is close to a coin flip and I can prove it. But the thesis behind Pick No. 1 held up, and the gap between those two facts is the whole point of this site.