The Detroit skyline across the river at sunset

Detroit Sports Reporter

Analysis and picks. Tigers, Lions, Pistons, Red Wings.

← All analysis

· Detroit Tigers · Pick 6

Pick No. 6: Nobody's really starting this one

The call: Detroit takes the opener Friday night at Comerica. Confidence: low.

First place is coming to town, which is a sentence I did not expect to write about the White Sox in August. They're 62-58 and they lead the AL Central. Detroit's 60-61 and 2.5 back, holding the last wild card by half a game with 6 teams inside 2 of it. So this is a big series, and the strange thing about Friday is that neither team is really going to start a pitcher.

Sean Newcomb has made 1 start this year and it was against Detroit

Chicago's giving the ball to Newcomb, who's appeared in 44 games and started exactly 1 of them. 64.1 innings across 44 outings, which is under an inning and a half a night. His longest appearance of the whole season is 3 innings.

That 1 start? June 20, at Comerica, against these guys. He went 3 innings, faced 9 hitters, and retired all 9. Then the bullpen took it the rest of the way and Detroit won 4-1 anyway.

So he's an opener, and everybody knows he's an opener, and Chicago isn't pretending otherwise. To be fair to him he's been very good in the role, 2.66 ERA and a 1.13 WHIP, and he strikes out 8.4 per 9. He's just not going to be out there in the 5th.

This is how the whole team is built, and I don't think it's a weakness

Here's the part I went in expecting to be a punchline and came out respecting. Chicago's bullpen has thrown 548.2 of the team's 1,071.1 innings. That's .512, more than half, and it's the most in baseball. Only Washington is also over half, at .509. The median club is at .418.

Share of team innings thrown by the bullpen, all 30 clubs, 2026 Share of a team's innings thrown by its bullpen All 30 clubs, 2026, around 1,070 innings apiece so far. The dashed line is half a team's innings. half the innings median .418 Chicago White Sox: bullpen threw 548.7 of 1071.3 innings (0.512). Rotation ERA 4.36, bullpen ERA 3.85. White Sox .512 Washington Nationals: bullpen threw 558.3 of 1097.7 innings (0.509). Rotation ERA 4.59, bullpen ERA 4.90. San Diego Padres: bullpen threw 526.0 of 1079.0 innings (0.487). Rotation ERA 4.62, bullpen ERA 3.58. Toronto Blue Jays: bullpen threw 515.7 of 1095.3 innings (0.471). Rotation ERA 4.19, bullpen ERA 3.84. Colorado Rockies: bullpen threw 494.0 of 1062.7 innings (0.465). Rotation ERA 5.95, bullpen ERA 4.92. New York Mets: bullpen threw 504.7 of 1085.7 innings (0.465). Rotation ERA 4.43, bullpen ERA 3.80. Athletics: bullpen threw 484.3 of 1072.3 innings (0.452). Rotation ERA 5.31, bullpen ERA 5.80. Houston Astros: bullpen threw 487.3 of 1081.3 innings (0.451). Rotation ERA 5.11, bullpen ERA 3.90. Tampa Bay Rays: bullpen threw 472.3 of 1070.0 innings (0.441). Rotation ERA 3.49, bullpen ERA 4.00. Pittsburgh Pirates: bullpen threw 478.7 of 1096.7 innings (0.436). Rotation ERA 4.41, bullpen ERA 4.21. Los Angeles Angels: bullpen threw 464.3 of 1074.3 innings (0.432). Rotation ERA 4.54, bullpen ERA 4.32. Milwaukee Brewers: bullpen threw 469.0 of 1091.3 innings (0.430). Rotation ERA 3.54, bullpen ERA 3.51. Cincinnati Reds: bullpen threw 449.7 of 1066.0 innings (0.422). Rotation ERA 4.53, bullpen ERA 4.50. Boston Red Sox: bullpen threw 452.0 of 1076.3 innings (0.420). Rotation ERA 3.85, bullpen ERA 2.97. Atlanta Braves: bullpen threw 452.0 of 1077.0 innings (0.420). Rotation ERA 3.72, bullpen ERA 3.44. Chicago Cubs: bullpen threw 452.7 of 1089.7 innings (0.415). Rotation ERA 4.27, bullpen ERA 3.88. St. Louis Cardinals: bullpen threw 447.3 of 1080.3 innings (0.414). Rotation ERA 3.94, bullpen ERA 4.29. Texas Rangers: bullpen threw 441.3 of 1068.3 innings (0.413). Rotation ERA 4.29, bullpen ERA 4.30. Detroit Tigers: bullpen threw 443.0 of 1072.7 innings (0.413). Rotation ERA 3.30, bullpen ERA 3.74. Tigers .413 Miami Marlins: bullpen threw 441.3 of 1071.0 innings (0.412). Rotation ERA 4.03, bullpen ERA 3.96. Minnesota Twins: bullpen threw 440.7 of 1085.7 innings (0.406). Rotation ERA 4.51, bullpen ERA 4.78. Baltimore Orioles: bullpen threw 433.7 of 1074.7 innings (0.404). Rotation ERA 4.31, bullpen ERA 4.15. Kansas City Royals: bullpen threw 430.3 of 1071.3 innings (0.402). Rotation ERA 4.54, bullpen ERA 5.31. New York Yankees: bullpen threw 432.0 of 1081.7 innings (0.399). Rotation ERA 3.44, bullpen ERA 3.04. Philadelphia Phillies: bullpen threw 435.3 of 1090.7 innings (0.399). Rotation ERA 4.01, bullpen ERA 4.42. San Francisco Giants: bullpen threw 418.3 of 1068.0 innings (0.392). Rotation ERA 4.32, bullpen ERA 4.32. Arizona Diamondbacks: bullpen threw 415.7 of 1084.0 innings (0.383). Rotation ERA 4.17, bullpen ERA 4.09. Cleveland Guardians: bullpen threw 409.0 of 1079.7 innings (0.379). Rotation ERA 3.74, bullpen ERA 3.98. Los Angeles Dodgers: bullpen threw 406.7 of 1077.7 innings (0.377). Rotation ERA 3.51, bullpen ERA 4.03. Seattle Mariners: bullpen threw 377.3 of 1076.3 innings (0.351). Rotation ERA 3.76, bullpen ERA 3.91.
Rotation IPBullpen IPBullpen shareRotation ERABullpen ERA
White Sox522.2548.2.5124.363.85
Tigers629.2443.0.4133.303.74
League median.418

Look at the last 2 columns for Chicago. Rotation 4.36, bullpen 3.85. Their relievers are the better unit and it isn't close, so leaning on them isn't a team falling apart, it's a team playing to the thing it's actually got. Their pen has the 9th best ERA in the sport. Their rotation is 19th.

And it's worth saying they're in first place doing it, so whatever I think of it, it's working.

Detroit has the best rotation in baseball and Friday they don't have it

Detroit's rotation ERA is 3.30, the lowest of all 30 teams. Ahead of the Yankees, ahead of Tampa Bay, ahead of the Dodgers. That's the team's whole identity this year, and it's the reason a 60-61 club has given up only 462 runs.

Jackson Jobe gets the ball Friday, and Jobe has thrown 5 innings this season. All 5 came last Saturday in San Francisco, 5 shutout innings, 4 strikeouts, 16 hitters faced, and that's his entire 2026. He made 10 starts in 2025 and then that was the last anybody saw of him until last Saturday. Nobody's letting him see a lineup a 3rd time on Friday either.

So both dugouts are going to be into their bullpen somewhere around the 5th, and that's what this game actually is. Detroit's pen has the 6th best ERA in baseball at 3.74 and Chicago's is 9th at 3.85, which is basically a coin flip on quality. The difference is that Chicago's relievers do this every night and know it, and Detroit's are being asked to cover for a starter who isn't stretched out yet.

Why I like Detroit anyway

The season series is 3-3 and it's the tidiest 3-3 you'll ever see. Chicago swept them in Chicago in May. Detroit swept them at Comerica in June. All 6 games went to the home team, and 4 of the 6 were decided by 1 run.

The home thing isn't just those 6 games either. Chicago is 37-24 at home and 25-34 on the road. Detroit's 32-28 at Comerica. Friday is at Comerica.

And the shape of the 2 teams right now is not the shape the standings suggest. Since June 1 Detroit is 38-23 and has outscored people by 129 runs. Chicago is 30-31 in that time at plus 32. Detroit's won 7 of 10, Chicago's lost 6 of 10. Chicago's lead is mostly a 32-27 start that Detroit spent the summer eating into from 22-38.

What scares me, and it's the same thing every time

Detroit is 12-20 in 1 run games, 4th worst in baseball. Chicago is 21-19.

That matters more than usual here, because a game where both teams empty the pen from the 5th inning on is exactly the kind of game that ends 4-3, and 4-3 is the score Detroit keeps losing.

The thing I can't talk myself out of is this. The nice version of Detroit's season is the comeback: 22-38 at the end of May with a run differential of minus 39, and now they're in a playoff spot. That's all true and it's great. But run their record against their own run differential and they were 3.6 wins short of it through May, and they're 5.5 wins short of it since June 1. The leak hasn't closed while they've been climbing. It's gotten bigger. They've just been outscoring people by so much that it stopped showing up in the standings.

Friday is a game with almost no margin in it for a team that's been losing the close ones.

Then there's the outfield, which is now 4 deep on the injured list. Riley Greene, Matt Vierling and Kerry Carpenter are all on the 10 day, and James Outman went on the 7 day Thursday with a concussion. Corey Julks and Trei Cruz got called up. Thursday's outfield was Max Clark in center, Javier Baez in left and Ben Malgeri in right, and Malgeri and Clark are both rookies. That's a lot of new faces against a first place team.

Tigers win. Low. Home team, better run differential, hotter, and I don't love saying it out loud but I think Detroit's bullpen holds one more than Chicago's does.

What are you watching for here? I'll be watching how long Jobe goes, because if he's out after 4 this turns into a bullpen game Detroit didn't plan on.

Sources: MLB Stats API, pulled 2026-08-14, for the probables, both pitchers' season and game logs, the sp/rp innings split for all 30 clubs, the season series, the standings and splits, and the Detroit transactions feed for the injured list. Chart and every number in it come from one run of scripts/bullpen_share.py.

Not betting advice. Just calls, made in public and kept in public.

Got a Detroit number you want looked at? Email projectunmuted@proton.me and it gets looked at properly. A stat somebody quoted that smells wrong, a thing you have always assumed about one of these 4 teams and have never seen checked. Every question that arrives is listed with its answer, including the ones where the answer is no.

More like this