Five Things We Liked This Week, February 21st

Welcome to “Five Things We Liked This Week”, a weekly list of… five things we liked this week:

1. Early spring observations: pitching

It’s hard to believe, but the Tigers’ first game of spring training is tomorrow. While we anxiously wait for games to begin, now is a good time to review some of the word on the street that has come out of Lakeland in the first week or so of spring training.

On the pitching side, often the best news is no news at all, at least when it comes to injuries. The first injury report of the year informed us that Alex Cobb would be out at least a month, and we also learned relief prospect Wilmer Flores would be out for around a month as well. Per the injury report, several pitchers working their way back from injuries are throwing twice weekly bullpens, including Sawyer Gipson-Long, Tyler Mattison and Alex Lange (Lange was placed on the 60-day IL to make room for relief addition John Brebbia).

Per Mlive.com beat reporter Evan Woodbery, Kenta Maeda has been among the pitchers making a good early impression in spring training. After Maeda’s struggles to start last season, it’s easy to forget just how good of a pitcher he was not only in 2023, but to finish the season in 2024.

In 2023, there were 127 pitchers who threw at least 100 innings. Maeda’s 27.3 K% ranked 17^th among those pitchers, his 6.5 BB% ranked 28^th, and his 3.74 xERA ranked 24^th. His 32.2% chase rate was in the 76^th percentile of all MLB pitchers as well.

In looking at Maeda’s pitch mix, the biggest difference between 2023 and 2024 was his split finger and fastball. In ’23, his fastball had a run value of 1, and his split finger had a run value of 8. In 2024, the fastball had a -16 run value and the split finger had a -3 run value. Per Woodbery’s report, Maeda is throwing harder this spring, which should help not only the fastball but also the splitter.

Maeda’s velo ticked up in 2024 when he moved to a relief role, and his effectiveness ticked up along with it:

We will get our first look of the year at Maeda tomorrow, as he is scheduled to start the first Grapefruit League game for Detroit. If the Tigers can get something closer to the 2023 (or ’24 relief) version of Kenta Maeda, the rotation or bullpen will get a major boost.

2. Early spring observations: hitting

With 3^rd base taking up much of the focus of the offseason for the Tigers, shortstop has flown somewhat under the radar. If you could fast forward to the end of the ’25 season, would you take these numbers from the shortstop position?

If you’re like me, not only would you say “yes”, but you also would have just signed up for 2022 Javy Báez.

Báez underwent hip surgery at the end of the ’24 season, and just based on watching baseball players swing a bat, a healthy hip seems pretty important. Per MLB.com beat reporter Jason Beck, the surgery appears to have helped Javy, which can only be a good thing for the Tigers. While a return to peak form for Báez may be unlikely, even getting back to the 2022 version would be good news for Detroit.

A platoon of Báez and Trey Sweeney has been bandied about, and that could prove to be effective. Sweeney’s 2024 minor league OPS was .200 points higher against righties, while Báez’ career OPS is .122 points higher versus lefties.

For what it’s worth, below are the 2025 Steamer projections for Báez and Sweeney. Please take a look at the “combined” row compared to the ‘22 Javy Báez chart above:

3. Hao-Yu Lee love

Along with Kenta Maeda, infield prospect Hao-Yu Lee has been getting some recognition in the early parts of spring training, including from our own Rogelio Castillo.

Lee came over to the Tigers back at the 2023 trade deadline, and has done nothing but impress since entering the Tigers’ system.

In 2024, his age 21 season, Lee put up a 141 wRC+ in 386 plate appearances at the AA level, despite being 2.6 years younger than the league average. I wanted to compare Lee’s age 21 season to some of the top second and third basemen in baseball over the past 10 years.

For reference, from 2015-2024, there have been 35 second or third basemen that have put up at least 15 fWAR in the big leagues; I checked out their age 21 seasons so you don’t have to.

Of those 35, 9 spent the majority of their age 21 season at AAA or in the majors, 4 were in college or non-affiliated ball, and 2 spent the majority of the year injured. That leaves a sample size of 20.

Of those 20 players, 14 spent their age 21 season at High-A or below; and despite the age difference relative to level, Hao-Yu Lee’s 141 wRC+ was higher at AA then all but four of those players, and all four were in Low-A or Rookie ball. (This list of 14 includes players like Marcus Semien, DJ LeMahieu, Josh Donaldson, Justin Turner, Kyle Seager, Max Muncy and one Alex Bregman.)

This is all impressive enough already, but let’s take a look at the 6 players left that played the majority of their age 21 season at AA (please note Robinson Canó’s wRC+ was unavailable, so I listed his OPS+, which has a .992 correlation coefficient to wRC+ according to Baseball Prospectus – and yes, that sentence made me feel very nerdy):

Does this mean that Hao-Yu Lee is destined for stardom in the big leagues? Of course not. But it does provide a reference point. 

4. John Brebbia

While technically not quite within the past week, on February 12^th, the Tigers signed right-handed reliever John Brebbia to a one-year contract with a team option for ’26.

It was a curious move at first glance, based on Brebbia’s 5.86 ERA in 2024. However, after taking a peek under the hood, it’s not hard to see why Scott Harris and the rest of the front office were interested.

Harris is familiar with Brebbia’s work from their mutual time together in San Francisco during the ’21-’22 seasons, and as relayed by Evan Woodbery of Mlive.com, he believes there’s more in the tank: “I’ve always thought he was an advanced strike thrower, that he could miss a lot of bats, and that he had a foundational fastball that plays above its velocity because of how he commands it and the shape of the pitch. Recently, I thought his secondary mix wasn’t optimal, and I’ve talked to him about this. We believe we can help him find secondary shapes that complement his fastball better.”

In 2024, Brebbia ranked in the 85^th percentile in chase rate and the 81^st percentile in strikeout rate, and that was working with a slider that was not sliding: batters hit .322 with a .587 slugging percentage off the pitch. However, Brebbia’s fastball has been a major weapon for the past several years. Over the past 4 seasons for example, hitters have a .204 batting average off Brebbia’s fastball, with just a .323 slugging percentage. I believe it was former manager Lou Brown who said, “Forget about the curveball, Ricky. Give him the heater.”

If Chris Fetter and team can tune up Brebbia’s slider, or give him another weapon to work with, Brebbia could be a major contributor to the Tigers’ bullpen in ’25 and beyond.

5. Against All Odds Documentary

While this item also didn’t quite happen within the past week, we still wanted to give a shoutout as back on January 23^rd, the Tigers released “Against All Odds”, a documentary about the 2024 season.

It was hard not to get chills watching the ’24 season play out on film like this, and the documentary did nothing to dampen excitement for the season to come. It was also a reminder of how lucky Tigers fans are to have two of the best broadcasters in the game, Dan Dickerson and Jason Benetti, covering the club. The team that put this documentary together did a great job, and although there was disappointment that Werner Herzog didn’t provide the narration, hats off to the Tigers for releasing this documentary for the fans.