The Mariners rotation will be another tough test for the Tigers

While the Cleveland Guardians gave the Tigers fits until they finally slayed the beast in Game 3 of their AL Wild Card series, the Seattle Mariners project to be a much tougher opponent. Imagine the Guardians pitching staff with an extra Gavin Williams and then with a killer offense as well. Keeping their sluggers in check will be difficult for Tigers pitching, but they will have Tarik Skubal starting twice should the series go five games. That’s the only edge really available to them in this series.

The trick lately has been scoring runs, but if the Tigers breakout in Game 3 means they’ve gotten over whatever ailed the offense in September, and really much of the second half of the season, they should be able to hold their own against the Mariners starting pitchers. Just don’t expect fireworks either. Can they get to Mariners’ pitching the way the high flying Mariners offense can likely get to the non-Skubal Tigers staff? Well that remains to be seen but the odds would say it’s pretty unlikely. The Mariners rotation and bullpen are pitching some of their best ball of the season. The Tigers will need their horse to carry them in two starts to really have a solid chance.

One thing that may help the Tigers is the uncertain status of Mariners’ ace right-hander Bryan Woo. He posted a 2.94 ERA with a 3.47 FIP across 186 2/3 innings this season. After throwing to hitters for the first time since a strained pectoral muscle forced him to miss his last scheduled start of the regular season, Woo sounded somewhat optimistic that he’ll be able to pitch in the series, but it certainly doesn’t sound like he’s quite ready to start in Games 1 and 2 over the weekend. Should he get back in time to make a start, at least the Tigers should only see him once in the series. Of course it is the postseason, so you never quite know if the Mariners just have him playing possum to some degree.

“Positive day. Still not where I want to be in terms of game speed,” said Woo post-throw. “But in terms of how everything’s progressed, happy with it. Considering a week ago I wasn’t even throwing yet, and then a week from now, I’ll hopefully be in a better spot. So still just taking it day by day, but in terms of looking at it that way, it’s a lot of positives.”

If the Tigers do face Woo, it may be a limited length outing for him but he’s still just very tough to deal with. He has an excellent 95-96 mph fourseamer fastball and a good slider. He tops that off with great command and will use his sinker a fair amount against right-handed hitters in particular, trying to jam them for weak contact. Woo posted a 2.94 ERA with a 3.47 FIP, so he’s not exactly in legitimate ace territory yet, but he has been very good this season. It would be a nice break for the Tigers if he can’t go in this series. Of course, if the Mariners do hold him back, it may be because they already have the lead in the series against the Tigers.

Logan Gilbert

Of course, the Mariners have no shortage of fine starting pitchers to fill out their ALDS rotation without Woo. The Tigers are absolutely going to have their hands full.

Right-hander Logan Gilbert will presumably lead the way in Game 1 unless manager Dan Wilson wants him to square off against Skubal in Game 2. More than likely, they’ll look to take a series lead in Game 1 with Gilbert on the mound on Saturday, leaving him available to pitch a Game 4 or 5 as required. That’s a particularly tough matchup in Game 1 as the Tigers will be piecing together another dose of pitching chaos with all non-starter hands on deck. Their plan will likely feature Keider Montero as the bulk guy. With Skubal slated to pitch on Sunday, manager AJ Hinch will at least be able to use his bullpen aggressively.

The lanky right-hander relies mainly on his good fourseam fastball and slider combination. The fastball actually doesn’t have a particularly good movement profile but Gilbert averages 95.5 mph with huge extension to the plate, so it doesn’t tend to matter unless he’s too predictable or grooving them in obvious swing counts. The slider is a good, if pretty prototypical edition at 87.6 mph. While he gets a quality whiff rate against the breaker, that’s also the one pitch responsible for most of the power against him. He backs those two primary pitches with a pretty lethal splitter that he’ll throw roughly 20 percent of the time and will use against either handed hitters. The splitter has a ludicrous 53.3 percent whiff rate.

Gilbert recorded 19 strikeouts against the Tigers in two starts totally 10 1/3 inning. They got to him for three earned runs over five innings in the second series of the season, but struggled to do much back in their second matchup against him in mid-July. Gilbert isn’t unhittable and will give up his share of homers, but he doesn’t walk many hitters and boasts a 32.3 percent strikeouts rate. Tarik Skubal’s K-rate this season is 32.2 percent. So this is not going to be easy.

Here’s a look if you need a refresher on Gilbert.

George Kirby

The task doesn’t get much easier against right-hander George Kirby either. He isn’t the strikeout artist that Gilbert is and his peak seasons may have come and gone in 2023 and 2024, but he’s still better than anyone the Tigers have other than Skubal himself. Kirby was a little bit more home run prone than normal in September, but his strikeout and walk rates were among the best of his career in the final month of the regular season, so the Tigers aren’t catching him at a low point the way Kirby’s 5.40 ERA in September might suggest.

A high batting average on balls in play of .315 says his 4.21 ERA is a bit inflated, and his 3.37 FIP across 126 innings of work agrees. Kirby struck out 26.1 percent of hitters faced, which is a good mark, and like Gilbert he doesn’t issue many walks. The Tigers will have their hands full with the Mariners probable Game 2 starter.

Kirby averaged 96.2 mph with his fourseamer and his sinker, and he’s used the two in a more and more balanced mix each season of his career. Of the two, the sinker is the one that tends to give up the power numbers. He will use the sinker more against right-handers and the fourseamer more against lefties, but either way he mixes both in there consistently.

While his fastballs aren’t quite as overpowering as Gilbert’s, Kirby’s breaking stuff is arguably even more lethal. He mainly uses his slider, but he’ll mix in a good amount of knuckle curves against left-handed hitters to try and backdoor them on the outer edge. He has a splitter as well, but it’s rarely used.

All in all it’s a pretty prototypical right-hander’s approach for a pitcher without much of an offspeed pitch. He’ll try to jam right-handers with the horizontal movement of his sinker to get ground balls, while bending the slider away for whiffs. Against lefties he tries to pitch away and then occasional jam them with the fourseamer, bending in some back foot sliders while looking to land the hook on the outer edge.

Left-handed hitters certainly have an advantage over right-handers, so you can look for AJ Hinch to stack up Parker Meadows, Wenceel Pérez, Kerry Carpenter and Riley Greene in the top half of the order. The Mariners starts are all right-handed, and so the lack of a good left-handed bench bat comes into play here. Jace Jung might get more consideration in this series than Justyn-Henry Malloy will as they finalize the roster, but neither Jung nor Trey Sweeney is likely to have much success against the hard-throwing Kirby.

Luis Castillo

At 32 years of age, Castillo is the veteran right-hander of the group. His numbers have tailed off to modestly above average the past two seasons as his strikeouts have dropped. He’s still a very solid #3 level starter, however. He posted a 3.54 ERA and a 3.88 FIP this season, and while he allows more home runs than he did in his prime years, he’s still a little better than average in that department as well, despite allowing more fly balls these days.

Castillo still sits around 95 mph with both fourseam and sinking fastballs, so there’s no respite from the Mariners relentless high velocity stuff here. He’ll use the fourseamer the most, mixing in sinkers against right-handers a little more. Both pitches are hittable, particularly the sinker, but because he limits the power numbers, you still have to string some hits together to score. His strikeout rate is only 21.7 percent, so the Tigers will put the ball in play quite a bit, but his 6.2 percent walk rate says he isn’t going to help them much in the on-base department. It also doesn’t help that Castillo is pitching his best ball of the year coming into the postseason.

The Tigers are going to need some hits to drop against the Mariners likely Game 3 starter. He can be rattled if you can put together some consistent traffic, but that’s much easier said than done. He’s a little more vulnerable to some small ball due to the fly ball tendencies and the pedestrian amount of whiffs he generates. We’ll see if AJ Hinch decides to put runners in motion a little more against Castillo to try to take advantage of the fact that he’s easy to make contact against. Really the best path to beating Castillo is to get some runners on ahead of the Tigers power hitters and hope someone comes through.

Bryce Miller and the bullpen

Again though, this is a deep, difficult rotation to deal with and the Tigers are going to have their hands full. Should Woo be able to return for Game 3, Castillo will probably be flexed to Game 4 unless they decide to use him as a bridge reliever in this series. I doubt that will be Dan Wilson’s strategy.

If Woo can’t make a start, right-hander Bryce Miller might function as something of a bulk arm for them in a Game 4 outing, though possibly not in his usual starting role. Miller also throws hard, but he’s far less precise and has issued a fair amount of walks on top of being pretty prone to give up some homers.

The Mariners bullpen hasn’t been any better than the Tigers this season, but while the Tigers have struggled more recently, again the Mariners were red hot down the stretch and the bullpen and rotation coming together is a big part of that surge. They acquired lefty reliever Caleb Ferguson from the Pirates at the deadline, and he and Gabe Spier give the Mariners a really good pair of southpaws to pair with closer Andres Munoz and setup men Eduard Bazardo and Matt Brash. They also picked up right-hander Luke Jackson after the Tigers cut him loose, and of course Jackson was pretty good for them down the stretch as well.

Overall, you probably get the picture by now. This is an outstanding, deep staff of pitchers and they’re all throwing the ball very well down the stretch. It’s not exactly Verlander-Scherzer-Sanchez, but the Tigers’ offense in the second half doesn’t bring to mind the 2013 Tigers much either. They’re really going to have to grind it out and take some momentum from their breakout in Game 3 against the Guardians to really do more than scratch out a couple of runs per game.