This Version of Casey Mize Is Exactly What Detroit Tigers Need From Former Top Pick
The Detroit Tigers have the best pitcher in baseball.
Tarik Skubal proved that last season when he won the American League's triple crown on his way to securing the AL Cy Young Award.
Every fifth day, the Tigers have a chance to win with Skubal on the mound.
But it's the rotation behind him that is the question mark.
When Detroit traded away Jack Flaherty ahead of the deadline, they didn't expect to make the playoffs. And when their magical run extended into October, it took a Houdini act from manager A.J. Hinch to get his team to the finish line with a "pitching chaos" strategy whenever their ace wasn't scheduled to pitch.
It worked in the short term, but that's not sustainable going forward.
That largely was the reason why the Tigers brought back Flaherty this winter, ensuring there was a solid secondary option behind Skubal since the rest of the staff is either unproven or inconsistent.
During spring training, though, Detroit saw something they've been waiting for for a long time; the emergence of their former top overall pick Casey Mize.
The right-hander was dominant, allowing just four earned runs on 11 hits across his six starts and 19 innings pitched, striking out 25 batters compared to walking eight.
Doing it in the spring is one thing, but Mize carried that over to his first start of the season on Tuesday.
He was brilliant against the Seattle Mariners, throwing 5.2 scoreless innings where he gave up just one hit and struck out six, propelling the Tigers to their second win in a row that was the exact bounce back they needed after a tough sweep against the Los Angeles Dodgers.
If this is the version of Mize that Detroit will get for the rest of the year, then that's the exact thing they were anticipating when they took him first overall in the 2018 draft.
It's been a rocky journey for the right-hander to get here.
Mize looked like he had arrived in the 2021 season when he posted a 3.71 ERA and 114 ERA+ across his 30 starts and 150.1 innings pitched, but after undergoing Tommy John surgery following his two starts in 2022, he was on the shelf for the entire 2023 campaign until he returned last year.
He introduced a new and improved splitter to his arsenal, increasing the velocity on this pitch to an average of 88.5 mph that was a 2.3 mph increase from the version he threw last season. That resulted in five whiffs on the seven swings he induced on the 15 splitters he threw, per Josh Kirshenbaum of MLB.com, allowing him to keep the Mariners offense at bay.
This was just one game, and repeating this performance for the upcoming 29 outings will be his next challenge.
But if Mize can repeat what he did on Tuesday, then the Tigers will have another front-end starter behind Skubal and Flaherty.
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