The Detroit Tigers had a nice offseason adding both Javier Baez and Eduardo Rodriguez. The Tigers have had their share of injuries like other teams but overall their whole team carries an OPS+ under 100. They even had a few young talents come up, the best player being Riley Greene thus far. The roster is stacked with young developing talent and wily veterans like Javi and Eduardo. It’s notable that future Hall of Famer Miguel Cabera is still playing and got his 3,000th hit earlier this year. Other than that the Tigers failed to even surpass their 2021 record of 77-85.
Javier Baez is a utility infielder who can play shortstop, second base and third base. The Puerto Rican born Baez throws right and bats right. He’s 29 years old with 6 years of MLB experience. Javier came up with the Chicago Cubs and helped them win their first World Series (2016) since 1908. Last year Baez was traded at the deadline by the Cubs to the New York Mets along with his teammate Trevor Williams for Pete Crow-Armstrong. Baez ended up being rental as the Mets chose not to bring him back for this current 2022 season. As a Free agent, Javier Baez signed a 6 year 140 million dollar deal with the Detriot Tigers. As a Tiger, Baez’ production has dropped off significantly. Here’s a comparison of his 2021 stats and his 2022 stats:
2021: 31 HR, 87 RBI, 18 SB, 184 SO, .265 BA, .319 OBP, .494 SLG, .813 OPS, 116 OPS+
2022: 15 HR, 61 RBI, 9 SB, 141 SO, .241 BA, .281 OBP, .394 SLG, .674 OPS, 93 OPS+
In the counting stats, Baez has about half as many homers, RBI and stolen bases. In his averages he’s down around 100 points across the board. The biggest drop being OPS. Obviously his drop in homers has a direct correlation to his OPS. It’s even worse when you consider that with the Mets, he had .886 OPS and a .515 SLG in 50 games. His fielding has also been considerably worse, committing a career high 26 errors. Tigers need Javi to step up his game if he’s to live up to his 140 million dollar contract.
Once a mid-level starting pitcher for the World Champion Boston Sox, Eduardo Rodriguez hit free agency in 2021. Rodriguez landed with the Detriot Tigers signing a 5 year, 77 million dollar contract. Rodriguez is a Venezuela born left handed thrower and is 29 years old. Unlike Javier Baez, Rodriguez, also known as E-Rod, was just slightly worse than his career average 4.18 ERA. In fact his Tigers ERA is lower than it was with the Red Sox last year. Let’s compare his numbers:
2021: 13-8 W-L, 4.74 ERA, 31 GS, 157.2 IP, 47 BB, 185 SO, 99 ERA +, 3.32 FIP, 1.389 WHIP, 9.8 H9, 1.1 HR9, 2.7 BB9, 10.6 SO9.
2022: 4-5 W-L, 4.37 ERA, 15 GS, 78.1 IP, 29 BB, 62 SO, 88 ERA+, 4.34 FIP, 1.340 WHIP, 8.7 H9, 1.1 HR9, 3.3 BB9, 7.1 SO9.
E-Rod hasn’t pitch quite as well as he did last season. The notable increase in walks per 9 at 0.6 nearly a full walk per game. His strikeouts per 9 also decreased by nearly 3 per game. It’s clear that his defense didn’t help with his FIP increasing by 1.02. (Tigers 12th in AL for Errors)
My point is that both Javier Baez and Eduardo Rodriguez haven’t performed to their expectations. This isn’t unusual for players to underperform after signing a big contract. But this also means the Tigers will have a tricky financial situation if it continues going forward unless they step it up.
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Thanks to Baseball Reference and Baseball Savant for the statistics.
Technically Analytics 