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Detroit Tigers opening day marks 25th baseball season at Comerica Park

Play ball!

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Apr 2, 2025 at 6:00 am
Image: Detroit Tigers fans at Comerica Park.
Detroit Tigers fans at Comerica Park. Joe Robbins/Icon Sportswire/AP Photo
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Ladies and gentlemen, start your engines (and give your bosses an early heads up that you’ll be sick on Friday). The Tigers kickstart their 25th baseball season at Comerica Park against the White Sox, and the city kicks off one of its biggest parties of the year. While we can quibble about whether there is such a thing as a moral victory, let alone one to be found in a series sweep, the Tigers played the Dodgers tough, and were a controversial review and reversal away from a ninth inning go-ahead run on Friday night. The team showed a lot of fight — the main quality that sparked their magical ALDS run last season. Jack Flaherty, who came back to the Tigers in free agency after getting traded to the Dodgers at the deadline and winning a World Series, looked good in his first start against his old team. He’s scheduled to start on Friday against the Sox, who look to bounce back from a historically bad 121 loss season.

Starts 1:10 p.m. on Friday; Comerica Park, 2100 Woodward Ave., Detroit, ticketmaster.com. Tickets start at $110.

Event Details
Image: Detroit Tigers vs. Chicago White Sox

Detroit Tigers vs. Chicago White Sox

Fri., April 4, 1:10 p.m., Sat., April 5, 1:10 p.m., Sun., April 6, 1:40 p.m., Fri., Sept. 5, 6:40 p.m., Sat., Sept. 6, 6:10 p.m. and Sun., Sept. 7, 1:40 p.m.

Comerica Park 2100 Woodward Ave., Detroit Detroit

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20 reasons for Tigers fans to reign optimistic in 2025

11. Wunderkind Scott Harris When Tigers owner Christopher Ilitch in September 2022 tabbed 35-year-old San Francisco GM Scott Harris to lead his disappointing club into the future, he was going against the grain of Detroit history. The Tigers have been one of the most successful American League franchises in their 125-year existence, but they have mostly hewed to the conservative side when making major decisions. Therefore, hiring a young executive who had never led an MLB front office — Harris served underneath a president of baseball operations with the Giants, just as Tigers GM Jeff Greenberg now serves under Harris — was the kind of risk that Detroit ownership would normally pass over. Detroit’s previous general manager, Al Avila, was 57 when he succeeded Dave Dombrowski late in 2015. As evident now, the risk was well worth it, and it was a master stroke on Ilitch’s part to hire someone who looks, sounds, and acts like a certified genius. Not only has Harris revived the flagging fortunes of the tortuously slow rebuilding process, but the attractive young squad the Tigers put on the field has also revived badly flagging enthusiasm in Detroit’s loyal but recently skeptical fanbase. Perhaps it was the bitter memory of the last time Detroit took a flier on a rising young executive that led ownership to go for an experienced executive in Dombrowski in 2002, and for a safe but uninspired internal hire in 2015. Harris is the Tigers’ first young general manager since ill-fated 29-year-old Randy Smith was brought in from San Diego in 1996 — but Smith was merely a legacy who had risen to his level of incompetence. (Smith’s father, Tal Smith, was a longtime executive with the Yankees and Astros.) Smith quickly earned a good reputation with the Padres by carrying out a fire sale of expensive veterans after he took over in 1993, acquiring a pile of young prospects in return. After taking over the Tigers, he followed a similar blueprint in preparation for the opening of Comerica Park in 2000. Stocking the larder with prospects acquired via trades and the premium draft picks Detroit’s lowly finishes bestowed on him, Smith was named AL Executive of the Year for 1997 by Baseball America, which simultaneously named the Tigers Organization of the Year. Stockpiling largely untested talent for the future is not the same as winning in the major leagues, as Smith — like many other GMs who quite easily could dump veteran salaries for inexpensive youngsters — would soon find out. None of the prospects Smith acquired would prove to be stars of the first order, and few could be considered stars of the second order. Smith cemented his doom by gambling on the acquisition of two-time American League MVP Juan Gonzalez to lead the Tigers in the inaugural season at their new home. It was a bad gamble that turned into a disaster. Gonzalez was a slow-footed slugger who had already peaked before he was traded. His brief tenure in Tigertown was marked by surliness, injury, and underperformance. Tigers fans were only too happy to watch him spurn an insanely generous long-term contract offer from Smith in order to test free agency after 2000. While Gonzo rebounded nicely in Cleveland in 2001, it proved to be his last good season. Proof that everyone else in baseball understood that Smith was an abject failure in Detroit can be found in the fact that he was never given another chance to lead an MLB club after being fired six games into the 2002 season. Dombrowski, at 31, became the youngest GM ever in AL/NL history when he was appointed to lead the Montreal Expos in midseason 1988. When he arrived to Detroit in 2002, he was only 45, yet he already had 14 years of experience running MLB organizations.
2. 1968 & 1984 precedents Legendary longtime Tigers president and general manager Jim Campbell was a young 38 when he took the reins in 1962. Campbell built and traded his way to the 1968 world championship, though that powerful team won only one division title afterward in 1972. Campbell also built the famous core of the 1984 championship club: Jack Morris, Dan Petry, Lance Parrish, Lou Whitaker, Alan Trammell, Chet Lemon, and Kirk Gibson — all homegrown except for Lemon, who was acquired in an astute, straight-up swap for a homegrown Tigers player. Campbell’s hand-picked successor, Bill Lajoie, made several key moves in the 1983-’84 offseason to make what was already a very good team into a dominant one. There are many parallels between the 1968 and 1984 Tigers and the 2025 Bengals, beginning with a very strong starting staff. 3. 1984 & 1968 prognostications Way back before the World Wide Web, Baseball-Reference, and MLB.com were born, newsstands and bookstores were full of special spring editions of sports magazines previewing the upcoming baseball season. That was also when major publishers printed expensive 2,000-page baseball encyclopedias so fans could find out the stats and records for every ballplayer and team in major-league history. Pete Palmer, baseball historian and co-editor of Total Baseball and the ESPN Baseball Encyclopedia, kept track of the predictions in these preseason annual magazines for decades. A look back at what experts thought of the Tigers before the 1968 and 1984 seasons is instructive.The experts — mostly veteran baseball writers — predicted that the Baltimore Orioles, who had won the AL pennant in 1983, would repeat in 1984. Of the 17 magazines Palmer tracked, only three picked the Tigers; the other 14 tabbed the Orioles. The Tigers won the AL East that year by 15 games before sweeping the Royals in three games in the ALCS and crushing the Padres in five games in the World Series. Preseason favorite Baltimore finished fifth, 19 games behind Detroit.In 1968, the expert opinions of baseball writers in the so-called “Bible of Baseball,” The Sporting News, anointed the Minnesota Twins as the favorites, with the Tigers picked for second place in the American League (that was the last year before divisional play). Only one of nine preseason annuals picked the Tigers to win the pennant. That summer, the Tigers crushed their AL competition, finishing 12 games ahead of the Orioles before outlasting the St. Louis Cardinals — who had won two world championships in the previous four years — in a thrilling, seven-game Series. Preseason favorite Minnesota came in seventh, 24 games back.The lesson here is not to take too seriously various predictions out there showing the Tigers finishing second, third, or fourth in the Central. This is a young team that is highly likely to improve and has a chance to make a great leap forward, just like the 1968 and 1984 Tigers. 4. Ace of Aces Tarik Skubal Skubal made his major-league debut at 23; and had his first decent year at 25. He is a true rara avis — dominant at 26 and a unanimous Cy Young Award winner at 27. The Tigers’ stellar rotation anchor was often said to be the best pitcher in baseball last year, though that’s unfair to Atlanta’s Chris Sale, who was just as good in 2024. Sale’s career provides an object lesson as to both the promise and the peril of Skubal’s future. From 2012 through 2018, when Sale was 23 to 29 years old, the White Sox southpaw was elite, making the All-Star team for seven consecutive seasons while receiving significant support in the Cy Young balloting every year (although he didn’t win his first Cy until 2024). That’s the promise. The peril? From 2019 through 2023, Sale suffered through five years of injuries and/or subpar performances until his huge comeback last season. While it’s not impossible to imagine that Detroit’s enlightened management team can craft a deal that will lock Skubal up, the Tigers’ ace will probably test his market value via free agency after the 2026 season. That makes it imperative that the Tigers go all-out this year and next — so long as they don’t materially damage their long-term chances. President of Baseball Operations Scott Harris knows that, and you can be assured he is planning with those parameters in mind. The six-year, $171 million offer Harris made to free agent Alex Bregman, with an opt-out only after the second year, showed that. 5. The rest of the rotation, especially uber-prospect Jackson Jobe The consensus best pitching prospect in the game today, Jobe has both the triple-digit velocity and the nasty stuff to become a dominant starter in “The Show” like his teammate Skubal. However, the 2021 first-round/No. 3 draft pick might need a little more seasoning before he can fully harness his awesome talent. Returnee Jack Flaherty, of course, had a hellacious first half with Detroit a year ago, though his second act in L.A., especially in October, wasn’t so terrific. The Tigers don’t need Flaherty to repeat his 2024 dominance, as long as he takes the ball every fifth day and keeps them in the game. Reese Olson and Casey Mize both have the potential to be 15-game winners, and both will get that chance. Neither is guaranteed success, but both have the stuff and the experience to step up a level this year. 6. The bullpen depth, despite the paucity of strikeout artists The bevy of relative unknowns lurking in the Detroit ’pen may lack a traditional, lights-out closer, yet there are a lot of useful tools for Tigers manager A.J. Hinch to employ in the last four innings. Exhibit A is the way Hinch and pitching coach Chris Fetter brilliantly played chess with their bullpen during last year’s August-September “pitching chaos” run. A key question is whether versatile lefty Tyler Holton can continue to be called upon in every conceivable situation while replicating the elite level of performance that he turned in last year and in 2023. 7. The outfield defense Although the 2024 alterations made the Comerica Park pasture somewhat smaller, the Tigers are unlikely to thrive without outfielders who can go and get ’em. Riley Greene and Parker Meadows are budding Gold Glovers in left field and center, respectively, and Wenceel Perez and Kerry Carpenter are adequate in right. Harris is acutely aware of this, and he has emphasized how Detroit’s fielders must aid and protect their pitching staff. The Tigers’ catchers are both solid defenders; regrettably, the infield ‘D’ is currently suspect at all four positions. Nonetheless, fans can expect to see better than average glovework overall as Hinch evaluates if he needs to replace anyone or move fielders around to shore up the infield defense.
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