Detroit at Toronto, August 20-22

Friday, August 20 2021 @ 02:00 PM EDT

Contributed by: Magpie

I was born lonely
down by the riverside
Learned to spin fortune wheels

and throw dice

You're probably thinking - that sneaky old Magpie. Gives us thousands of words yesterday on the Tigers of the past because he's got nothing to say about the Tigers of today.

You're not entirely wrong, except that the current Tigers do show signs of becoming interesting, in the not too distant future. There are some good looking young pitchers here - Casey Mize and Tarik Skubal. There are some pretty decent position players as well. The problem there, I think, is that few of them are actually young, with the exception of Akil Baddoo. It's not that they've got a bunch of old guys - it's just that the prime of players like Jeimer Candelario and Jonathan Schoop and Eric Haase and should be right about now.

But it is a lineup composed of pretty good players along with some truly gaping black holes, which I've always thought was the easiest thing to fix in a hurry. Shortstop, for example. This team really needs a shortstop. And a second baseman. But I believe there will be some shortstops looking for employment this winter.

Miguel Cabrera, of course, is very old and the Tigers have an enormous amount of money committed to him. After the first two months of the current season, this situation was looking sad and dire. But since June 1, Cabrera has hit ... better. I can't access the exact numberz because I happen to be sitting outside a Starbucks in Winnipeg and my tablet seems unable to cope with a simple Game log. It's something like .280/.340/.450 which obviously isn't worth $32 million. But neither is it the ninth circle of hell. He's actually become playable, which matters if once more you want to start winning some games.

The Jays and Tigers were often rivals in the old AL East - the two teams were both in the hunt for division titles for most of the 1980s. But those days are long gone, and they haven't met for quite some time, July 2019 to be precise. Detroit never visited the Jays at their temporary homes in Buffalo and Dunedin - their last time as the visiting opposition came in the four game series in Toronto that kicked off the 2019 season.

Matchups? Something like this, I imagine...

Fri Aug 20 - Peralta (3-2, 3.70) vs Ray (9-5, 2.88)
Sat Aug 21 - Alexander (2-2, 4.57) vs Ryu (11-6, 3.72)
Sun Aug 22 - Some Guy (?-?, ?.??) vs Matz (10-7, 4.08)

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