The extraordinary mystery of the Tigers’ Tarik Skubal
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Tim Keown
THE IDEA HERE is to profile the Detroit Tigers‘ Tarik Skubal, the most dynamic and charismatic pitcher in baseball, a young man whose run of dominance over the past three seasons is approaching historic levels. This gig is pretty straightforward: We seek answers from the past to the questions raised by the present. How did this mountain of aggression, a man who occupies the pitcher’s mound like an invading force, develop this all-consuming drive? What motivations and grudges and insecurities boil inside him, and what dots on his personal timeline tell the story best?
Where did he come from, and how did he get here?
The key is to ask the right questions of the right people, trigger the best memories, elicit the most profound stories.
Or just have someone read the location on a caller ID.
Russ Skubal, Tarik’s dad, says he noticed the Northern California area code and city of my phone number. I tell him I live nearby, in a little spot called Suisun Valley, a formerly quiet and undiscovered slice of vineyards and hellish wind that has become less quiet and more discovered as it gains prominence as a wine region. “I know it well,” he says. “I used to coach high school basketball right by you.” He lets out a mirthless laugh. “The principal didn’t like me much, so I only lasted two years.”
He coached former NFL wide receiver Stevie Johnson and former NFL linebacker James-Michael Johnson at Rodriguez High and was convinced he would have won a state title if he had been given two more seasons.
“You know, Tarik played two years in the Tri-Valley Little League,” he says. “We lived right around the corner from the fields.”
My response is somewhere between a stammer and a grunt. My wife and I had four sons play in that league. I coached in it for a decade. One or more of my sons had to have played on the same field as Tarik. I undoubtedly saw that name, not a common one, written on a lineup card or scorebook multiple times. I probably wrote it myself.
I did not remember Tarik Skubal.
I texted my son Andrew, six days younger than Tarik, and asked him if he knew he once shared a field with the best pitcher in the big leagues. “What????” he replied. I texted my friend, Chris Foley, who coached his three sons in the same league for as long as I did. “Seriously??” he responded.
This is the man who was named the American League Cy Young winner last season in a unanimous vote after crafting one of just 39 Triple Crown seasons — leading the league in ERA, strikeouts and wins — in MLB history. This is the man who, at 28, is even better this season: 10-2, a 2.02 ERA, a preposterous 0.81 WHIP, 10.5 strikeouts for every walk. This man, the odds-on favorite to start next week’s All-Star Game, someone with a name so unique it would seem impossible to forget, had somehow flickered in and out of our lives without any of us making the connection.
I jokingly tell Russ this doesn’t speak well of my reporting skills, and he says, “Think about this: How many times do you think we sat together in those little bleachers and didn’t even know it? What a crazy world.”
Later that night, in the Tigers’ clubhouse after Skubal beat the Athletics for his ninth win of the season, I tell Tarik what I learned from his father. “Holy s—,” he says. “Holy s—.” We set out to piece it together. Do you remember this kid or that coach? Which team did you play on? Remember the cars parked in the mud beyond the left-field fence?
At this point it must be said that Skubal is a remarkably good sport, and perhaps the most accessible, friendly and accommodating superstar in the game. The combination of a 90-minute rain delay and a sloppy game against the Athletics means it’s nearly 11 p.m. as he stands at his locker and happily reminisces. He just pitched six innings and gave up four runs; not his best, but the Tigers won, and Skubal says, “If that’s what qualifies as a bad game for me, I’ll take it.” He left the dugout and went directly to the weight room, where he put himself through his customary post-start, two-hour weight workout. “Total body lift, and I go decently heavy,” he says. “Bench, row, split-squads, dead lifts — you’re going to be sore after a start, anyway. The idea is to keep your high days high and your low days low.”
We’d spoken at his Comerica Park locker two or three times before the revelation of our shared but forgotten past, and he’s as blown away — well, almost — as I am. He’s immediately transported back to Cordelia Tri-Valley Little League, where the wind blasted through the massive eucalyptus trees so violently you could close your eyes in the dugout and imagine you were hearing waves crash against rocks, and where the tall weeds behind the outfield grass were home to legions of ticks that made their way home on just about every kid who played.
“The f—ing ticks,” he says. “Every night my mom would check my elbows, my armpits — everywhere.”
Skubal moved from Northern California to Kingman, Arizona, and was all-state in basketball and baseball in high school. Hidden by geography and young for his grade, he had just one Division I offer, from Seattle University. He was drafted by the Tigers in the ninth round after a fine career in Seattle despite Tommy John surgery costing him a year and probably some significant money.
“That’s the beauty of the game of baseball, and the beauty of my career,” Skubal says. “I think my career is pretty relatable to a lot of kids. I hope so, anyway. I didn’t have the most streamlined process. I didn’t have a lot of Division I offers, didn’t go high in the draft, not an immediate prospect, no big signing bonus. I didn’t have any of that.”
I suggest to him that our widespread amnesia regarding his time in our midst tracks with the trajectory of his career, that maybe we hold the distinction of being the first in a long line of people who missed on Tarik Skubal.
THE MOTIVATIONS AND grudges and insecurities, they’re all there, amiably fueling a drive that transforms itself on the mound into an entirely different vibe: a roaring bear of a man, 6-foot-4 and officially listed at 240 pounds, who throws every pitch like it’s an accusation and a dare, each one seeking the strike zone like blood rushing to a cut. His pitching coach at Seattle University and the first person not to miss on Tarik Skubal, Elliott Cribby, describes Skubal’s high leg kick and swerving motion as “a fish chasing a lure in the water,” and I defy anybody to do better.
The route from there to here wasn’t easy from the start. Tarik was born with a clubfoot on his left leg and underwent surgery as an infant. “Tarik never let it get in the way,” Russ says. “He never told a coach he couldn’t run because his foot hurt. To me, it’s the most inspirational part of his journey, and the inspiring part is that you can take any weakness and make it a strength.”
Skubal was raised in small-town Kingman with three brothers who became four when Tyler, three years older than Tarik and a freshman in high school, asked his parents if his friend Wil Jones could live with them. Wil was navigating difficult family circumstances, and Tyler remembers the conversation lasting “five minutes, tops,” before the Skubals agreed. “Our core principle as a family and as educators is to do what’s right for kids,” says Russ, now an elementary school principal. Wil, an excellent basketball player who loved to compete at just about anything, fit the family dynamic.
Tarik’s competitive zeal, exemplified by his combustible nature on the mound, came to national attention during Game 2 of last season’s AL Division Series in Cleveland. After the fifth of his seven scoreless innings, Skubal stormed off the mound to a resounding chorus of boos and quite obviously yelled at the Guardians‘ fans to “shut the f— up.” His mother, Laura Skubal, took to social media to chide her son with an age-old mom move: the invocation of the middle name. “Tarik Daniel!!” she replied to a post showing her son raging. Tarik responded the next day by saying that he hadn’t heard that admonishment since high school and that he found it “interesting” that his mom would have a problem with his language since he remembers her being tossed from high school gyms during his and his brothers’ basketball games.
So the fire burns hot, and it appears to have been set organically. “I probably wasn’t the greatest father,” Russ says, laughing. “I believe life has a natural pecking order. Everybody talks about building up kids’ self-esteem. The way I see it, self-esteem comes from the word self. You have to believe you’re awesome yourself. Nobody can do that for you.”
Tyler, now 31, was Tarik’s most frequent and most combative opponent. They would wrestle or play one-on-one basketball games, what Tyler calls “Skubal Games” played by “Skubal Rules,” which meant the defense calls fouls and “nobody ever thinks they foul, so most Skubal Games started out competitive and ended up as boxing matches.”
Tyler, described by his dad as “competitive but nice,” would complain to his parents about Tarik’s persistence.
“He won’t stop hitting me,” Tyler would invariably say.
“Well,” Russ told him, “hit him back.”
“I did, but he won’t stop.”
“Then you didn’t hit him hard enough.”
They all cite the same stories, putting their fingers on the same dots on the timeline: Tarik in seventh grade, playing in a championship basketball game to complete an undefeated season, entering the team huddle after the third quarter, his team down double digits, and declaring, “I’m not losing this game,” and then going out and scoring 12 points in the final six minutes to prove it.
Tyler left Kingman and played college basketball at Dubuque for a season. He came home for a break after Tarik had led his junior varsity team to an undefeated season, and Russ, ever the coach, decided it was time for a test. “I wanted to see how good Tarik was,” he says now, so he arranged for his sons to play one-on-one — Skubal Rules in full effect — to see whether Tarik could hold up against his stronger brother.
“I worked him pretty good,” Tyler says. “If I remember it right, I started out up 7-0 and then it became a Hack-a-Shaq. I don’t think we shook hands after that one. He’s always had an absolute love of competition. That’s where the fun is, getting lost in the battle. That guy that roars off the mound, yelling at the world? That’s the guy I’ve known my whole life.”
GIVEN THE AGE proximity to my youngest son, I asked Skubal, back at his locker after the A’s game, if he was on the 9- and 10-year-old all-star team. “I was an all-star every year I played,” he says, which elicits a playful eye roll from teammate Alex Cobb, sitting two lockers to the left. Skubal said he thought he was on the 11-12 team as a 9-year old (Cobb: another eye roll) but didn’t get on the field. It clearly still chafes — “Stupidest thing ever,” he says. I don’t think this happened in our league, but I don’t say anything. He moved around a few times when he was little. The leagues and the teams probably smudge in the brain after nearly 20 years.
Finally, I play the ace.
“If you were on that team, I thought you might remember sifting through the infield dirt to find my son’s teeth.”
Skubal’s eyes widen in both pure wonder and sheer terror.
Bingo.
“That’s your son?” he asks.
I nod.
“Oh. My. God. Dude.”
He takes a moment to compose himself and puts one of his massive hands over his mouth, perhaps to keep a wayward clubhouse projectile from delivering unto him the same fate. He turns to the few teammates who remain at his end of the room: Cobb, Tommy Kahnle, Casey Mize.
“This thing scarred me,” he tells them. “He’s at second base. We’re doing double-play stuff. Guy at third base fields it, throws it. He loses it in the sun. He lost how many teeth? Like, eight?”
“It was two,” I say, “but he’s …”
Skubal is not hearing any of it. He’s back there on that field, a little boy again, feeling the shock shiver through his body, seeing the ball and the teeth and the blood. He’s seeing teammates and coaches panning for teeth out near second base and someone holding up an incisor like the World Series trophy. Fine. You win. Eight it is.
“It was unbelievable,” he says. “I was there, so I was on that team. I’ll never forget it. That was the craziest thing I’ve ever seen on a baseball field. Teeth were everywhere. Blood was everywhere. They were sifting through dirt to get busted-out teeth. And then they put them back in!”
Cobb shudders a little and winces. Deep inside every pitcher lives a fear of taking a ball to the teeth, and Cobb — 37 years old, 13 years in the big leagues — appears to be hating the direction of this conversation as he hangs on every single detail.
“And he played!” Skubal says. “He stayed on the team! He played the next week! His teeth were, like, dead. Weren’t they dead? I’ll remember that the rest of my life. I swear. It was crazy. It was the most blood I’ve ever seen on the baseball field. The most blood I’ve ever seen.”
I send Andrew the recording of Skubal’s animated recollection of one of his worst days.
“My god that’s beautiful,” he texts back.
Word spread. The Tri-Valley Little League dads of 2006-07 were having a moment. The texts and phone calls were flying. It turns out Tarik and Andrew were teammates on the all-star team the following summer as well. Andrew didn’t remember Tarik, and Tarik didn’t remember Andrew, only his teeth. We’re all electrons bouncing around the universe, finding our own orbit, until we walk headfirst into a reminder that we’re all connected. One dad in our circle remembered Skubal but hadn’t linked it to what we’re seeing now. My friend Foley was the manager of that all-star team. He wrote to me, “Silva always gives me s— about keeping Michael off that all-star team. I just called him and told him why Michael didn’t make it.” Foley’s son, Matthew, known as “Chewy,” was on that team. I read Skubal a different text Foley sent me that day:
“Sent this to my boys: Never forget, there was a time when the manager looked into the dugout and tossed Chewy the ball and told him to take the mound when Tarik Skubal was available and ready to go.”
Skubal booms out a big laugh.
“I bet Chewy deserved it,” he says.
SKUBAL’S REAL BASEBALL origin story begins on a Wednesday night in Peoria, Arizona, late September of his senior year in high school. He was pitching in the Arizona Fall Classic, an annual travel ball extravaganza, and he was on: hitting 90 mph with his fastball, keeping hitters off balance, showing hints of the mound presence that would come to define him. For the first time, the scouts noticed — “We couldn’t get out of the parking lot,” Russ says — and Tarik went home with a wad of business cards from pro scouts and one from a college pitching coach: Cribby.
Three days later, on Saturday morning, the Skubals made the three-hour drive back to Peoria so Tarik could pitch again. Sore and exhausted from playing a high school football game the night before — he was, no surprise, a lineman — Tarik threw 82 to 84 mph, and the postgame parking lot was clear sailing.
“They all thought it was a fluke,” Tarik says.
Except Cribby, who kept at it.
“I’m not calling that guy,” Tarik told Russ. “There’s no way I’m going to school up there.”
But Russ persisted, and Tarik called. Cribby invited him to Seattle for a camp during Christmas break. “Not an official visit,” Russ is quick to point out. “We paid for the flights, the hotel, the camp.” Seattle University’s head coach, Donny Harrel, was dealing with a family situation that kept him away from the camp, and he left Cribby with strict orders that no scholarships would be offered until he got back.
Cribby watched Skubal throw — wearing, as he remembers it, K-Swiss shoes that Russ bought in a hurry because rain moved the camp indoors — and immediately offered him a scholarship.
“I could look in his eyes and see everything you could ever want if you’re trying to build a program,” Cribby says. “I couldn’t let him go home without an offer. He was hiding under a rock, and I was terrified someone was going to find him.”
Skubal didn’t know about Perfect Game, the one true religion of the travel ball set, until he talked to college teammates. He didn’t know the first thing about how professional baseball worked, only that he wanted to play it. “It’s a good thing I didn’t get drafted out of high school,” he says. “I didn’t know anything, but I guarantee I would have signed. I would have been, ‘Sure, let’s go play.'”
Skubal, citing his family’s financial constraints growing up because his father was a schoolteacher/coach and there were five boys “eating everything in the house,” wants to take an active role within the Major League Baseball Players Association to bring equity to youth baseball. “We weed out players because of financial burdens,” he says. “I think kids are playing too much baseball. I encourage kids to play all sports, but it’s hard when 12-year-olds are getting recruited. Now you think you have to be good at 10. I wasn’t good until I was 26.”
The humility is endearing and genuine, and Skubal was a late bloomer, to be sure, but that senior year in high school was a turning point. Russ remembers pro scouts traveling to Kingman to watch Tarik throw a bullpen after he had committed to Seattle. “That was my only outside source that he might be good,” Russ says. “When people drive to Kingman and want to stop, there must be a reason.”
Skubal’s sophomore season at Seattle, he struck out 10 in a Friday night start at UC Irvine with superagent Scott Boras in the stands, and the next day Skubal, his parents and Cribby were guests at Boras’ Newport Beach office. “We were looking around like, ‘Is this really happening?'” Cribby says. Boras became Skubal’s adviser shortly thereafter, and at the end of the 2026 season — or sooner, if the Tigers pony up a megadeal to extend Skubal — Boras will negotiate a free agent deal that could hit $400 million.
In spring training of 2022, before he became this guy, before last year’s Cy Young season that helped drag the Tigers — a team that unloaded players at the trade deadline — to the playoffs, and before he followed it with a season that looks as if it might be even better, Bryce Harper stood in the batter’s box and told Tigers catcher Jake Rogers, “This guy is the best lefty in the game.” Harper struck out and announced, “That guy’s going to win a Cy Young,” as he walked back to the dugout.
So maybe it’s more accurate to say Skubal didn’t become great until he was 26, after he used the rehabilitation time following flexor-tendon surgery in August 2022 to transform his changeup from a reliable swing-and-miss offering into the most formidable pitch in the game. Everything he throws revolves around the changeup, a pitch that takes up residence in the hitters’ minds and works its magic even when Skubal doesn’t throw it. His fastball-changeup combination is almost laughably unfair. He commands the fastball in ways that shouldn’t be possible for a pitch traveling at such speeds; in a typical setup, he will slice the outside corner with it and then throw the changeup, coming out of the same tunnel with the same arm action, to the same spot, only to have it drift off the outside corner, leaving hitters swinging like so many cats chasing so many lasers.
Skubal’s career is proof that joy, and not just spiteful vindication, can come from proving people wrong. When he signed his contract, for an above-slot bonus of $350,000, a fine sum but far less than the $1 million he could have commanded without the arm injury, he told Cribby, “It’s fine. I’m going to make my money in the big leagues.”
“In my eyes, I haven’t accomplished anything in this game,” Skubal says. “That’s what keeps me hungry. I haven’t won a World Series, and that’s all that matters. And when, God willing, I win a World Series, I’ll probably tell you I haven’t accomplished anything because I haven’t won two. That’s just how I was raised.”
When I ask him how his life has changed in the past year, with the accolades and the attention and the growing consensus that the game is seeing something it hasn’t seen since vintage Justin Verlander or Clayton Kershaw or maybe even Pedro Martinez, Skubal thinks for a moment and says, “My coffee maker broke, and I’m just going to buy a new one. Just buy a new one, right? I tried to fix it for a little bit, but nah, I’m going to buy a new one. That’s a luxury, I guess.”
Skubal calls the Cy Young “the highest award a pitcher can win,” but through the first half of this season he is putting together an argument to be in the AL MVP conversation. If he can somehow pass Aaron Judge and possibly Cal Raleigh, he would become the third full-time pitcher this century — and just the third full-time starting pitcher since 1986 — to win an MVP award. He is economical and dominant, the rarest combination in an era when it’s near-biblical for hitters to work counts in an effort to chase starters as early as possible.
“Part of my process is that I’m 100 percent bought-in on executing every pitch,” Skubal says. “I expect each one to go where I want it to. I don’t let any negative thought enter my mind. I don’t hit my spot 100% of the time. I probably hit my spot 20% of the time, but the game’s best do it a little less than me. I’m not trying to be perfect.”
Skubal listens patiently to a recap of something his manager, AJ Hinch, said a few days after Skubal threw the best game of his career, and one of the best games of anybody’s career — ever. Against the Guardians on May 25, Skubal threw a 94-pitch complete game shutout (a “Maddux” in pitching lingo, and Skubal’s first complete game) and struck out 13. His last pitch was a third strike to Gabriel Arias at 102.6 mph, the fastest strikeout pitch thrown by a big league starter in any inning in the Statcast era.
The complete game issue is among the most tiresome of the terminally exhausting subset of analytics vs. old-school. Always remember that Bob Gibson threw a complete game every four days and Juan Marichal once threw 227 pitches and now everybody’s soft and managers are afraid to let anyone face the same hitter three times. Hinch, whose job is to assess baseball games as dispassionately as possible, said he would let more starters pitch into the ninth if they, like Skubal, threw 85 pitches and allowed no runs through eight. But the calculus of his job is to determine whether a starter’s 107th pitch to start the ninth is going to be better than closer Will Vest‘s first pitch.
Skubal listens to this as if he has heard it before — maybe every time he is removed from a game — and didn’t believe it then, either. This is a man for whom “five and dive” constitutes the three most mortifying words in the language. But does his manager have a point?
“Yeah,” he says, the whatever in his tone as obvious as the sun. “But I’ll always think my pitch — whichever one it might be — is the best option.”
You like it old-school? Skubal will make your old-school look brand-new.
MY WIFE FOUND the official photo of that all-star team, taken days before the tooth incident. Kneeling bottom left, the proof: 9-year-old Tarik Skubal, with Andrew Keown standing directly behind him. Skubal’s posture is straight out of an anatomy textbook: his dark eyes set in a steely glare, his right hand above his left as they rest on his right thigh. The tan line on his right wrist gives him away as a kid who spent most of his summer wearing a baseball glove. Nearly every other 9- and 10-year-old is looking out from under a cap either pulled down too low or cocked too high. They’re all slouching or leaning or just looking like kids who can barely remain still long enough for a shutter to click. They’ll all be rolling in that dirt and grass within seconds.
One little boy, however, is all business. “Even then he was a little serious,” his father says. Tarik, in fact, is the only one who looks as if he has higher aspirations than the 9- and 10-year-old all-star team. He’s posing not for the job he has but the one he wants. He looks as if he knew, even back then, that someday everybody — even those who don’t remember — would come to see it.
Hard-throwing rookie Jacob Misiorowski is a National League All-Star replacement, giving the Milwaukee Brewers right-hander a chance to break Paul Skenes‘ record for the fewest big league appearances before playing in the Midsummer Classic.
Misiorowski was named Friday night to replace Chicago Cubs lefty Matthew Boyd, who will be unavailable for the All-Star Game on Tuesday night in Atlanta because he is scheduled to start Saturday at the New York Yankees.
The 23-year-old Misiorowski has made just five starts for the Brewers, going 4-1 with a 2.81 ERA while averaging 99.3 mph on his fastball, with 89 pitches that have reached 100 mph.
If he pitches at Truist Park, Misiorowski will make it consecutive years for a player to set the mark for fewest big league games before an All-Star showing.
Skenes, the Pittsburgh Pirates right-hander getting ready for his second All-Star appearance, had made 11 starts in the majors when he was chosen as the NL starter for last year’s All-Star Game at Texas. He pitched a scoreless inning.
“I’m speechless,” said a teary-eyed Misiorowski, who said he was given the news a few minutes before the Brewers’ 8-3 victory over Washington. “It’s awesome. It’s very unexpected and it’s an honor.”
Misiorowski is the 30th first-time All-Star and 16th replacement this year. There are now 80 total All-Stars.
“He’s impressive. He’s got some of the best stuff in the game right now, even though he’s a young pitcher,” said Yankees slugger Aaron Judge, who is a starting AL outfielder for his seventh All-Star nod. “He’s going to be a special pitcher in this game for a long time so I think he deserved it and it’s going be pretty cool for him and his family.”
Carlos Rodón, Carlos Estévez and Casey Mize were named replacement pitchers on the AL roster.
The New York Yankees‘ Rodón, an All-Star for the third time in five seasons, will replace teammate Max Fried for Tuesday’s game in Atlanta. Fried will be unavailable because he is scheduled to start Saturday against the Chicago Cubs.
In his final start before the All-Star game, Rodón allowed four hits and struck out eight in eight innings in an 11-0 victory over the Cubs.
“This one’s a little special for me,” said Rodón, an All-Star in 2021 and ’22 who was 3-8 in his first season with the Yankees two years ago before rebounding. “I wasn’t good when I first got here, and I just wanted to prove that I wasn’t to going to give up and just put my best foot forward and try to win as many games as I can.”
The Kansas City Royals‘ Estévez replaces Texas’ Jacob deGrom, who is scheduled to start at Houston on Saturday night. Estévez was a 2023 All-Star when he was with the Los Angeles Angels.
Mize takes the spot held by Boston‘s Garrett Crochet, who is scheduled to start Saturday against Tampa Bay. Mize gives the Tigers six All-Stars, most of any team and tied for the franchise record.
Royals third baseman Maikel Garcia will replace Tampa Bay‘s Brandon Lowe, who went on the injured list with left oblique tightness. The additions of Estévez and Garcia give the Royals four All-Stars, matching their 2024 total.
The Seattle Mariners announced center fielder Julio Rodríguez will not participate, and he was replaced by teammate Randy Arozarena. Rodríguez had been voted onto the AL roster via the players’ ballot. The Mariners, who have five All-Stars, said Rodríguez will use the break to “recuperate, rest and prepare for the second half.”
Arozarena is an All-Star for the second time. He started in left field for the AL two years ago, when he was with Tampa Bay. Arozarena was the runner-up to Vladimir Guerrero Jr. in the 2023 Home Run Derby.
Rays right-hander Drew Rasmussen, a first-time All-Star, is replacing Angels left-hander Yusei Kikuchi, who is scheduled to start Saturday night at Arizona. Rasmussen is 7-5 with a 2.82 ERA in 18 starts.
San Diego added a third NL All-Star reliever in lefty Adrián Morejón, who replaces Philadelphia starter Zack Wheeler. The Phillies’ right-hander is scheduled to start at San Diego on Saturday night. Morejón entered the weekend with a 1.71 ERA in 45 appearances.
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David Schoenfield
We’re past due to hand out some midseason grades, so let’s hand out some midseason grades.
As we pass the 90-game mark in the 2025 MLB season, my team of the first half isn’t the well-rounded Detroit Tigers, who do get our highest grade for owning MLB’s best record, or the explosive Chicago Cubs or Shohei Ohtani‘s Los Angeles Dodgers, but a team most baseball fans love to hate: the Houston Astros. They lost their two best players from last season and their best hitter has been injured — and they’re playing their best baseball since they won the 2022 World Series.
Let’s get to the grades. As always, we’re grading off preseason expectations, factoring in win-loss record and quality of performance, while looking at other positive performances and injuries.
Jump to a team:
AL East: BAL | BOS | NYY | TB | TOR
AL Central: CHW | CLE | DET | KC | MIN
AL West: ATH | HOU | LAA | SEA | TEX
NL East: ATL | MIA | NYM | PHI | WSH
NL Central: CHC | CIN | MIL | PIT | STL
NL West: ARI | COL | LAD | SD | SF
Tarik Skubal is obviously the headline act, but the Tigers are winning with impressive depth across the entire roster.
Javier Baez is putting together a remarkable comeback season after a couple of abysmal years and will become the first player to start an All-Star Game at both shortstop and in the outfield. Former No. 1 overall picks Casey Mize and Spencer Torkelson have put together their own comeback stories, while Riley Greene has matured into one of the game’s top power hitters.
Given their deep well of prospects and contributors at the MLB level, no team is better positioned than the Tigers to add significant help at the trade deadline.
I heard someone refer to them as the Zombie Astros, which feels apropos. Alex Bregman left as a free agent, they traded Kyle Tucker, Yordan Alvarez has been injured and has just three home runs, and the Jose Altuve experiment in left field predictably fizzled.
But here they are, fighting for the best record in the majors and holding a comfortable lead in the AL West. They’re getting star turns from Hunter Brown, Framber Valdez and Jeremy Pena, while the risky decision to start Cam Smith in the majors with very little minor league experience has paid off, as he has now become their cleanup hitter.
If we ignore the COVID-19 season, the Astros look on their way to an eighth straight division title.
This could be at least a half-grade higher based on everything that has gone right: Pete Crow-Armstrong‘s attention-grabbing breakout, Tucker doing everything expected after the big trade, Seiya Suzuki‘s monster power numbers and Matthew Boyd‘s All-Star turn in the rotation. The Cubs are on pace for their most wins since their World Series title season in 2016.
There have been a few hiccups, however, especially in the rotation with Justin Steele‘s season-ending injury and Ben Brown‘s inconsistency, plus rookie third baseman Matt Shaw has scuffled, and the bench has been weak aside from their backup catchers.
Still, this is a powerhouse lineup, and the Cubs will seek to improve their rotation at the deadline.
They just keep winning of late, going from 25-27 and seven games behind the Yankees on May 25 to taking over first place from the slumping Bronx Bombers, a remarkable turnaround over just 36 games. They went 27-9 over a 36-game stretch ending with their eighth win in a row on Sunday.
George Springer‘s recent surge has been fun to watch, a reminder of how good he was at his peak, and Addison Barger has been mashing over the past two months.
Some of the stats don’t add up to the Blue Jays being this good — they’ve barely outscored their opponents — but there might be more offense in the tank from the likes of Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and a healthy Anthony Santander, and the bullpen, a soft spot, is the easiest area to upgrade.
Their success is best summed up by the fact that Freddy Peralta is their lone All-Star, but they have a whole bunch of players who have contributed between 1 and 2 WAR.
Brandon Woodruff looked good Sunday in his first start in nearly two years, so that could be a huge boost for the second half.
I’m curious to see how Jackson Chourio performs as well. While his counting stats — extra-base hits, RBIs — are fine, his triple-slash line remains below last season, especially his OBP. He had a huge second half in 2024 (.310/.363/.552), and if he does that again, the Brewers could find themselves back in the postseason for the seventh time in eight seasons.
The Rays started off slow, with a losing record through the end of April, but then went 33-22 in May and June to claw back into the AL East race — as the Rays usually do, last year being the recent exception.
Two key performers have been All-Star third baseman Junior Caminero, who has a chance to become just the third player to hit 40 home runs in his age-21 season, and All-Star first baseman Jonathan Aranda.
Due to the league wanting the Rays to play more home games early in the season, the July and August slate will be very road-heavy, so we’ll see how the Rays adapt to a difficult two-month stretch, especially since their pitching isn’t quite as deep as it has been in other seasons.
No, they’re not going to be the greatest team of all time. But they might win 100 games — even though Blake Snell and Roki Sasaki, their huge offseason acquisitions, have combined for just two wins in 10 starts.
The lineup, of course, has been terrific, with Ohtani leading the NL in several categories and Will Smith leading the batting race. By wRC+, it’s been the best offense in Dodgers history.
If they can get some combo of Snell, Sasaki and Tyler Glasnow healthy, plus Ohtani eventually ramped up to a bigger workload on the mound, the Dodgers still loom as World Series favorites.
They are on pace for 95 wins, mainly on the strength of Zack Wheeler, Ranger Suarez and Cristopher Sanchez, who are a combined 23-7 with 11.8 WAR. Jesus Luzardo‘s ERA is bloated due to that two-start stretch when he allowed 20 runs, but he has otherwise been solid as well.
But, overall, it hasn’t always been the smoothest of treks. The bullpen has imploded a few times and the offense has lacked power aside from Kyle Schwarber. Bryce Harper is back after missing three weeks, and they need to get his bat going. Look for some bullpen additions at the trade deadline — and perhaps an outfielder as well.
The Cardinals have been a minor surprise — perhaps even to the Cardinals themselves. St. Louis was viewing this as a rebuilding year of sorts — not that the Cardinals ever hit rock bottom and start completely over. They had a hot May, winning 12 of 13 at one point, but the offense has been fading of late, with those three straight shutout losses to Pittsburgh and six shutout losses since June 25.
The starting rotation doesn’t generate a lot of swing and miss, with both Erick Fedde and Miles Mikolas seeing their ERAs starting to climb. Brendan Donovan is the team’s only All-Star rep, and that kind of sums up this team: solid but without any star power. That might foretell a second-half fade.
All-Star starting pitchers Logan Webb and Robbie Ray, plus a dominant bullpen, have led the way, although after starting 12-4, the Giants have basically been a .500 team for close to three months now. Rafael Devers hasn’t yet ignited the offense since coming over from Boston, and the Giants have lost four 1-0 games.
These final three games at home against the Dodgers before the All-Star break will be a crucial series, as Los Angeles has slowly pulled away in the NL West.
This was an “A-plus” through June 12, when the Mets were 45-24 and owned the best record in baseball, even though Juan Soto hadn’t gotten hot. Soto finally got going in June, but the pitching collapsed, and the Mets went through a disastrous 1-10 stretch.
The rotation injuries have piled up, exacerbating the lack of bullpen depth. Recent games have been started by Justin Hagenman (who had a 6.21 ERA in Triple-A), journeyman reliever Chris Devenski, Paul Blackburn (7.71 ERA) and Frankie Montas, who has had to start even though he’s clearly not throwing the ball well. The Mets need to get the rotation healthy, but also could use more offense from Mark Vientos and their catchers (Francisco Alvarez was demoted to Triple-A).
At times it has felt like Cal Raleigh has been a one-man team with his record-breaking first half. But he will be joined on the All-Star squad by starting pitcher Bryan Woo, closer Andres Munoz and center fielder Julio Rodriguez, who made it on the strength of his defense, as his offense has been a disappointment.
The offense has been one of the best in the majors on the road, but the rotation has been nowhere near as effective as the past couple of seasons, with George Kirby, Logan Gilbert and Bryce Miller all missing time with injuries. They just shut out the Pirates three games in a row, so maybe that will get the rotation on a roll.
They’re just out of the wild-card picture while hanging around .500, so we give them a decent grade since that exceeds preseason expectations. It feels like a little bit of a mirage given their run differential — their record in one-run games (good) versus their record in blowout games (not good) — and various holes across the lineup and pitching staff.
But they’ve done two things to keep them in the race. One, they hit a lot of home runs. Two, they’re the only team in the majors to use just five starting pitchers. The rotation hasn’t been stellar, but it’s been stable.
The Padres are probably fortunate to be where they are, given some of their issues. As expected, the offensive depth has been a problem.
Not as expected, Dylan Cease has struggled while Michael King‘s injury after a strong start has left them without last year’s dynamic 1-2 punch at the top of the rotation (although Nick Pivetta has been one of the best signings of the offseason). Yu Darvish just made his season debut Monday, so hopefully he’ll provide a lift.
The Padres haven’t played well against the better teams, including a 2-5 record against the Dodgers, but they did clean up against the Athletics, Rockies and Pirates, going 16-2 against those three teams.
For now, the Reds are stuck in neutral. Leave out 2022, when they lost 100 games, and it’s otherwise been a string of .500-ish seasons: 31-29 in 2020, 83-79 in 2021, 82-80 in 2023, 77-85 in 2024 and now a similar record so far in 2025.
The hope was that Terry Francona would be a difference-maker. Maybe that will play out down the stretch, but the best hope is to get the rotation clicking on all cylinders at the same time. That means Andrew Abbott continuing his breakout performance, plus getting Hunter Greene healthy again and rookie Chase Burns to live up to the hype after a couple of shaky outings following an impressive MLB debut.
Throw in Nick Lodolo and solid Nick Martinez and Brady Singer, and this group can be good enough to pitch the Reds to their first full-season playoff appearance since 2013.
The Yankees have hit their annual midseason swoon — which has been subject to much intense analysis from their disgruntled fans — and that opening weekend sweep of the Brewers, when the Yankees’ torpedo bats were the big story in baseball, now seems long ago.
Going from seven up to three back in such a short time is a disaster — but not disastrous. Nonetheless, the Yankees will have to do some hard-core self-evaluation heading to the trade deadline.
The offense wasn’t going to be as good as it was in April, when Paul Goldschmidt, Trent Grisham and Ben Rice were all playing over their heads. So, do they need a hitter? Or with Clarke Schmidt now likely joining Gerrit Cole as a Tommy John casualty, do they need a starting pitcher? Or both?
From the book of “things we didn’t expect,” page 547: The Marlins are averaging more runs per game than the Orioles, Padres, Braves and Rangers, to name a few teams. They’re averaging almost as many runs per game as the Mets, and last time we checked, the Marlins weren’t the team to give Soto $765 million.
An eight-game winning streak at the end of June has the Marlins going toe-to-toe with the Braves for third place in the NL East even though the starting rotation has been a mess, with Sandy Alcantara on track to become just the fourth qualified pitcher with an ERA over 7.00.
Heading into the season, I thought that if any team was going to challenge the Dodgers in the NL West, it would be the Diamondbacks. The offense has once again been one of the best in the majors, but the pitching issues have been painful.
After the aggressive move to sign Corbin Burnes, he went down with Tommy John surgery after 11 starts. Meanwhile, Zac Gallen, Eduardo Rodriguez and Brandon Pfaadt each have an ERA on the wrong side of 5.00. Rodriguez was better in June before a shellacking on July 4, while Gallen remains homer-prone, so it’s hard to tell if improvement is on the horizon. Their playoff odds are hovering just under 20%, so there’s a chance, but they need to get red-hot like they did last July and August.
It feels like it has been more soap opera than baseball season in Boston, with the Devers drama finally ending with the shocking trade with the Giants.
If you give added weight that this is the Red Sox, a team that should be operating with the big boys in both budget and aspirations and instead seemed to only want to dump Devers’ contract, then feel free to lower this grade a couple of notches, even if the Red Sox are close in the wild-card standings.
On the field, the heralded rookie trio of Kristian Campbell, Roman Anthony and Marcelo Mayer hasn’t exactly clicked, with Campbell returning to the minors after posting a .902 OPS in April. A big test will come out of the All-Star break, when they play the Cubs, Phillies, Dodgers, Twins and Astros in a tough 15-game stretch.
After last season’s surprise playoff appearance, it’s been a frustrating 2025 — although I’m not sure this result is necessarily a surprise.
There were concerns about the offense heading into the season and those concerns have proven correct. They were getting no production from their outfield, so they rushed Jac Caglianone to the majors to much hype, but he has struggled and might need a reset back in Triple-A. Even Bobby Witt Jr., as good as he has been (on pace for 7.5 WAR), has seen his OPS drop 140 points.
On the bright side, Kris Bubic emerged as an All-Star starter and Noah Cameron has filled in nicely for the injured Cole Ragans, so maybe they trade a starter for some offense.
Coming off a catastrophic 2024 season, nobody was expecting anything from the White Sox. Indeed, another 121-loss season loomed as a possibility. While they’re on pace to lose 100 again, they’ve at least played more competitive baseball thanks to their pitching.
Rookie starters Shane Smith and Sean Burke have shown promise, while rookie position players Kyle Teel, Edgar Quero and now Colson Montgomery are getting their initial taste of the majors.
There has been the mix of calamity: Luis Robert Jr. has been unproductive and is probably now untradable, and former No. 3 overall pick Andrew Vaughn hit .189 and was traded to the Brewers.
The Twins are one organization that might like a do-over of the past five seasons. It feels like they’ve had the most talent in the division, but all they’ve done is squeeze out one soft division title in 2023. Now, the Tigers have passed them in talent and other factors, such as payroll flexibility.
There’s still time for the Twins to turn things around in 2025, but outside of that wonderful 13-game winning streak, they haven’t played winning baseball.
Overall, it’s been yet another bad season, despite Paul Skenes‘ brilliance. Really, do we talk enough about him? Yes, we do talk about him, but he has a 1.95 ERA through his first 42 career starts. Incredible.
Here’s an amazing thing about baseball. The Pirates are not a good team, but they recently put together one of the best six-game stretches in history. That’s not stretching the description. First, they swept the Mets — a good team — by scores of 9-1, 9-2 and 12-1. Then they swept the Cardinals — a good team — with three shutouts, 7-0, 1-0 and 5-0. They became the first team since at least 1901 to score 43 runs or more and allow four runs or fewer in a six-game stretch. And then they promptly got shut out three games in a row, making them the first to win three straight shutouts and then lose three straight shutouts.
Eighteen of our 28 voters picked them to win the AL West before the season, but it’s looking more and more like the 2023 World Series might be a stone-cold fluke in the middle of a string of losing seasons. That year, nearly everyone in the lineup had a career year at the plate, and the pitching got hot at the right time.
This year’s Rangers, though, have struggled to score runs, and while some have pointed to the offensive environment at Globe Life Field, they’re near the bottom in road OPS as well. It’s been fun seeing Jacob deGrom back at a dominating level, and Nathan Eovaldi should have been an All-Star.
Put it this way: If the Rangers can somehow squeeze into the postseason, you don’t want to face the Rangers in a short series. Indeed, if any team looms as an October upset special, it might be the Rangers.
The Nationals received superlative first-half performances from James Wood and MacKenzie Gore, while CJ Abrams is on the way to his best season. But there remains a lack of overall organizational progress, which finally led to the firings on Sunday of longtime GM Mike Rizzo and longtime manager Dave Martinez. A 7-19 record in June sealed their fate, as the rotation has been bad and the bullpen arguably the worst in baseball.
Until the Nationals figure out how to improve their pitching — or, better yet, find an owner who wants to win — they will be stuck going nowhere.
That fell apart in a hurry. Sunday’s loss was Cleveland’s 10th in a row, a stretch that remarkably included five shutouts. Indeed, the Guardians have now been shut out 11 times; the franchise record in the post-dead-ball-era (since 1920) is 20 shutouts in 1968.
There’s nothing worse than watching a team that can’t score runs, so that tells you how exciting the Guardians have been. Last year, the Guardians hit exceptionally well with runners in scoring position, keeping afloat what was otherwise a mediocre offense. That hasn’t happened in 2025 (trading Josh Naylor didn’t help either). Throw in some predictable regression from the bullpen, and this season looks lost.
We can’t give this a complete failing grade due to the emergence of All-Star shortstop Jacob Wilson (the Athletics’ first All-Star starter since Josh Donaldson in 2014) and slugging first baseman Nick Kurtz, who have a chance to finish 1-2 in the Rookie of the Year voting. Plus, we have Denzel Clarke‘s circus catches in center field.
But otherwise? Ugh. The Sacramento gamble already looks like a disaster, three months into a three-year stay. The team is drawing well below Sutter Health Park’s 14,000-seat capacity, with many recent games drawing under 10,000 fans. Luis Severino bashed the small crowds and the lack of air-conditioning.
The A’s had a groundbreaking ceremony for their new park in Vegas, renting heavy construction equipment as background props. Maybe they should have spent that money on more pitching help.
Based on preseason expectations, the Braves have clearly been the biggest disappointment in the National League — fighting the Orioles for most disappointing overall.
What’s gone wrong? They haven’t scored runs, as the offense continues its remarkable fade from a record-setting performance just two seasons ago. The collapses of Michael Harris II and Ozzie Albies lead the way, with lack of production at shortstop and left field playing a big role as well. Closer Raisel Iglesias has struggled, and the team is 11-22 in one-run games. Spencer Strider hasn’t yet reached his pre-injury level and Reynaldo Lopez made just one start before going down.
The Braves haven’t missed the playoffs since 2017, but that run is clearly in jeopardy.
The Orioles have a similar record to the Braves but have played much worse, including losses of 24-2, 19-5, 15-3 and two separate 9-0 shutouts.
They will spend the trade deadline dealing away as many of their impending free agents as possible, and then do a lot of soul-searching heading into the offseason. After making the playoffs in 2023 and 2024, will this season just be a blip? While the pitching struggles aren’t necessarily a big surprise, what has happened to the offense? Are some of their young players prospects or suspects?
After two months of Cleveland Spiders-level baseball, it would be easy to make fun of the Rockies. Especially since they recently announced Walker Monfort — son of the owner — was promoted to executive VP and will replace outgoing president and COO Greg Feasel.
On the other hand, the Rockies are doing something right: They just drew 121,000 for a three-game series against the White Sox.
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Jesse Rogers
CHICAGO — Former White Sox lefty Mark Buehrle was forever immortalized inside Rate Field as the team unveiled a statue in his honor Friday.
Buehrle, 46, played 16 years in the majors, including the first 12 with the White Sox, who he helped win a World Series in 2005. He won 214 games and pitched 200 innings or more in 14 consecutive seasons from 2001 to 2014.
“I can’t put it into words,” Buehrle said after the unveiling. “You don’t play the game for any of this. You never think of number retirements or statues. I can’t even wrap my head around it. It doesn’t make sense.”
The statue is an action shot of him throwing a pitch.
His wife and kids were in attendance and helped pull off the cover to unveil the statue while his 2005 teammates looked on. The event kicked off a weekend reunion for the World Series team which went 11-1 in the postseason, beating the Houston Astros in four games to take home the title.
Buehrle was a five-time All-Star and four-time Gold Glove winner, finishing fifth in Cy Young voting in 2005.
“Well-deserved,” former right fielder Jermaine Dye said of the statue. “Great teammate. Great leader. Definitely someone you want on a ballclub to lead a pitching staff.”
The White Sox rotation — led by Buehrle — threw four complete games in the ALCS against the Boston Red Sox in 2005, missing a fifth complete game by two-thirds of an inning. It’s an unheard of accomplishment in today’s game since starters infrequently go the distance.
Besides being an innings-eater on the mound, Buehrle was a fast worker — a favorite trait of his catcher, A.J Pierzynski. And he wasn’t someone who threw a lot of different pitches. He caught it and threw it without much input from behind the plate.
“He was fast,” Pierzynski said. “We had Jermaine Dye calling pitches from right field some games. We did come crazy things you wouldn’t recommend to people to do nowadays.”
Buehrle is a notoriously low-key guy who hates the spotlight but even he was moved by the team’s decision to honor him with a statue, which joins former slugger Harold Baines in the right-field concourse.
“I joked with him when I saw him,” Dye said. “I told him ‘Man it takes you getting a statue to get you out of the house.'”
Buehrle added: “I was literally nervous as can be today. This is not my comfort zone but by no means am I taking it lightly. This is incredible.”
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