Know Your Enemy: Detroit Tigers

The Bengals limp into town, and the White Sox are in a must-win three of four situation

Enemy team

Remember what happened last time? Dallas Keuchel (rightfully) called out everyone. It seems to have worked, because the White Sox took the last two of the series against the Tigers to win it. Detroit then traveled to Cleveland to lose three straight, so the Tigers are coming in to Chicago looking to cling to their third-place spot in the division.

The Tigers had been relatively lucky health-wise, all things considering. Until they weren’t. C.J. Cron went on the injured list early last week, and has elected to have surgery to repair a torn ligament in his left knee effectively ending his season. Old friend Iván Nova was placed on the 10-day injured list over the weekend with triceps tendinitis.

Tigers pitchers has been having some struggles as of late (shockingly, not fixed by the bullpen addition of Carson Fulmer). There are two vacancies currently in the rotation with the Nova injury and Tyler Alexander being relegated back to a relief role and spent Sunday piggyback to Michael Fulmer. The Tigers will call up their No. 1 prospect Casey Mize for his major league debut on Wednesday. One thing to note is that Tigers pitchers are not going deep in to innings, so calls to the bullpen are coming sooner, and we’re looking at a lot of tired arms.

Miguel Cabrera is struggling in 2020, but I don’t want to see what happens when it finally clicks for him (I won’t be mad if that comes after this series). He’s hitting .169 with a .626 OPS, second-lowest among the team’s regulars.

Your Enemy’s current record

9-10

The Tigers came into Sunday with four straight losses. As we’ve seen with the Sox, losing streaks that long, in this of all seasons, can kill morale. It doesn’t help that we made them look like a team of All-Stars during their last visit.

Enemy pitchers

First up is Gio González vs. Matthew Boyd in a clash of starters who are off their games. Gio is 0-1 with a 6.61 ERA in 16 ⅓ innings, while Boyd is 0-2 with a 10.24 ERA in 19 ⅓ innings. Both pitchers need to shake some bad mechanics and bring down those ERAs.

Tuesday and Wednesday are where the holes in the Tigers’ rotation show up. Tuesday, No. 50 overall prospect Tarik Skubal is facing Dylan Cease. Cease had a great outing last time vs. the Tigers, bringing his lifetime starts against the Tigers to 4-0.

No word on who the Sox are tapping for Wednesday’s start but with Matt Foster’s quality start as part of Saturday’s doubleheader I have an inkling that we might see him again. If not, rumor has it that Dane Dunning may be making his major league debut. For the Tigers, debuting on Wednesday will be former No. 1 overall pick, Casey Mize.

The Thursday finale will be a battle of "aces," Spencer Turnbull vs. Lucas Giolito.

Keys to the series

• With 38 games remaining, the Sox need to get it together yesterday.
• Chicago needs to take advantage of the struggling Tigers rotation and bullpen. Jump out to early leads, and keep it there.
• The Tigers offense isn’t hurting as much as their pitching staff right now, so the defense needs to be tight and clean.