Detroit ignites Opening Day festivities as a struggling Tigers offense faces a tough Cardinals squad, featuring a landmark Verlander return.
The Tigers come home Friday for the kind of day Detroit treats like a civic sacrament, ironically enough, since it is Good Friday. Opening Day at Comerica Park, 1:10 p.m., sold out, the whole routine.
Framber Valdez gets the ball in Game 1 of a three-game set against the St. Louis Cardinals, and Justin Verlander — making his first start in this building since August 2017 — closes the series Sunday on national television. In between, a Tigers offense batting .202 through six road games needs to find something it left in the desert.
A rough exit from Arizona
Detroit started the year fine in San Diego, taking two of three behind a dominant Tarik Skubal outing and a strong Valdez debut. Then they went to Chase Field and got swept. The Diamondbacks outscored the Tigers 17-11 across three games, and the final two losses stung in different ways. On March 31, the bullpen coughed up a 5-1 lead in the eighth inning — Will Vest and Kenley Jansen both getting tagged — as rookie Jose Fernandez homered twice in his MLB debut to beat them 7-5. On April 1, Skubal pitched seven innings of one-run ball and still lost 1-0 because Zac Gallen and two Arizona relievers held Detroit to four hits.
The aggregate numbers are bleak. One home run as a team through six games — a Dillon Dingler shot on Opening Day in San Diego. Forty-six strikeouts. A .582 OPS. Kerry Carpenter, batting leadoff, is 1-for-16 with 10 strikeouts, a franchise record for futility through four games. Colt Keith (.429) and rookie Kevin McGonigle (five RBI in his first week, including a four-hit MLB debut) have been the exceptions, but the middle of the order has been largely silent.
What Valdez and Verlander bring to the weekend
Valdez, signed in February to a three-year, $115 million deal, looked exactly like the pitcher Detroit paid for in his first start. He gave the Tigers six innings on 83 pitches in San Diego, scattering seven hits but allowing just one earned run with five strikeouts. He leaned on his sinker, generated ground balls and kept the Padres off balance. Friday will be his Comerica Park debut in a Tigers uniform, and he draws Cardinals right-hander Michael McGreevy, who threw six no-hit innings in his own season debut against Tampa Bay before the bullpen let the bid slip away.
Verlander's Sunday start is the weekend's headliner, even if his first outing back was not what anyone hoped for. He lasted 3.2 innings in Arizona on March 30, surrendering five earned runs as Corbin Carroll hit an RBI triple and a three-run homer off him. Verlander, 43 and chasing his 300th career win (he sits at 266), was honest afterward: "Nothing was right. Those guys were on time for everything." He signed a one-year, $13 million deal to come back to the franchise that drafted him in 2004, and his return to Comerica — first appearance there in nearly nine years — will air on Peacock's Sunday Night Baseball broadcast. He faces Kyle Leahy, a converted reliever making just his second career start.
Saturday's middle game features its own subplot. Jack Flaherty, who pitched for the Cardinals from 2017 through mid-2023, faces his former club with Dustin May on the mound for St. Louis.
The Cardinals are better than expected
St. Louis arrives at 4-2, which is not what most people projected for a team in the first year of a Chaim Bloom rebuild. The Cardinals traded Nolan Arenado, Willson Contreras and Sonny Gray over the winter and fielded an Opening Day lineup entirely 27 or younger. It hasn't mattered yet. Rookie second baseman JJ Wetherholt, the seventh overall pick in the 2024 draft, homered in his first MLB at-bat on March 26 and delivered a walk-off single two days later. First baseman Alec Burleson, a Silver Slugger winner in 2025, anchors the middle of the order. Shortstop Masyn Winn, a Gold Glove winner at 23, singled home the winning run in the 11th inning on April 1 to beat the Mets.
The pitching staff is young and uneven — a 4.26 ERA and 1.47 WHIP through six games — but McGreevy and Andre Pallante have both been sharp in their starts. The bullpen is a closer-by-committee operation that has already blown one four-run lead and survived two extra-inning games. This is a team playing with nothing to lose, which tends to make opponents uncomfortable.
Why Opening Day in Detroit is different
There is no event quite like it in this city. Last year, the Downtown Detroit Partnership counted 128,535 visitors to the area surrounding Comerica Park on Opening Day — more than three times the ballpark's capacity. People take the day off work. Kids skip school. Tailgates fire up before dawn in the parking lots off Woodward Avenue, and the bars along Adams Street are full by 9 a.m. The free block party on Witherell Street opens at nine with food trucks, music and appearances from the mascot PAWS, and the annual March to Comerica Park leaves Campus Martius at 10:30.
Friday's pregame ceremony will include a moment of silence for Mickey Lolich, the Tigers' 1968 World Series hero who died since last season. Brandon Inge, who played 12 seasons in Detroit, throws the ceremonial first pitch. An A-10 Thunderbolt from Selfridge Air National Guard Base handles the flyover.
The tradition runs deep here. Charlie Bennett, a catcher who lost both legs in an 1894 train accident, threw out or caught the first pitch at every Detroit home opener for 30 consecutive years starting in 1896 — an unmatched streak. In 1993, the Tigers beat Oakland 20-4 at Tiger Stadium on Opening Day with Cecil Fielder going 4-for-4. Dmitri Young hit three home runs on Opening Day 2005 at Comerica. Last year, Carpenter — before his current slump — hit two.
The Tigers are 71-53-1 all-time on Opening Day. History favors them. What remains to be seen is whether the bats come back to life in front of 41,000 people who took the day off to watch them try.