This article has been in the works for a minute. I was going to write this piece, regardless of how my Mize had looked in spring training, and so far the results have been there for Casey. He gave up three runs today, but only one was earned, and his stuff has looked generally fine in a very small sample. But I was recently on a show where I was asked who is a candidate for the Tigers who I feel might be due for some regression, and the first one that came to mind was Casey Mize.
I’m not coming on here to say that Mize will be cut at some point or that he’s going bounce back and forth between AAA and the big league level. Mize had a career-best season a year ago, even finding his way to Atlanta for the All-Star game as a reserve. Overall, I think Casey is fine. No, he’ll never live up to the hype that we had for him when he went number one overall out of Auburn. Still, I think there is some internal belief that Mize will be able to build on last season. While I by no means expect him to necessarily bottom out, if I had to rank this five-man rotation the Tigers have coming into 2026, Casey would definitely be the number five guy. That’s almost a backhanded compliment. A rotation with Casey Mize as your number five pitcher is a pretty darn good rotation, but I think the underlying numbers show that he’s due for some regression.
The biggest thing that stands out about Mize that has concerned me for a long time and is going to continue to worry me is that he doesn’t have a signature put-away pitch. He has a solid enough command of the strike zone to be able to eat innings, but this was somebody who was lauded for having a potentially generational out pitch with his splitter coming out of college, and not only has that pitch not developed into an elite pitch for him, but it has also not developed into an effective pitch for him. It’s legitimately the least effective splitter in all of major league baseball. That’s not an exaggeration. Last season, his splitter had -12 run value, which was the lowest of anyone who throws that pitch consistently. While this is not ideal, it would almost be passable if there were another pitch in Mize's arsenal that I felt was a potential strikeout pitch, and I just don’t feel like he’s yet found it.
Casey Mize will likely survive in the big leagues for a while. The pitch ability is there, and he’s always been an ultra-competitive guy. But when I look at the outlook of this organization and some of the young pitchers that are either currently on the team or coming back from injury, like Jackson Jobe or Troy Melton or even the youngster Jaden Hamm down in AAA, I can’t help but feel like there’s a way more upside to those guys than there is with Mize. There’s an alternate universe out there where Mize's development goes a little bit more smoothly. He doesn’t have to deal with a headache of COVID and doesn’t miss essentially two full seasons because of Tommy John’s surgery. They’re still a place for him on this team for now, but I don’t expect him to improve upon what he did a year ago.