The Detroit Tigers signed two veteran starting pitchers last off-season. The hope was that they could eat innings at the back-end of the rotation, and serve as potential trade bait if they played well. So far so good for Francisco Liriano, who is already drawing interest from multiple teams. Mike Fiers hasn’t been quite as good, with a 4.57 ERA and just a 5.82 K/9.
With Fiers struggling and Jordan Zimmermann on the disabled list, the Tigers turned to Blaine Hardy and Ryan Carpenter to make a handful of spot starts.