One year ago, before so much changed across Detroit’s baseball terrain, Akil Baddoo was playing for the Tigers and driving a born-again MLB team.
He was batting .262, with five home runs, a .350 on-base average, and .839 OPS. A rookie the Tigers had all but stolen from the Twins was a fan darling. And so were the Tigers as they and their new skipper, AJ Hinch, shook off a bad April and turned into one of baseball’s hottest 2021 revival stories.
Baddoo is an outfielder who now works at Triple-A Toledo. He has played in all of 10 games for the Mud Hens after one of those miserable oblique injuries tore into his spring.