Framber Valdez will have a high bar to clear when he makes his Detroit Tigers’ debut Friday night on the road against the San Diego Padres.
Valdez went 81-52 with a 3.36 ERA in eight seasons and 188 games (166 starts) with the Houston Astros before signing a three-year, $115 million deal with Detroit. He figures to form a potent 1-2 left-handed punch with Tarik Skubal atop the Detroit rotation. His first act is to follow Skubal’s six inning, three-hit, no-earned run performance in Detroit’s 8-2 season-opening win on Thursday.
Valdez isn’t the power pitcher that Skubal is but can get strikeouts, averaging nearly one per inning over 1,080 MLB innings. But Valdez fetches groundouts like few others. He gets 1.64 groundball outs for every flyout, more than double the MLB average of 0.75.
The former World Series champion is aware that his first start with a new organization is a big moment — not just for him but for his new teammates and his new/old manager, A.J. Hinch.
“I have a new team, new manager, new teammates, new staff and a lot of them are rooting for me,” Valdez said. “So I have to do my best and give my best just to make things happen and give them the positive that they’re looking for.”
Kevin McGonigle more than did that in his MLB debut Thursday. The 21-year old infielder went 4-for-5 with two doubles and two RBIs, making him the first player in Tigers history to collect four hits in his major league debut since Billy Bean did it on April 25, 1987.
Hinch surprised some by batting McGonigle sixth instead of ninth but maintained he wasn’t sending a message with the higher spot in the order.
“The message was putting him on the team,” Hinch said. “That’s a big enough message.”
San Diego certainly got the message that McGonigle could hit MLB pitching. He led Detroit’s 12-hit attack that drove Nick Pivetta to cover after three innings, seven innings and six earned runs, forcing the Padres to get six innings out of their bullpen.
They’ll hope for more length from Michael King in his first start of the year. After going 13-9 in 2024 with a 2.95 ERA and winning both of his postseason starts, King battled injuries for most of 2025 and made just 15 starts, going 5-3 with a 3.44 ERA.
A healthy King who can find his 2024 form would be a big deal for a starting staff that seems somewhat thin, especially if Pivetta reverts back to being the inconsistent pitcher he was before winning 13 of 18 decisions last year.
It would also help if San Diego could do better than the two runs on five hits in generated in 2025, although Skubal tends to suppress offense. One thing first-year manager Craig Stammen has made clear is that the lineup might change more often than it did last year.
But Stammen, after batting Fernando Tatis Jr. cleanup at times during spring training, returned him to the leadoff spot for the last game of spring training and had him there again on Thursday.
“We’re going to try new things and different things and see what shakes out,” Stammen said.
The Padres have beaten Valdez twice in his four career starts against them, although he owns a solid 3.13 ERA in 23 innings. King is 1-1 with a 2.16 ERA in four career outings against Detroit, two of them starts.
–Field Level Media
