The Tigers will select right-hander Drew VerHagen’s contract prior to their doubleheader against the Yankees on Monday, Evan Woodbery of MLive.com tweets. VerHagen will start the first of those games, while the team will option reliever Johnny Barbato in a corresponding move.
The 27-year-old VerHagen is headed back to Detroit’s 40- and 25-man rosters just over a month after the team outrighted him on April 27. VerHagen had thrown 10 innings of seven-run ball at that point, contributing to the 5.04 ERA he has posted across 94 2/3 innings with the Tigers since his 2014 debut.
While VerHagen hasn’t produced in the majors, the hard thrower has been downright dominant with Triple-A Toledo this season. Over six starts and 27 1/3 innings, VerHagen has pitched to a 1.32 ERA with 13.5 K/9, 2.63 BB/9 and a 48.1 percent groundball rate. Those numbers are substantially better than the production he registered last year in 97 1/3 innings at the minors’ highest level (4.90 ERA, 6.38 K/9, 3.98 BB/9, 44.5 grounder percentage).
Is it fair to question whether the 27-year-old VerHagen’s dominance at Triple-A this year has at least something to do with him averaging fewer than 5 innings per start (27-1/3 innings over 6 GS)?
Drew VerHagen did not deserve to be called up when he was previously called up in the past. However, this time his AAA numbers show he improved his time there..
On the other hand, I don’t see anything in Johnny Barbato’s minor league stats that indicate why the Tigers thought he was MLB ready.
He’s being called up because of the double header.. when you’re on a rebuilding team, you can rack up a ton of airline miles from aaa to the bigs.
Again it’s a rebuilding team. Barbato has a solid 1.75 era in aaa, pretty close to a sub 3.00 ERA in 4 seasons at the AAA level. The infirmary is running out of room in tiger town. So the cycle will continue. We’ll see Barbato again really soon.
No, Sandy Baez is being called up from Erie as the 26th man for the DH. VerHagen will be around after tomorrow. They want to see what VH has as Zimmermann, Liriano and Carpenter are on the DL.
VH obviously has nothing. Baez a nice MLB debut, so we’ll see. Gardy did hint at Baez heading for Toledo later in the week, however.
HOW BOUT THEM TIGERS!
May the goose of paradise fly up your nose!
Hard to rack up airline miles from Toledo to Detroit!
Aaahhhhhh!!!! I see what you did there because Toledo is close to Detroit.. and all the rest of the Major League Baseball stadiums across the country and Canada.