Okay, so I got this idea in my head, right? I wanted to see who are the pitchers for the Detroit Tigers who’ve won 20 games in a single season. Sounds simple enough, but I quickly learned it wasn’t as straightforward as I thought.
First, I started with a basic search, just typing “Tigers 20 game winners” into the search bar. I got a bunch of scattered info, some articles, some forum posts, nothing really concrete. It was a mess. So I figured, “Okay, time to get a little more organized.”
I decided to make a list. I grabbed a notebook and started jotting down names that popped up frequently in my searches. This is what I came up with:
- Denny McLain – 1968. I knew this one.
- Mickey Lolich – 1971. Heard of him.
- Justin Verlander – 2011. Definitely remember that.
Looking at this list, I realized I was missing a whole bunch of names. I mean, the Tigers have been around for a long time, there’s gotta be more than three! So I dug deeper. I scoured websites, read through old articles. This was becoming a real project.
I refined my list by adding any other names I found:
- Denny McLain – 1968, 1969. Two years in a row!
- Mickey Lolich – 1971.
- Justin Verlander – 2011.
- Hal Newhouser – 1944, 1945, 1946. Three years in a row!
- Hooks Dauss – 1915, 1919.
- “Wild Bill” Donovan – 1907.
- George Mullin – 1904, 1905, 1909.
- Ed Killian – 1904.
- Max Scherzer – 2013.
- Bobo Newsom – 1940.
And there you have it! Turns out there are 10 pitchers who’ve managed to win 20 or more games in a single season for the Tigers. The whole process was way more involved than I initially thought, but it was fun to go down this rabbit hole and learn something new about baseball history.
