Team 100: The 1931 Tigers

Ezra Shaw/Getty Images

Year: 1931

Record: 61-93

Win Percentage: .396

Win Percentage Change: -.091

Run Differential: -185

Pythagorean Record: 60-94

AL Finish: Seventh of eight

Manager: Bucky Harris

Best Transaction

There were only a handful of deals made by the Tigers in 1931, and I can’t make any of them sound “good.” This isn’t me being lazy. Take a look for yourself.

Worst Transaction: Sold Waite Hoyt to the Philadelphia Athletics

Don’t get me wrong here—Hoyt’s best years were well behind him by the time he joined the Tigers. Hoyt won 157 games with the Yankees in the 1920s and played only a year and a half in Detroit. In 1930, he won 13 games but was 3-8 in 1931 when he was traded.

However, he went 15-6 in 1934 and posted better than league average ERA numbers for many years after leaving Detroit.

Upper

Tigers fans got their first good look at Tommy Bridges in 1931. Bridges appeared in a few games in 1930, but 1931 was his first full season in the big leagues. The 24-year-old Bridges went only 8-16 this season, but he threw eight complete games, which included a pair of shutouts.

These signs were not misleading as Bridges would go on to win 194 games in his career, all of them for the Tigers.

Downer

Charlie Gehringer very rarely missed a game with the Tigers. However, in 1931 (a truly awful season) the “Mechanical Man” missed over 50 games. Gehringer led the league in games played four times in his career, so his 101-game output in 1931 really was out of the ordinary.

The Tigers could have used Gehringer, too, because the offense was really bad. Their offense ranked seventh in the AL in runs scored while placing sixth out of eight teams in batting average and home runs.

This team had very little pop and failed to hit for average. Put those two things together and you’ll find a team that just didn’t score any runs. The team OPS+ for 1931 was a pitiful 82.

Summary

Great things were not expected in 1931, so this season wasn’t a huge letdown. However, at the time, it was the second worst Tigers team in history and was also a group four years removed from their last winning season.

I would have to imagine things were pretty bleak in Detroit around these times. The Great Depression was in full swing, Gehringer was hurt, Ty Cobb was gone, and the Tigers were losing most of the time.

They got decent pitching from Bridges and Earl Whitehill, while the offense was led by John Stone and Roy Johnson. Johnson and Stone were the top two on the club in both homers and triples.

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