Alfredo Simon

Alfredo Simon delivers a pitch Wednesday night against the Pittsburgh Pirates. Simon allowed two hits and did not issue a walk in eight innings.

(AP Photo)

PITTSBURGH -- The Detroit Tigers have played nine games. They cannot possibly be as good as their record indicates.

They are on pace to finish 144-18. That's not going to happen.

The Tigers are not going to finish the season with a 1.91 ERA or an 0.86 WHIP. Opposing batters are going to hit better than .193 against them. The Tigers are not going to hit .328 with a .905 OPS as a team. They are not going to outscore the competition 954 to 378, which is what they are on pace to do right now. The Tigers are not going to throw 72 shutouts.

The bullpen is not going to post a 3.12 ERA or hold opposing hitters to a .180 batting average. (Do you believe me yet?)

But there is one question we should probably ponder following a 1-0 victory Wednesday over the Pittsburgh Pirates, which directly followed a 2-0 victory Tuesday over the same team.

Has most of the baseball-watching world underrated the starting rotation for the Tigers?

By which I mean: Have we underrated the fourth and fifth starters in the rotation?

Tigers manager Brad Ausmus has said since the start of spring training that he thought people were underrating the starting rotation. Ausmus discounts spring numbers but not what he sees there. He liked what he saw in Alfredo Simon and Shane Greene.

"It's the stuff that we liked," Ausmus said Wednesday night. "It's an imperfect science looking at someone and trying to determine how good their stuff will perform at the major-league level. Simon has quite a bit of a track record and Greene had a little bit of a track record, but you look at the stuff, how the hitters react, how the ball's coming off bats."

David Price and Anibal Sanchez are known commodities. Justin Verlander still has some questions to answer, but those answers are not going to come for some time at the rate his recovery from a right triceps strain is going. The expectation remains that he will be better than he was last season even though it's fair to wonder when he might start proving that.

When Tigers fans and writers and baseball people said the Tigers entered the season with some questions marks in the rotation, they were referring for the most part to Simon and Greene.

To be fair, those questions were, well, fair. Simon struggled terribly in the second half of the 2014 season. He was making the leap from the National League to the American League. Prior to 2014, he had pitched primarily as a relief pitcher. Even the gaudy numbers he posted in the first half of 2014 seemed to be out of whack with what some of his secondary numbers said they should be.

Greene looked dominant in two starts against the Tigers in 2014. But he entered 2015 with 15 big-league appearances and pedestrian numbers (4.39 ERA, 1.479 WHIP) in six seasons in the minors.

So, who would have expected Greene to start the season with 16 shutout innings or to come so close to pitching a three-hit shutout in his second start with the Tigers?

Who would have expected Simon to throw eight innings of two-hit ball in his second start? Who would have expected that he would have allowed runs in only one of the first 13-plus innings he's pitched this season?

James McCann was impressed by Simon from his vantage point behind the plate.

"Everything is smooth," McCann said. "Everything is easy. It never looks like he's overthrowing, whether it's in a game setting or in the bullpen. It's always free and easy and relaxed."

Greene was simply dominant Tuesday. Simon looked just as good Wednesday. Not to take anything away from them, but they also benefited a bit from a Pirates team that spent the series waving off opportunities to draw walks like they were Joba Chamberlain in a cloud of midges.

It's true to say that the Tigers did not issue a single walk in their three-game series against Pittsburgh. It's just as true to say the Pirates didn't draw one. The Pirates haven't scored in 19 innings. They haven't drawn a walk since Sunday.

Still, the Pirates' lack of patience shouldn't take anything away from how good Simon and Greene have been. They are as much a reason for their team's 8-1 start as anyone else.

The rotation for the Tigers isn't as the current numbers indicate. Neither are Simon and Greene. It and they can't be.

But even before the season reaches its 10th game, it's worth wondering whether they are both better than many of us thought they'd be.

Detroit Tigers at Pittsburgh Pirates - Game 3 12 Gallery: Detroit Tigers at Pittsburgh Pirates - Game 3

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