Detroit vs. Everybody: Are the Tigers the team to beat in MLB? - ESPN

If you picked the mighty Los Angeles Dodgers to be the first team to win 50 games this MLB season, you weren't alone.

You were also wrong.

If you picked the Detroit Tigers, congratulations! We're not sure we believe you, but we'll give you the benefit of the doubt.

The Tigers won their 50th game on Tuesday, a full day before the Dodgers, and they got there thanks to big contributions all season from ace Tarik Skubal, the red-hot Riley Greene and the resurgent Javier Baez, among many others.

But are they really as good as they've played so far? Are they even the American League's best team? Could they defeat the Dodgers (or whichever team comes out of a stacked National League) in the World Series?

We asked MLB experts Bradford Doolittle, Tim Keown, Jeff Passan and David Schoenfield to tackle all things Tigers before they play host to the Minnesota Twins on «Sunday Night Baseball» (7 p.m. ET, ESPN and ESPN2).

Doolittle: The Yankees still have the AL's best roster and remain the favorites in the circuit, even with the Rays and Astros closing in fast on both Detroit and New York. This feels like a season in which, by the time we get to October, there's not going to be a clear-cut front-runner in the AL. But if we zero in on a possible Tigers-Yankees ALCS, I like the interchangeability of the Detroit staff, which we saw in action late last year. Max Fried and Skubal cancel each other out, so it really comes down to the number of favorable matchups A.J. Hinch can manipulate during a series of games between two postseason offenses likely predicated on timely multi-run homers.

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Sunday, 7 p.m. ET: Twins-Tigers

Keown: It's obviously the Yankees —