The complete meltdown and magical comeback of Javier Báez

Javier Báez came to Detroit as a two-time All-Star – and completely hit the skids. Now, he’s renovated his game and become a team superstar again.

Javier Báez came to Detroit as a two-time All-Star, a Gold Glove winner, the spark plug known as “El Mago” who helped the Chicago Cubs shake off a century of futility to win a championship in 2016. In late 2021, all his work paid off: The Detroit Tigers gave him a six-year, $140 million contract to make him the cornerstone star who would at last turn their rebuilding project into playoff success. Instead, the mega-signing looked like a bust. Over two-and-a-half difficult, injury-plagued seasons, Báez played so poorly he became a baseball meme. His frequent swings at pitches outside the strike zone were mocked by fans around the league. He ended the 2024 season with a .184 batting average, the dour exclamation mark on his worst campaign since his abbreviated first year in the league 10 years earlier. In August 2024, Baez’s season ended early as the hip and lower back issues that hampered him all year finally grew to be too much to bear. How bad was his crash? Detroit sports fans don’t really like to boo their hometown players. It’s not like New York, Boston or Philadelphia, where making one’s displeasure known is as reflexive of an act as breathing. In Detroit, underperforming stars and teams are usually met with empty stands, uncomfortable silences, light grumbles – at most, loud sighs of exasperation. Booing was reserved for squads like the mid-2000s Lions, teams that were so historically underperforming that the emotional scars from those years still lurk just beneath the surface of Detroit fandom. That’s how you know things were really, really bad for Javier Báez during those first three rotten years in the Motor City: The boos at Comerica Park were plenty noticeable. Báez heard them, too. He says he didn’t mind.