Everyone is looking for good things from the Tigers starters.

Are they in league with the rotation of 1971 Baltimore Orioles?

The Orioles had 4 twenty game winners in 1971.

This is actually an amazing achievement in that Baltimore's offense was decent, but not stellar.

Palmer, Cuellar, Dobson, and McNally.

Are Verlander, Scherzer, Fister, and Sanchez capable of such a feat?

Of course not. Just like Denny's 31 which will never happen again. A 20 game winner is the elite today; at one time it was no big deal. At one time, the W almost always went to the starter; too many in the mix for the W now.

With todays' 5 man rotations no staff will produce four 20 game winners. Pitchers don't make as many starts and are relegated to specific pitch counts, leaving their fate in the hands of specialized BP's.

Dobson was kind of an outlier in that '71 rotation putting up his best season numbers. The other 3 had long, excellent careers.

Just like JV's near 25 W's would have been the equivalent of thirty, so too would four 17 game winners today.

That would be quite amazing, but our top 4 starters could possibly achieve that.
I would put the odds of that happening as somewhere north of 1 in 100.

<4 X 20>

Is the same as 5 X 16, I don't think that there has been a staff that has done that in the last 25 years.

Ez'est possible

M's 116 game winning season. For if they didn't do it, who would have.

Old Man Moyer-20 (38 that year)
Fat Freddie-18
Paul Abbott-17

They didn't even get the 4th sixteen game winner......Aaron Sele-15. But close.

John Halama won 10. (in seventeen starts)

Joel Pineiro got eleven spot starts, where he won six games (compared to Sanchez starting twelve for us last year, only winning four)

Arther Rhodes was 8-0, all in relief

I can't imagine any other team coming this close, since they all pretty much had twenty less wins over the past 40 years.

Not a single Tiger won 20 last year ..not even Verlander who was a close second in the Cy Young voting.

Two 20-game winners would be a big achievement these days. Even three 17-game winners would be a big big achievement.

I'd be happy with four 15+ game winners, ..which could happen if we can escape the injury bugs.

<<<The Orioles had 4 twenty game winners in 1971.>>>

Wins are a poor measure of the quality of a pitcher.
It's a measure of team performance, not individual players.