This season, Cade Cunningham has every right to feel great about the progress he’s made with the Detroit Pistons. After going from under 20 wins in each of the last two seasons, the Pistons are one victory shy of cracking 40 wins this season.

The Pistons expected to be better under the new front office and coaching staff, but not many anticipated this kind of jump. It’s a reason to celebrate, but the Pistons are staying grounded.

After an intense win on the road on Wednesday night against the Miami Heat, Pistons guard Cade Cunningham revealed his humble mentality moving forward.

“To have put ourselves in the position we put ourselves is something not many people saw us doing,” Cunningham told reporters on Wednesday.

“It’s something we’re super proud of. We also know there’s a lot of work ahead to get the respect we want in this league … I don’t feel like we’ve accomplished anything yet.”

For the first time in his four-year NBA career, Cunningham has reached the 65-game threshold, making him eligible to receive yearly awards and accomplishments to add to his resume. So far, Cunningham has added an All-Star nod to his list of accomplishments.

Now, he’s on the hunt for playoff wins and everything else that comes with the result of his successful season on a personal level.

For Cunningham, he’s posting averages of 26 points, nine assists, and six rebounds. The veteran star is knocking down 46 percent of his shots from the field and 35 percent of his three-pointers. He’s putting up career-high numbers in all major statistical categories.

As far as the team goes, the Pistons have been on the same page throughout the year, hence their shocking success. A “happy to be here” mentality would be understandable for the Pistons in the playoffs, they are definitely looking to shake up the Eastern Conference next month. If everything continues to trend in the right direction, the Pistons will be in the playoffs for the first time since the Blake Griffin days.

More Pistons on SI

The next Detroit Tigers’ prospect on the list stands out for several reasons. Six-foot-eight reliever RJ Petit is a truly large man, and while he has the usual work to do to refine his command, the ironically named right-hander isn’t too far from being in a position to help the Tigers sometime this summer.

The Tigers drafted Petit out of Charleston Southern back in 2021 with their 14th round pick. The South Carolina product was always going to be a longer-term project. Outsized players, particularly pitchers, typically take a long time to get their long limbs synced up. While his power sinker, steep angle, and strike throwing made him an effective reliever from the start, he struggled to refine his secondary stuff early on and was prone to hanging some breaking balls. Still, when he didn’t make the big mistake A-ball hitters had a tough time against him in his full season debut in 2022, and the strikeouts piled up rapidly.

The jump to Double-A Erie in 2023 was much more of a struggle. A better class of hitter struggled less with his sinker, and while they still couldn’t do much damage against it, Petit’s strikeout rate dropped off a good deal. Top hitters could battle him into making big mistakes up in the zone with his breaking ball. He was pounding the strike zone well, and still not surrendering too much hard contact in the air, but hitters sprayed a lot more line drives than they did in A-ball. Hopes for a little more velocity didn’t really come to pass, and he slipped off the radar somewhat by the end of the season.

Finally in 2024, Petit’s age 24 season, things started to come together. His massive, 300 pound build was even more solid after his offseason work, and the velocity gains the Tigers hoped for started to show as the year progressed. He was also getting much more consistent movement and location from his slider. That was the biggest development for him as it really became a major league quality weapon on a pretty consistent basis. He had a few bouts during the season in which he gave out more free passes than normal, but his strikeout rate spiked from 20.4 percent at Double-A in 2023, to 31.1 percent last year, and the home runs disappeared almost entirely.

Petit gave up just two long balls all season over 58 ²⁄₃ innings while pitching in a fairly hitter friendly run environment in the Eastern League. He struck out 76 hitters to 27 walks, and he also got back to racking up a 50 percent ground ball rate. He seemed to run out of gas in September, which hurt his numbers a bit, but so far Petit has been a workhorse as a reliever over three years in the minor leagues. Work remains to turn him into a major league reliever, but the progress was really encouraging. Now we’ll see if he can take the next step and pull it together at the Triple-A level this season.

Despite his size, Petit has a balanced, clean delivery and rarely gets too out of sync. Despite his size, he has a pretty compact arm path, releasing the ball from a high three-quarters angle, and his smooth delivery and easy armspeed give him a little deception.

Petit’s average fastball has ticked up closer to 94 mph over the past year, but he’s always had the ability to reach back for more. The difference was that as the 2024 season progressed, Petit more often reached back for 95-97 mph heaters and mixed in some better high fastballs as a change of pace. He looks like he has that upper range whenever he wants it, but the sinker is perhaps less effective when he starts forcing it.

Petit’s towering frame and arm slot give him a tough angle to the bottom of the zone with his sinker, and while that’s not the hotness, things may be trending back the other way somewhat. The game has come to emphasize riding fastballs and hot tailing twoseamers over the last decade, and that isn’t going to change. The pitchers with super high spin, high IVB stuff get snatched up early in the draft, but there are still plenty of other ways to get guys out. Petit can add and subtract some run, but it’s a true bowling ball style sinker with late tail and few minor league hitters have been able to do much with it when he’s locating it well.

There are plenty of good pitchers around that are better down in the zone, and the Tigers seem more interested and equipped to get the best out of a pitcher like Petit. Their emphasis on catcher framing at the bottom of the zone has been notable the past few years. The Tigers helped Jake Rogers and Carson Kelly to produce more strike calls down, and the organizational move to catching with one knee down is part of that effort. Petit fits right in, and while he’s unlikely to be a real strikeout artist at the major league level, he’s got the stuff already to take advantage of a major league caliber defense.

The big development for Petit last season was far greater consistency with his 83 mph slider. The pitch functions like a true power curveball with a lot of depth and 12-6 break. AT his best he can throw it a little harder and really snap it off in the mid-80’s, when it becomes a legitimate plus pitch. He’ll get more tilt on it to his gloveside, and can back foot lefties with it, but it’s the consistent depth and consistent command he showed last season that made it such a tough pitch for hitters last year.

Petit not only gets a good amount of whiffs on the slider, he can also lean into throwing sliders for strikes to both sides of the plate and pitch backwards with good effectiveness. In multiple outings where he couldn’t quite nail the edges with his sinker, he was able to spam the slider with good command and remain pretty effective. That new dimension to his game, along with the modest velocity increase, brought renewed interest after Petit slipped off the back of most prospect lists in 2023-2024.

The pitch that hasn’t really come along that much is Petit’s changeup. It remains a little inconsistent. He can mix it in to lefties and get some whiffs down and away, and his smooth delivery combined with good armspeed sells it well. It feels like it needs some tweaking to be so useful against the best hitters in the game.

Based on Petit’s stuff, you’d kind of like to see him try a cutter. The slider is a north-south pitch with a lot of depth that it doesn’t really function like a traditional power slider. A harder breaking ball that moved horizontally in opposition to the sinker would be a nice addition to his game. The Tigers are teaching everyone and their brother a split-change these days, and a solid one would play really well off the sinker. Still, the fastball and slider are good enough for him to pitch high leverage innings if he can sharpen his fastball command a little more.

2025 Outlook

When he’s on, Petit’s stuff is enough to get him to the big leagues already. It’s just a question of him refining his command a little more. He would also benefit from letting it loose and throwing his max stuff more consistently. He’s shown the ability to ramp it up, and he has the size, the easy delivery, and the durability to think he might make that happen this season.

You can squint and see a future version of RJ Petit who commands 95-97 mph with a nasty power sinker and a firmer mid-80’s slider with the shape of a straight knuckle curve. That gives him the potential to be a fairly dangerous high leverage reliever.

The more realistic hope is that he just spots his fastball more consistently and is an effective middle reliever of a type that fits the Tigers preferences. Petit has pretty even splits, he’s been durable and can go more than an inning at a time, and he generally puts his defense to work without giving up too much damage. The Tigers seem stacked with pitching right now, but if Petit is at his best a little more consistently this year, he might get a chance to show what he can do.

• The Stellantis voluntary buyout offer comes as the automotive industry deals with potential headwinds.
• It’s not clear how many employees will be allowed to take the deal.

Stellantis is offering voluntary buyouts to hourly UAW employees at more than 20 Detroit and Toledo area manufacturing facilities and Mopar locations.

The locations include Sterling Heights Assembly Plant, Warren Truck, Detroit Assembly Complex, Toledo Assembly Complex, Chelsea Proving Grounds and CTC facilities.

The automaker, which owns the Jeep, Ram, Chrysler, Dodge and Fiat brands, is offering lump sum payments for employees with at least one year of service, according to a copy of the offer letter obtained Thursday by the Free Press.

Payments range from $50,000 for workers with at least one year of seniority but less than 15 years to $72,000 for workers with 25 years or more seniority. The offer also includes six months of medical benefits, excluding dental.

The offer, which is active from March 24 to May 8, stipulates that management will choose who can take the buyout. Some employees will be able to leave immediately, following a seven-day revocation period, but others might remain until Sept. 30.

More: Stellantis’ ex-CEO had total compensation of more than $24M last year

It wasn’t clear how many workers the company might be targeting.

Spokespeople for both the UAW and Stellantis have been asked for comment.

More: Stellantis says UAW members could see $3,780 profit-sharing checks, a big drop from 2024

Stellantis had faced criticism for rounds of job cuts last year at its U.S. facilities, and the automaker had a challenging 2024, dealing with issues ranging from lower sales to high inventories. It also saw the exit of former CEO Carlos Tavares and is searching for a new CEO. More recently, the narrative around the company had been more positive as it adjusted its vehicle pricing, became more assertive with its marketing and lowered its inventories.

However, the threat of tariffs and uncertainty in the market is raising a host of new challenges and potential headwinds for Stellantis and the rest of the automotive industry.

Contact Eric D. Lawrence: elawrence@freepress.com. Become a subscriber. Submit a letter to the editor at freep.com/letters.

This is a developing story.