SEATTLE – This can’t be happening again, right? Not so soon. Not less than two years removed from one of the best feel-good stories in franchise history.
This isn’t how it works. Miracle finishes happen once. That’s the script. We know. We’re sportswriters – we write the scripts, which means we know everything, which means the Detroit Tigers aren’t climbing out of that hole, all those games under .500, to make the playoffs for the second time in three summers.
And yet, here they are, making another late summer push; yes, it’s late summer, and that’s hard to believe, too.
Whatever this is, wherever this goes, you can’t turn away so easily after watching the Tigers start 5-1 on this West Coast trip, can you? Admit it, you smiled a little watching them score 53 runs against the Athletics and the Mariners.
Because here it is: August, and your Tigers are a game out of the third and final wild-card berth in the American League.
August comes quickly around these parts, which is to say the fall comes quickly, too, and, well, why not enjoy whatever voodoo is starting to percolate?
It’s all starting to feel playoff-y, at least a little bit, even though no one in the Tigers clubhouse wants to admit that fully just yet. Not publicly. This is baseball. You don’t acknowledge reality and tempt the Baseball Gods.
Except for Framber Valdez, who’s been around too long to worry about such things. The Tigers lefty had his most impressive outing of the season on Thursday, Aug. 6 against the Mariners. He threw seven scoreless innings, pumped his fist when he got out of his only jam, and generally looked like the pitcher the Tigers thought – or hoped – they were getting when they signed him to a big free-agent deal in February.
“I think this team is showing that we’re hungry,” he said through team translator Carlos Guillen. “We just have to stay focused and keep doing what we’re doing. Don’t pay attention to yesterday or what’s going to happen tomorrow.”
So far, so good. No tempting of the Baseball Gods yet.
Then he continued:
“We’ve got a game today, win that game. … So that’s what we’re going to focus on and I’m confident we’re going to be in the playoffs.”
In fairness, all he’s really saying is that if the Tigers keep their heads down and don’t start worrying about standings and records and keep locked in on the game right in front of them, they’ll have a chance to keep playing good baseball, and if they do that, OK, yeah, they’ll be in the playoffs.
That’s not tempting fate, that’s laying out the plan to ride it, harness it even. Which the Tigers didn’t do the first couple months of the season, but that was then and they seem to be doing it now, in so many ways.
They just took two of three from a talented team that also struggled against expectations this season. The Mariners, after they knocked off the Tigers in last year’s ALDS, came within three innings of making the first World Series in franchise history. Or two runs, depending on how you want to look at it, not that anybody here in the Pacific Northwest does.
Nor, it seems, did many want to look at this year’s Mariners late Thursday afternoon, with the Tigers ripping balls into gaps and seats and sprinting around the bases. Eleven runs the visitors from the Motor City scored, shutting out the M’s for the second time in three games.
And Seattle fans booed.
Which could be seen as disrespectful to the Tigers, as in: You’re getting run over by this team? Except it wasn’t. The crowd knew. It wanted to see the home team start to find its way, like the visiting team has.
Or seems to have. Again, it’s probably still too soon to say too much. The Tigers are still three games under .500. They’ve got rookies in the lineup and youngsters in the rotation. Who knows if it will last? Which is why the Tigers aren’t worried about much more than the series opener in San Francisco on Friday (10:15 p.m., Detroit SportsNet).
They know that right-hander Keider Montero will take the ball, and that he will give them a chance. They know that the cool, heavy air makes it harder to hit home runs. They know that if they keep being aggressive at the plate, especially in search of fastballs, they’ll get on base. They know there is no secret to this, and no overthinking.
“I think we are just putting our heads down, going out and playing,” said Colt Keith, who has been in the thick of the offensive outburst lately. “I don’t know other teams’ records. I barely know ours. … It feels like we’re going to go out there and win every night.”
Of course we want to compare this summer’s surge to 2024, and of course we want to ask the players if they feel anything similar.
So, does it, Dillon Dingler was asked?
“Obviously, we don’t want to compare [this team] to different teams. You never want to try to compare in that sense … but I’ve been saying this for a little bit now: We’re just playing good ball.”
Yeah, they are, and that’s not only easy to see on the field, but easy to see in the numbers. Here are a few: 34-21, 16, three.
That’s the Tigers’ record since June 1 – fourth-best in baseball over that stretch – the number of games by which they were below .500 on May 31 and the number of games below .500 on Aug. 7.
This is starting to look less like a fluke and more like a trend – two months isn’t a small sample size, it’s a third of the season. Again, not that the Tigers are worried trends or flukes or sample sizes.
They’re worried about the next game. That’s it.
And that’s all they’ll say at the moment. This is baseball, where the opposing left fielder is slamming his glove on the turf celebrating stealing a home run on one night and quietly walking back to the dugout after a ninth-inning strikeout the next afternoon, his team down by 11 runs.
It’s humbling that way, and unpredictable, and if you live much beyond any single moment, you’ll spin off your axis in a hurry. The Tigers are doing their best to stay grounded.
Besides, this could all change the other way just as fast. Baseball Gods and all, right?
Yeah, Tarik Skubal is gone. Casey Mize is gone. But the season is not.
“We still have a lot of talent in this room as we proved by coming here and winning a series and chipping away at the hole we’ve dug,” said A.J. Hinch. “We’re not out of it yet. But we are heading in the right direction.”
Back to the Gritty Tigs of 2024? We’re not there yet. And maybe we shouldn’t look back anyway. This team is interesting on its own. That should be enough.
Contact Shawn Windsor: swindsor@freepress.com. Follow him @shawnwindsor.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Can the Detroit Tigers really do this again? Yeah, they really can
Reporting by Shawn Windsor, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
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By Shawn Windsor, Detroit Free Press | USA TODAY Network
