Detroit — The road keeps getting longer for the Tigers.
And after packing their bags for a short trip over a holiday weekend, the players left their home clubhouse Thursday afternoon dressed in all manner of casual travel wear. But if they all wore the same look on their way to board a flight bound for Baltimore, there was good reason.
Because after getting swept at home by their division rivals from Cleveland, and losing for the 14th time in their last 16 games to tumble into last place by themselves in the AL Central — this time it was a drama-free 3-1 final tally at Comerica Park — the silent stares weren’t the only thing the players had in common.
The frustration is shared, too.
“Right now,” manager AJ Hinch sighed, “we’re wearing it.”
They can’t seem to shed it, either.
A sixth straight loss Thursday handed the Tigers their fifth losing series sweep of the season. But it was their first against the Guardians in a four-game set since 2019, when the Tigers were in the midst of that awful 114-loss campaign. The last time it happened here at home against Cleveland was in late 2017, another dreary time that came just after the Tigers traded Justin Verlander to Houston.
That was then, though. And this is now a season that’s threatening to go completely off the rails for a Detroit ballclub that began the season with lofty expectations. They were the odds-on favorite to win the AL Central for the first time since 2014 after making back-to-back trips to the divisional playoff round. And the free-agent signings of Framber Valdez and Justin Verlander in February signaled they were serious about making a World Series push in what could be Tarik Skubal’s final season in Detroit.
Yet here they are now in late May, wondering where rock bottom really is. The Tigers are 11 games under .500 for the first time since the 2023 season. They’re now 9½ games behind the Guardians, alone in the AL Central cellar. And after scoring just eight runs in this four-game series against Cleveland — that’s a paltry 38 runs in this current 15-game skid — it’s getting harder and harder to see a light at the end of the tunnel.
“They say the tide turns, and it needs to turn tomorrow if it didn’t today,” Hinch said. “And that’s really the motivation. These (losses) are tough to explain. It’s why I have a hard time after games. It’s tough for these guys to digest. That’s why it’s pretty quiet in there. We’re getting it handed to us, and we gotta wear it, and we have to endure it, and we have to continue to trust that the work is going to pay off.”
But lately, all that hard work — “and they’re working, they’re trying, they’re getting after it,” Hinch added — is failing to produce results in games. And if the fans are shocked by that, so are the players.
“Yeah, we’re just frustrated,” said Matt Vierling, who led off Thursday’s game with a gritty, 11-pitch at-bat that, true to recent form, ended in a strikeout. “We’re trying. We’re doing everything we can. Obviously, I understand (the fans’ disappointment). You know, we expected to be better than this. But all we can do is show up tomorrow and try to win a ballgame.”
One win is all it takes to turn the tide sometimes. But it’s going to take a lot more than than to get their heads back above water.
In fact, the notion that they just needed to tread water while their ace, Tarik Skubal, works his way back from elbow surgery, seems almost laughable now. Because for a team that was already drowning in injury news this spring, that proved to be cement shoes. Not surprisingly, this current 2-13 nosedive began the day the team announced the two-time reigning Cy Young winner was headed to the injured list.
“But there’s been some things that I think we can do better that precedes that,” Hinch noted after watching his team blow a ninth-inning lead and lose in extra innings Wednesday night. “It’s probably a convenient excuse if we want to use it. But it’s not a necessary excuse.”
Neither is this necessarily a death knell, with more than two-thirds of the season still left to play. But history does suggest the postseason is a long shot after a start like this: Only three teams in the Wild Card era (since 1995) have lost 30 or more games in their first 50 and gone on to make the playoffs.
The 2019 Nationals (19-31) were the last to do it, and they went on to win the World Series. And if you want to look on the bright side, the expanded Wild Card format means it’s bound to happen more often. Just a couple years ago, the New York Mets limped out to a 21-29 start, then got hot in June and July and finished with 89 wins before making a postseason run all the way to the NLCS.
And while the math already is starting to look problematic for Hinch’s crew in their division, we all have seen how quickly fortunes can change around here in August and in September. The Tigers came out of nowhere to clinch a playoff berth in 2024, and the Guardians did the same to win the Central last season when Detroit blew a 15 1/2-game division lead. Consider this, too: The final AL wild-card spot at the moment is occupied by the sub-.500 Texas Rangers (24-25). So it’s not as if the Tigers are the only ones scuffling.
Still, to get to 86 wins this season, which is what it took in ’24, Detroit will need to play at nearly a .600 clip (66-45) over the next four months. Or two games better than they were through the first four months of last season, when they’d built a nine-game lead of their own atop the AL Central.
Of course, the Tigers are just 74-88 in their last 162 games dating back to last May. And over the last 81? It’s an ugly 29-52, the third-worst mark in the majors, better than only Colorado and the Los Angeles Angels.
They know they’re better than that, of course. And they know they’ll get some reinforcements soon. Troy Melton likely will be activated to make his first start of the season Sunday in Baltimore. Skubal, who was excited after his ramped-up bullpen session Thursday morning, could be back early next month. Justin Verlander continues his rehab as well. And before too long, Gleyber Torres (oblique) and Kerry Carpenter (shoulder) and Javier Báez (ankle) will return to help revive the slumbering lineup, which Thursday included five starters batting .200 or worse for the season.
But as Hinch himself noted after Thursday’s loss, which spoiled another excellent outing from Casey Mize, the Tigers can’t just sit around waiting to catch that next wave.
“You have to create it,” the Tigers’ manager said. “Like, it’s a competition between you and the other side, and sometimes you have to do something a little bit different, or sometimes you have to dig your heels in a little bit.”
What they can’t do, though, is dig this hole any deeper. And whether that’s getting back-picked off the bases the way Trey McKinstry did late in Wednesday night’s game or leaving the bases loaded the way Spencer Torkelson did in the bottom of the first Thursday, the Tigers know they have to stop beating themselves before they can start winning games with any regularity.
“At this level, things get exposed when you get in these ruts, or when you get in these games where one or two things are the difference,” Hinch said. “It’s not like there’s a huge margin. It’s a small margin.”
Maybe so, but the standings are starting to say otherwise.
john.niyo@detroitnews.com
@JohnNiyo
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Niyo: Patience wearing thin as Tigers’ skid continues
Reporting by John Niyo, The Detroit News / The Detroit News
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