Somebody let the Tigers get hot.
And that somebody is team president Scott Harris, despite what a segment of the fanbase and the media — and even some rival executives across the league — have insisted the past 10 days.
After getting real at the trade deadline and selling off two of the top starting pitchers on the market in Tarik Skubal and Casey Mize with an eye on the Tigers’ future, Harris knew he’d take plenty of flak for whatever happened next.
But partly because he stopped short of a complete sell-off at the deadline, hanging on to veterans like Gleyber Torres, Kenley Jansen and Jack Flaherty, Harris also knew what’s happening now was possible. Maybe even likely, considering the circumstances, as the surging Tigers have only increased their playoff odds in a muddled American League race.
And as the Tigers return to the scene of the crime Tuesday — beginning a crucial six-game homestand against division rivals Cleveland and Chicago at Comerica Park, where a disastrous performance two weeks ago sealed the decision everyone was dreading — that dissonance sounds more like defiance.
“Make no mistake, we’re not giving up on this season,” Harris said Sunday, reiterating his post-deadline proclamation in an interview with MLB Network Radio. “We’re not waving a white flag or anything like that. We’re playing really good baseball.
“I like how we’re playing right now. I like a lot of things about our team. And we’re not conceding anything down the stretch. This is an organization that came out of nowhere in 2024 to make the playoffs. So I wouldn’t rule us out.”
No one should, at this point. Fresh off a 7-2 road trip on the West Coast, the Tigers sit just one game out of the final AL wild-card spot and 3 ½ games back of the White Sox for the AL Central lead. And it’s hardly a stretch to suggest AJ Hinch’s team, which owns the league’s best run differential (plus-87), could find itself in the driver’s seat by the end of this week.
“Obviously, we’ve got some big games against some good opponents, but I really like where we’re at right now,” first baseman Spencer Torkelson said after Sunday’s 3-1 extra-innings victory in San Francisco gave the Tigers their seventh straight road series win. “We just gotta keep this thing rolling.”
That’s easier said than done with the Guardians coming to town. The reigning two-time AL Central champs have won all six meetings with the Tigers this season. And we all know what happened down the stretch a year ago, when the Tigers blew a massive 15 1/2-game division lead and ultimately lost the title to the Guardians on the final day of the regular season.
But it’s possible the Tigers are catching Cleveland at the right time in the right place this week. The Guardians are mired in a slump, losing six of their last eight games and 15 of 22 since the All-Star break to fall a season-worst three games under .500. And it’s bad enough that manager Stephen Vogt called a team meeting Sunday after the Guardians’ loss to the White Sox to address the funk.
“As a team, we’re trying to do too much,” Vogt told reporters after Cleveland dropped the rain-delayed rubber match in Chicago. “Everyone’s trying to do just a little too much, be a little too perfect. We just had a conversation about that in the clubhouse. We just have to relax. We have to be ourselves. Who we are is good enough, and I think we’ve lost sight of that.”
Of course, the beauty of the AL Central is that the division lead is always within sight. The White Sox, who lost a whopping 121 games last season, moved into first place in mid-June and have held at least a share of the lead since July 4. Yet only four games separate the top four teams in the Central, and the Tigers are the only one among that group that owns a winning record (14-8) since the All-Star break.
What’s more, prior to Sunday, the AL Central was the only division in baseball where none of the teams had better than 50-percent odds of making the playoffs, per Fangraphs. (Chicago’s chances did climb to 51.8 percent after taking the weekend series from Cleveland.)
Things aren’t much better in the AL West, where Houston began play Monday with a half-game lead over Texas in that division despite only being one game over .500. But the reality is there’s likely just one wild-card spot up for grabs in the AL, with the three teams in the East (Tampa, New York and Boston) well ahead of the pack.
Among that group, only Detroit and Baltimore were sellers at the deadline.
But that hardly matters if you buy the idea that Jackson Jobe can pitch the way he did in his season debut Saturday — when he threw five shutout innings in his return from Tommy John surgery — or that more reinforcements are on the way for the Tigers’ rotation in September: Flaherty, newly-acquired River Ryan, maybe even Justin Verlander.
Same goes for the offense that Harris left untouched at the deadline, other than an infusion of young talent led by top prospect Max Clark, who has played well defensively in center field and is hitting .297 with an .867 OPS since his late-July call-up.
“Part of the calculus going into the deadline was, ‘How are we playing?’ and ‘How competitive is this team?’” Harris said. “But part of it was we still don’t even have our roster on the field right now. It felt like in some ways we built a roster that never even saw the light of day.”
That’s a reference to the rash of injuries that helped derail the Tigers this spring and ultimately led the front office to do what it did earlier this month. But it’s not an excuse, unless the team allows it to be.
And that was the gist of the message Hinch delivered once the deadline drama was finally done.
“We feel like we have a good team,” Hinch said. “We still feel like we have a lot of talent. And we do. So dust yourself off, deal with the emotions … and get back to playing baseball.”
So far, that’s exactly what they’ve done. And no one should be surprised if the Tigers keep doing it.
“If this season has taught me anything,” Harris said, “it’s to expect the unexpected here.”
john.niyo@detroitnews.com
@JohnNiyo
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Niyo: Tigers showing benefits of restraint at trade deadline
Reporting by John Niyo, The Detroit News / The Detroit News
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By John Niyo, The Detroit News | USA TODAY Network
