Win Some, Lose Some: The Perplexing Detroit Tigers
By: Will Burchfield
@burchie_kid
The Tigers had built a sizeable wave of momentum heading into their weekend series against the first-place Indians.
"We're hot right now, and we're going to stay hot," Kyle Ryan said following the team's four game sweep of the Mariners.
Stop us if you've heard this before.
The Tigers, as has become their routine this season, crashed down to earth just as they seemed to be taking off. Playing in front of their biggest crowds since Opening Day here in Detroit, they were swept in conclusive fashion by the Indians, managing hardly a whimper in the final two games of the series. By Sunday afternoon, after their demoralizing 9-3 loss, the Tigers' first-place deficit had swelled from four games to seven.
If their results so far are any indication, they'll trim that down to a more manageable number in the coming games. But then what? The Tigers' most damaging flaw through nearly 80 games has been their inability to sustain momentum, their tendency to live at either extreme of the competitive spectrum. They are either scalding hot or woefully cold, with very little in between. And as a result, they are 38-38 – decidedly average no matter how you dice it.
"I think we're better than a .500 club, I think we've shown flashes of it," said Justin Verlander after getting battered around Comerica Park on Sunday. "I think we've shown flashes of being not very good, but I believe we're better than this."
It's a familiar refrain, by now, within the Tigers' locker room. And the players can't be doubted for their self-belief, for their collective conviction that they are, in fact, more than what they've shown. On paper, the Tigers are a very good team. 38-38 seems to sell their talent short.
But like it or not, believe it or not, that mark of adequacy reflects what that talent has produced. The Tigers have twice had winning streaks of four games and five, and equally damaging losing skids of seven games and four, the latter number on three separate occasions. Their best run of play this season came in late May, when the Tigers won eight of nine. Then they promptly lost five of six.
To say it's been an up-and-down year would be an understatement. This season, more accurately, has felt like Disney's Tower of Terror ride, the team's fortunes mounting and plunging without notice. It makes the Tigers very hard to believe in, even in a division without a clear front-runner.
"I'm glad it's still June," said Brad Ausmus following Sunday afternoon's loss.
True – but it will soon be July. It's early yet – but it won't be for long. And though there's a lot of baseball left to be played, as everyone likes to point out around this time of year, the Tigers don't look like a team that can control their own fate.
Can they rely on their pitching? They could for most parts of last week, when they held the hard-hitting Mariners to 3.5 runs per game over a four-game series. And yet they most certainly couldn't over the weekend, when the Indians touched up Jordan Zimmermann, Anibal Sanchez, Verlander and Co. for 22 runs.
Can they depend on their bats? It seemed so with Cleveland coming into town, as the Tigers had scored an average of 6.4 runs over their prior ten games. And yet it seemed otherwise as the Indians packed their bags and moved on, having wholly quieted Detroit's offense for the better part of 27 innings.
The strengths of this team are just as quickly its weaknesses. They can muffle opposing lineups or they can be totally mauled by them. They can mash the baseball or be utterly mystified by it. And it doesn't so much change day-by-day as it does series-by-series, the team living in a string of surges and funks.
There are 13 games to go for the Tigers before the All-Star break. The last 11 of those will come on the road, including three in Cleveland at the beginning of next week. If Detroit expects to get back in the race in the AL Central, winning a few games against the Indians – against whom they are 0-9 this season – would be a good place to start.
Beyond that, the Tigers need to establish a more even keel moving forward. If their bats go cold for a day or two, they must jolt them back to life right away. If their arms begin to implode, they must stabilize them before catastrophe strikes. And if they lose a couple games in a row, as all teams do every now and then, they must nip it in the bud right there.
If they truly are better than a .500 club, they ought to start playing like it soon.
