CLEVELAND — The beautiful thing about this sport is supposed to be the way it mirrors life. There is always a new day. You never quite know what to expect. Just when you think you have it figured out, something happens that can alter your beliefs, shift your perspective. Nothing is the apocalypse until the apocalypse.
That’s largely the mentality the Detroit Tigers have taken through what has become the worst collapse in MLB’s divisional era. On July 8, they led the American League Central by 15 1/2 games. The idea of popping champagne by the end of August was not all that unfathomable. Then the losses started coming in waves. After the Cleveland Guardians beat the Tigers 5-1 Wednesday night at Progressive Field, the Tigers have lost eight in a row, 11 of 12 and 20 of 27. They are 26-39 since that lead peaked at 15 1/2.
Cleveland’s latest win gives the frenetic Guardians sole possession of first place. After 184 days leading this division, the Tigers are in second place and fighting to hold on to the American League’s final wild-card spot.
This isn’t just bad baseball.
This isn’t just the breaks of the game.
It’s an unprecedented, unbelievable, monumental collapse.
“As a baseball person, I know exactly what’s going on and what has gone on,” Tigers manager A.J. Hinch said. “I’ll have plenty of time to process all this in due time. But I try to get these guys ready to play the next day because it is the day that we can control and the day we can right the ship and get back in the win column. At the end of the day, this is gonna impact a lot of people, meaning the frustration and the magnitude of how we’ve gotten here. We got too many games to focus on that right now.”
Hinch has managed every day with that sort of steadiness. He’s made it his brand and driven it into the minds of his players. Here in a time where the next day never seems to get any better, he’s grasped for the right words in front of the cameras but knows nothing he can say will strike the right chord.
Through all this losing, players have still talked about how quickly things can turn. They would know. This is largely the same group that staged a frantic 31-11 run down the stretch last season to break a decade-long playoff drought, but that’s starting to feel like a long time ago.
Last season, Parker Meadows robbed a home run in Seattle to help that momentum build. Wednesday in Cleveland, Meadows leaped and reached and even got the tip of his glove on a George Valera blast off Jack Flaherty. He could not reel it in. That’s how Cleveland took a 2-1 lead.
“Just kind of sums up how things have been going lately,” Meadows said. “Honestly, just an inch away.”
Last year — and even for much of this season — it seemed like the Tigers so often had timely hits fall when they needed them most. Wednesday, Wenceel Pérez hit a bouncer that left his bat at 106.5 mph in the second inning. It turned into a 4-6-3 double play.
Last season, the Tigers got a key double-play ball to help seal a defeat of the Houston Astros in the playoffs. This year, José Ramírez’s seventh-inning hard chopper just eluded the reach of Gleyber Torres and bounced into the outfield for a two-run double.
“You don’t make sense of it,” Flaherty said. “You just move on to the next day. (The Guardians), it’s some of the best baseball I’ve seen in September. … They’ve done their job. We haven’t done ours.”
That’s not to say any of this is as simple as not getting the right breaks. If the Tigers fail to make the postseason, it will be a long and complicated autopsy. The Tigers entered play with an OPS that ranks 19th in September. Their ERA was 5.23 this month. All season, only three teams have struck out more than the Tigers.
Along this losing stretch, they have wasted at-bats, struggled to get meaningful starts aside from Tarik Skubal, watched a bullpen flounder and made their share of costly mistakes, like Dillon Dingler’s dropped pop fly in the seventh that led to two runs scoring on the Ramírez double.
The stretch of poor play has gone on so long that it’s fair to wonder whether something is more fundamentally broken.
“I don’t think it’s resignation,” Hinch said. “I think these guys are pros, and they’re trying their best.”
Try as they might, nothing is working. When Steven Kwan singled home a run in the fifth inning, Flaherty put his hands atop his head, elbows out wide. He gave an exasperated look as the ball fell and the run scored.
After the game, a manager who can no longer successfully hide all the angst looked into the camera once more.
“I’m having a hard time coming up with words, honestly, and I know that’s not always that acceptable or the norm,” Hinch said. “But what I’m seeing out of our team is not normal. Unfortunately, it’s our reality.”
With only four games left in the regular season, the Tigers are running out of tomorrows.
(Photo: Jason Miller / Getty Images)
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