BALTIMORE – Summer in the D is glorious, as a winter’s worth of chill finally gives way to warm days, late sunsets and good times in the Motor City. And when the Detroit Tigers return home to Comerica Park on Tuesday, May 26, the temperature is forecast to hit 82 degrees, a perfect prelude to Michigan’s high season.
If only the Tigers could so easily flip the switch on what was supposed to be a similarly sublime season.
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Instead, a series of calamitous events, paired with abominable play, has this anticipated juggernaut fighting for survival. The final season for two-time Cy Young Award winner Tarik Skubal before he hits free agency took a jarring turn when the lefty was shelved May 4 with bone chips in his elbow that required surgery.
What happened since has been more dispiriting.
The Tigers lost 16 of their next 18 games, tumbling into the American League Central cellar, creating the impression they collapsed in the wake of their ace’s ailment.
More accurately, a handful of ailments, along with a roster not constructed to withstand them, has had a cascading effect. Fifteen Tigers are on the injured list, most in the majors after reliever Brant Hurter landed there Sunday with lumbar spine inflammation.
And the setbacks seem to get more macabre.
Sunday, the club lost for the 21st time in 28 road games when closer Kenley Jansen gave up a two-out, two-strike three-run ninth inning homer, his third walk-off blast yielded in this young season. The Tigers recovered to win the nightcap and gain a doubleheader split against the Baltimore Orioles, snapping an eight-game losing streak
And with that, they packed their bags and headed home, admittedly in an odd spot: Just as the city comes to life, the Tigers are forced to adopt an unexpected mantra.
Not dead yet. We swear.
“I want to keep encouraging these guys that No. 1, the season is not lost. The division has not been won,” manager A.J. Hinch insisted, on a day the Tigers fell 11 games behind the Cleveland Guardians. “The playoffs have not been named.
“All the goals you had as a team, eight weeks ago, are still available to you.”
It’s just awfully hard to see from here.
Detroit is 21-33, with only the Los Angeles Angels sporting an inferior record in the AL, and its 8-21 road record is the worst in the major leagues.
Center fielder Matt Vierling was a member of both the 2022 Phillies who started 21-29 and reached the World Series, and the ’24 Tigers who sold off parts at the trade deadline, were eight games under .500 on Aug. 10 yet rallied for a wild card and reached the AL Division Series.
While there’s no Knute Rockne speech to be given – the club’s performance after Skubal’s injury would’ve made such eyewash even sillier - Vierling says he’s made a point to pull teammates aside on the team bus, at dinner, in quiet moments in the clubhouse to keep the road ahead in sight.
Even if the current ride is bumpy.
“It’s difficult when you lose one guy, you lose two guys, you lose five or six,” says Vierling. “Kind of like a ‘Whoa, OK.’ The whole dynamic changes with everything. Unfortunately, that did happen to us.
“But that doesn’t have to define our season. It might define what’s going on right now, but we still got plenty of time left. Miss those guys a ton, and I know when they’re back, they’re really gonna help us.”
Yet the pain has yet to abate.
'It's been awful'
Gleyber Torres was an All-Star last year, and while his final numbers weren’t gaudy, his presence in the Tigers lineup balanced their offensive diet. He’d posted a .389 on-base percentage through 32 games this year when, two days before Skubal’s prognosis was revealed, he injured an oblique muscle.
He is nearing recovery, but the Tigers’ struggles without him has made it harder to watch.
“It’s been awful,” Torres said Sunday, now traveling with the team after getting treatment at the club’s Florida complex. “Being injured is no fun. At the beginning I thought it would be a short period. I feel frustration because I feel I can’t do anything for the team.
“When I was in Florida I see the game but I don’t be around the boys. Now I’m here and just feel whatever they feel right now.”
“It’s awful.”
Torres’ absence has been felt throughout the lineup. When he occupied the No. 2 spot on most nights, catcher Dillon Dingler typically batted fifth or sixth – and flourished, with a.257/.330/.495 line, an .850 OPS, six homers and 23 RBIs in 29 games.
In the 18 games since Torres’ injury? A .194/.279/.400 line, with four homers and eight RBIs.
“Even on his bad days, he’s going to find a way to get on base or get a hit. That’s very, very stable in the top third of the order,” says Hinch of Torres. “Everything changes when you lose someone of Gleyber’s presence. And we have to overcome it.
“We need somebody to get hot or get on base a little more to create good things in the absence of someone as talented as Gleyber.”
That won’t be Kerry Carpenter, sidelined with an AC sprain in his left shoulder, nor veteran Javy Báez, out indefinitely following a grim ankle injury.
Given all the absences, all too often it’s fallen to a dazzling rookie to lead them.
Kevin McGonigle: Indispensable rookie
Jumping Kevin McGonigle from Class AA all the way to Detroit wasn’t necessarily in the master plan. Yet the manner in which the 21-year-old handled himself in spring training – at the plate and in every facet that makes a big leaguer – left them little choice.
And he’s justified their decision almost every day.
McGonigle leads major league rookies – a fine class this season – in hits (55), doubles (12), batting average (.282) and OBP (.386) and is one of five major leaguers with more walks (31) than strikeouts (30).
Still, it has not been an entirely linear elevator to what should be an All-Star Game appearance.
McGonigle has just two extra-base hits in his past 106 plate appearances, his OPS dropping from .963 on April 25 to .796 through Sunday.
Still, his OBP has remained steady in that span – getting on base at a .356 clip even as his slugging has dissipated – and Hinch has admitted the club can’t afford to manage his workload in his first 162-game campaign.
On a largely veteran team, he’s been objectively its steadiest performer.
“His overall contribution demonstrates that he belongs,” says Hinch. “When players – especially hitters – get here, they want to feel that they belong. We want to look at how they respond. Same approach, same demeanor, same reaction to success and failure.
“How he’s overcome making mistakes, how he has drawn walks where normal, young hitters are going to be anxious and overswing, he’s demonstrated that he belongs as a big leaguer. He’s a mainstay in this lineup and sometimes you have to remind yourself, he’s 21 and didn’t play Triple-A.”
Especially in his ability to meet the moment. Some 250 family and friends made the roughly 90-minute drive from his hometown of Media, Pennsylvania to see him play at Camden Yards.
He led off the May 22 series opener and clubbed the first pitch for a home run.
“Advanced is one of the perfect words for it. Mature is another really good word for it. His personality – to be 21 and doing that is insane,” says Vierling. “His baseball sense and what he’s doing on the field is pretty incredible. Every single time he goes up there, I feel like he’s going to hit a ball hard, he’s going to walk, he’s going to work a long at-bat.
“I haven’t really seen much like him since I’ve been in the big leagues.”
McGonigle is 52 games into his career and clearly has a decent handle on the cat-and-mouse tango that goes on in the big leagues. The book is out on him, and he has not folded.
McGonigle ranks in the 97th percentile in both chase and whiff percentage, a startling level of discipline for such a young hitter. His compact 5-9, 187-pound frame should only add strength as he gets older.
Yet he’s more than holding his own already.
“To be able to compete at the highest level of the game is awesome,” McGonigle tells USA TODAY Sports. “I go out every day trying to stay consistent with mindset stuff and trying to help the team win.”
While he’s arguably been their most reliable player, McGonigle still leans significantly on veteran sounding boards. A big league indoctrination amid a season gone sideways is far from optimal.
The Tigers’ collective woes probably provided the more profound teaching moments.
“The biggest thing they help me with is tell me this is a game of failure. As a team you’re going to fail. As a player you’re going to fail,” says McGonigle. “But the way you stay in this game for a long time is how you respond to that.
“Everyone in here is ready to keep fighting, keep trying to win baseball games and I think we’re going to be in a good spot at the end of the year.”
Learning to take a punch
But at some point, they have to start winning.
Sunday, Baltimore’s Colton Cowser joined Atlanta’s Matt Olson and Cincinnati’s Nathaniel Lowe as lefty sluggers with walk-off homers against Jansen, who ranks third all-time with 483 saves. He was stewing after the Game 1 loss, saying he should’ve “died with my cutter” rather than throw a flaccid two-seam fastball that Cowser drove out to center.
It was the two walks that preceded Cowser’s blast that were less forgivable, the sort of carelessness the club cannot afford in these dire straits.
“We just gotta keep climbing that tall mountain,” says Jansen, “and get on top. It’s one pitch I wish I could’ve taken back.”
Another regret in a season full of them. Yet perhaps the injury report will be kinder soon.
Skubal, thanks to the innovative NanoScope procedure, is returning far sooner than anticipated. He’s thrown bullpen sessions and could possibly face hitters next week in Detroit; Justin Verlander, the 42-year-old future Hall of Famer, is in a similar spot in his lengthy return from left hip irritation.
And in Game 2 Sunday, right-hander Troy Melton made his season debut after suffering elbow inflammation during spring training, earning the win with 5 ⅔ effective innings. Dingler washed away the bad vibes with a first-inning two-run homer. McGonigle contributed a two-run, left-on-left single off a lefty.
“We talk about this game being full of adjustments. Here’s a 21-year-old showing you how to do it,” says Hinch of McGonigle. “He loves his at-bats. He’s locked in his at-bats. And we love it when he’s at bat, too.”
Yet the Tigers will need this summer to be far more than the continuing saga of the McGonigle Chronicles. The reinforcements will need time to ramp up, even as the club desperately needs wins.
The goal remains not to enjoy the summer warmth, but stick around for the weather to turn again, in autumn, for the third consecutive season.
“We had the biggest punch in the face a few hours before this game,” says Hinch after the club salvaged the back half of the doubleheader.
“Our guys just stashed it away and went right back into game mode.”
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Tigers fell apart after Tarik Skubal injury. Lost season in Detroit?
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