The Detroit Tigers have been two distinctly different baseball teams this year.
During the season’s first month, they were some kind of American League bulldozer. They reeled off six in a row to begin the year, each by at least a 3-run margin.
The Tigers ran that to an 11-2 mark, and people started having flashbacks to the storied 35 and 5 open to the 1984 campaign. After a hard-fought series split at Kansas City in the beginning of May, the record stood at a sparkling 17-9.
The team was humming right along, its reconfigured pitching staff leading the way and some newfound speed in the lineup providing a significant boost.
Then the month of May progressed and the world-beaters started to look like helpless victims.
There was a home series loss to Milwaukee, the National League’s worst club. Then a quick little three-game skid as they headed west. And most recently, a beatdown at the hands of the Angels, four losses in four nights and questions upon questions as to the true identity of this Tigers team.
Issues On the mound, At the plate, And in the Dugout
Who is Shane Greene? Is he the second coming of Greg Maddux that we saw for the majority of April, or is he the birthday party piñata that’s been appearing ever since?
What about the offense? J.D. Martinez crushed the competition all last summer, only now he’s leading the team in strikeouts and drawing unflattering comparisons to former one-year wonders like Chris “Red Pop” Shelton.
The addition of Yoenis Cespedes was supposed to solidify the batting order and provide added protection for King Cabrera. He started off fine, but has scuffled badly of late, collecting just a handful of hits in his last 40 tries.
And sophomore skipper Brad Ausmus has looked shaky on numerous occasions. He left a laboring Aníbal Sánchez in a beat too long against Houston, then hooked David Price probably one batter too early in the Angels finale on Sunday. With the offense in a severe funk, you might expect some type of shakeup in the order, only there’s been nothing of the sort.
Which leads us to wonder again, “Who is this team and what exactly are they capable of?”
Is it a legitimate World Series contender? This franchise has been on the brink of greatness for about a decade now, only to see each season fall just short for a different reason every time. After a couple weeks of 2015 baseball, you’d have bet your life that this was the group to finally reach the mountaintop. Now you’d be hesitant to risk lunch money on such an event taking place.
To be fair, this is not some disaster, either. We know what horrific baseball looks like in this town. Heck, the Tigers from 1994 to 2005 might represent the worst stretch of any Detroit sports team in history. This squad is not in that stratosphere.
They are still on solid ground, a workmanlike 28-24, just a few games out of first and still right in the thick of things in MLB’s completely jumbled mess that is the Wild Card race. As long as Miguel Cabrera and David Price are still wearing the uniform, the Tigers will undoubtedly play meaningful baseball down the season’s home stretch.
But that was never the expectation. Fans in Minnesota or Houston might salivate at the thought of playing even a single playoff game in 2015. Not the case in TigerTown.
This team has been aiming for a championship going on 10 years now, and while the “Window is closing” argument is sometimes overblown and brought into play too often, it’s hard to ignore that many of the key guys on this roster find themselves on the wrong side of 30 and that injuries are starting to play a bigger part than ever.
It’s not “Now or Never,” but something very much in that neighborhood.
We don’t complain when watching a suspenseful movie that hurls us from one emotion to another, denying us the comfort of knowing what’ll happen next. But that roller coaster ride only lasts a couple of hours.
This one goes strong for about seven months. Actually, it has lasted nearly a full decade. At some point, you just want to hit fast-forward all the way to the ending and find out if this team's been a contender or pretender all along.
We’re about a third of the way through the season and that answer remains perfectly unclear.
One Tigers team has had dominant starting pitching and a blast-off lineup. That group won 11 of its first 13 and looked like a lock for post season play.
The recent edition has shown a pitching staff full of question marks, a lineup littered with holes, and a manager unsure of what move should come next.
Good Time to Collect Some W's
The Athletics arrive in town tonight for a three-game set, and while they’ve been a tad better of late, this is still a team with the worst record in the American League. The Tigers need to right the ship with at least a pair of wins, and they’d settle the collective ulcer in Detroit doubly so with a clean sweep.
The way this season has gone, it wouldn’t be surprising to see a blowout win, a shutout loss, then a rainout draw.
We’ll scratch our heads, wonder what’s to come next, and prepare for several more months of exhilarating, maddening, up-and-down baseball.
This year could result in a return trip to the playoffs and maybe a run to the Fall Classic. Or it might really be this group’s last hurrah, a slow grind to 82 or 83 wins, and a winter spent wondering how so much talent has been through these doors since 2006 without notching the franchise’s fifth World Series title.
It almost makes you long for autumn and the unchanging ineptitude of the Detroit Lions.
At least with that squad, you know exactly what’s coming next.
