Tweet
On June 23, the Tigers were 32-41 but only 4 1/2 games behind the Twins for first place.
The Tigers share MLB’s longest postseason drought with the Angels, so the narrative around manager A.J. Hinch’s mostly young team was more positive than one might imagine. Local reporters had been asking for days about the standings. And eventually, Hinch had heard enough. The manager who went to two World Series with the Houston Astros provided a dose of reality.
“I’m just not going to let our team talk (about contending or the standings),” Hinch said. “I haven’t heard those words. … I don’t want to hear it, because I think we have so much more to do to get better before we can truthfully talk like that. We haven’t earned the right to talk that way. We just haven’t.”
The straight answer turned into something of a rant.
“You want to get somewhere where you matter and you want to get on national broadcasts? You want to get into the conversation where people don’t look at us like, pat us on the head, we’re a nice team that’s trying hard?” Hinch said. “Play better. Play better for a long time, beat some teams, and then you’ll start to earn that designation. Until then, it’s all a distraction.”
For what it’s worth, the series opener this weekend between Detroit and Cleveland was slated to be aired on FOX before it was rained out, though that might have more to do with the Hollywood writer’s strike than with the national allure of a midweek matchup between a couple of teams jostling for second place in baseball’s weakest division.
The Tigers are now 7 1/2 games out of first place (actually closer to the Guardians than the Guardians are to the Twins). That the Tigers are lurking just behind Cleveland for second place is a testament to the nature of the division’s top and bottom rungs.
Once viewed as the future powers of the division, the White Sox had slumped to a miserable 49-75 record and traded key players such as starter Lucas Giolito at the trade deadline. First-year manager Pedro Grifol has struggled to tame clubhouse issues that dated to the team’s ill-fated two seasons with Tony La Russa as manager. After relief pitcher Kenyan Middleton was traded to the Yankees, he did an interview with ESPN in which he ripped the White Sox culture.
In Kansas City, a season of atrocious play has highlighted how far the organization has to go in the first year with J.J. Picollo as the president of baseball operations and Matt Quatraro as manager.
These are teams stuck in place, treading water far from shore, neither clearly trending up nor obviously tanking in the style of the Astros. In a division of failed rebuilds and sustained mediocrity, this year’s heightened struggles could be attributed to MLB’s move to a balanced schedule before the season. Teams now face each of the 29 other teams at least once during the year. As a result, teams now play only 52 games against division opponents. In previous years, they played 76.
The Tigers just so happen to have a 25-15 record against division opponents this season, on track for the team’s first winning record against AL Central rivals since 2016. “The way we’re playing the Central, I wish we played more in the Central,” Hinch said Sunday in Cleveland. “Is that where you’re going with this?”
Later Sunday afternoon, Eduardo Rodriguez — the pitcher who cited personal reasons and nixed a trade to the contending Dodgers at the deadline — went 6 2/3 innings in a 4-1 victory, leading Detroit back into the fringe of the division hunt.
“I don’t feel we’re out yet,” Rodriguez had told reporters before his previous start. “We have a chance to make the postseason. That’s why I decided to stay here, too. Right now I just want to keep pitching and keep helping my team. I hope we can make it.”
Detroit, though, is 32-52 against the rest of the league, including a disheartening 5-20 against baseball’s strongest division, the AL East.
“The reality is you have to play well against the whole league now to win your division,” Hinch said. “Whether it’s an anomaly or whether there’s something to it, this year shows us it’s great we’ve played well in the division, but the AL East has not been kind to us, other divisions have not been kind to us.”
Sunday in Minnesota, the Twins handed the ball to another pitcher on his last legs.
Dallas Keuchel — a former Cy Young winner whose fastball now averages 87 mph, a bearded left-hander who had not struck out any of the 36 batters he had faced as a member of the Twins — started against the Pirates.
The 35-year-old Keuchel, however, spun what might be one of his last gems in the major leagues. He was perfect through 6 1/3 innings in a 2-0 victory, allowing the Twins to retain a six-game hold on the division. At 65-60, the Twins could challenge the 2005 Padres (82-80) for fewest wins from a division champion. With the Tigers and the Guardians playing one another this weekend, the division overall managed an 8-9 record, that .470 winning percentage representing something of a banner stretch.
The AL Central lives at the intersection of absurd and hapless, as evidenced by Keuchel’s improbable outing and another play that unfolded on the shores of Lake Erie on Sunday.
In the top of the second, Detroit’s Matt Vierling tapped a ball down the third-base line. Cleveland’s Logan Allen and Tyler Freeman converged on the ball, let it trickle down the line, praying it would roll foul.
The ball came to a complete stop on the chalk … a base hit, and yet another reminder of the state of the game, the series, and the season in the AL Central: slow-moving, non-developing, anticlimactic, a bunch of stoppable forces meeting some movable objects.
The Tigers share MLB’s longest postseason drought with the Angels, so the narrative around manager A.J. Hinch’s mostly young team was more positive than one might imagine. Local reporters had been asking for days about the standings. And eventually, Hinch had heard enough. The manager who went to two World Series with the Houston Astros provided a dose of reality.
“I’m just not going to let our team talk (about contending or the standings),” Hinch said. “I haven’t heard those words. … I don’t want to hear it, because I think we have so much more to do to get better before we can truthfully talk like that. We haven’t earned the right to talk that way. We just haven’t.”
The straight answer turned into something of a rant.
“You want to get somewhere where you matter and you want to get on national broadcasts? You want to get into the conversation where people don’t look at us like, pat us on the head, we’re a nice team that’s trying hard?” Hinch said. “Play better. Play better for a long time, beat some teams, and then you’ll start to earn that designation. Until then, it’s all a distraction.”
For what it’s worth, the series opener this weekend between Detroit and Cleveland was slated to be aired on FOX before it was rained out, though that might have more to do with the Hollywood writer’s strike than with the national allure of a midweek matchup between a couple of teams jostling for second place in baseball’s weakest division.
The Tigers are now 7 1/2 games out of first place (actually closer to the Guardians than the Guardians are to the Twins). That the Tigers are lurking just behind Cleveland for second place is a testament to the nature of the division’s top and bottom rungs.
Once viewed as the future powers of the division, the White Sox had slumped to a miserable 49-75 record and traded key players such as starter Lucas Giolito at the trade deadline. First-year manager Pedro Grifol has struggled to tame clubhouse issues that dated to the team’s ill-fated two seasons with Tony La Russa as manager. After relief pitcher Kenyan Middleton was traded to the Yankees, he did an interview with ESPN in which he ripped the White Sox culture.
In Kansas City, a season of atrocious play has highlighted how far the organization has to go in the first year with J.J. Picollo as the president of baseball operations and Matt Quatraro as manager.
These are teams stuck in place, treading water far from shore, neither clearly trending up nor obviously tanking in the style of the Astros. In a division of failed rebuilds and sustained mediocrity, this year’s heightened struggles could be attributed to MLB’s move to a balanced schedule before the season. Teams now face each of the 29 other teams at least once during the year. As a result, teams now play only 52 games against division opponents. In previous years, they played 76.
The Tigers just so happen to have a 25-15 record against division opponents this season, on track for the team’s first winning record against AL Central rivals since 2016. “The way we’re playing the Central, I wish we played more in the Central,” Hinch said Sunday in Cleveland. “Is that where you’re going with this?”
Later Sunday afternoon, Eduardo Rodriguez — the pitcher who cited personal reasons and nixed a trade to the contending Dodgers at the deadline — went 6 2/3 innings in a 4-1 victory, leading Detroit back into the fringe of the division hunt.
“I don’t feel we’re out yet,” Rodriguez had told reporters before his previous start. “We have a chance to make the postseason. That’s why I decided to stay here, too. Right now I just want to keep pitching and keep helping my team. I hope we can make it.”
Detroit, though, is 32-52 against the rest of the league, including a disheartening 5-20 against baseball’s strongest division, the AL East.
“The reality is you have to play well against the whole league now to win your division,” Hinch said. “Whether it’s an anomaly or whether there’s something to it, this year shows us it’s great we’ve played well in the division, but the AL East has not been kind to us, other divisions have not been kind to us.”
Sunday in Minnesota, the Twins handed the ball to another pitcher on his last legs.
Dallas Keuchel — a former Cy Young winner whose fastball now averages 87 mph, a bearded left-hander who had not struck out any of the 36 batters he had faced as a member of the Twins — started against the Pirates.
The 35-year-old Keuchel, however, spun what might be one of his last gems in the major leagues. He was perfect through 6 1/3 innings in a 2-0 victory, allowing the Twins to retain a six-game hold on the division. At 65-60, the Twins could challenge the 2005 Padres (82-80) for fewest wins from a division champion. With the Tigers and the Guardians playing one another this weekend, the division overall managed an 8-9 record, that .470 winning percentage representing something of a banner stretch.
The AL Central lives at the intersection of absurd and hapless, as evidenced by Keuchel’s improbable outing and another play that unfolded on the shores of Lake Erie on Sunday.
In the top of the second, Detroit’s Matt Vierling tapped a ball down the third-base line. Cleveland’s Logan Allen and Tyler Freeman converged on the ball, let it trickle down the line, praying it would roll foul.
The ball came to a complete stop on the chalk … a base hit, and yet another reminder of the state of the game, the series, and the season in the AL Central: slow-moving, non-developing, anticlimactic, a bunch of stoppable forces meeting some movable objects.
Comment