05/28/2026 1:10p EDT Los Angeles Angels at Detroit Tigers

[Tigeraholic1]

2003 vibes.

 

Edited 18 hours ago by Tigeraholic1

[chasfh]

5 hours ago, RatkoVarda said:

I think Hinch is one of the best managers in baseball and I would not argue if you said he was the best, and I don't think firing him changes the course of this lost season, and I do not think they find a better manager if they let him go

but

the results absolutely suck, and more importantly, they are not putting up much of a fight, and they not playing particularly well in any phase of the game - that's on Hinch

I don't know what happened, but the team seems lost

Injuries is what happened, and I think it might be more than just the lost WAR of front-line starters going onto the list. I also believe there could be something to idea of a very human response to hopelessness manifesting in lackadaisical play leading to an accelerating downward spiral.

IOW, it looks like they’ve just stopped trying because they can’t win.

[casimir]

12 minutes ago, chasfh said:

Injuries is what happened, and I think it might be more than just the lost WAR of front-line starters going onto the list. I also believe there could be something to idea of a very human response to hopelessness manifesting in lackadaisical play leading to an accelerating downward spiral.

IOW, it looks like they’ve just stopped trying because they can’t win.

The offense is atrocious and the defense is too lackluster.  I would guess it’s become a mental thing by now.  But is it lack of effort or is it something like playing to not lose rather than playing to win?  Has the pressure of just trying to keep head above water become too much?

[gehringer_2]

58 minutes ago, chasfh said:

Injuries is what happened, and I think it might be more than just the lost WAR of front-line starters going onto the list. I also believe there could be something to idea of a very human response to hopelessness manifesting in lackadaisical play leading to an accelerating downward spiral.

IOW, it looks like they’ve just stopped trying because they can’t win.

IDK - I would get that in hockey or football or basketball where you are going out and being physically and often painfully dominated by the other team and you cannot exercise any will on the field of play. 

But baseball  isn't like that. You are not competing physically against the other team - the game doesn't hurt more to play based on the strengh of the other team (doesn't  hurt  to play in any serious way for non-pitchers) so like Hinch says, every day's game is a clean slate and a player who loves playing baseball can still experience playing the game he loves regardless of the score in a way that isn't true in other sports. 

I think there is more to the idea that hitters can get run down mentally when they are facing pitching that over matches them, but even with the injuries most of the hitters on this team are pros with enough big league experience that should not be an issue. 

So having said all that, why is this team in such a funk - I think it is  just *directly* the effect of having too many poor hitters in the lineup -- you can't score runs when you have long stretches of low OBP hitters that in effect make whole innings pointless, coupled to the fact you aren't stressing the other team's pitchers. The guys at the top of the order have remained productive, but the lineup is too short, and  there is no wrap-around synergy on either side of them.

So I don't think you need any mental explanations -  pure lack of hitting talent explains it to me.

If the coaches or prep concepts changed would it make a difference? Who knows, maybe marginally, but you aren't going to do much with raw material like Workman, Jones, Short, Lee, Rogers, Perez etc - they aren't good enough ( all <600 OPS). And McKinstry has turned back into pumpkin -apparently last season was his career outlier, so add one more.

Edited 13 hours ago by gehringer_2

[RatkoVarda]

46 minutes ago, chasfh said:

Injuries is what happened, and I think it might be more than just the lost WAR of front-line starters going onto the list. I also believe there could be something to idea of a very human response to hopelessness manifesting in lackadaisical play leading to an accelerating downward spiral.

IOW, it looks like they’ve just stopped trying because they can’t win.

they play in a weak ass division, in a weak ass league, and were looking at a weak ass part of the schedule. it wasn't hopeless. if they could have played 450 ball, they could have stayed in striking distance. and when the injured guys came back they could have made a move. but no one stepped up with one of those outlier seasons you get occasionally. if they have stopped trying, then Hinch probably needs to go

[Tiger337]

1 hour ago, chasfh said:

Injuries is what happened, and I think it might be more than just the lost WAR of front-line starters going onto the list. I also believe there could be something to idea of a very human response to hopelessness manifesting in lackadaisical play leading to an accelerating downward spiral.

IOW, it looks like they’ve just stopped trying because they can’t win.

That's not an excuse though, especially since they excelled in the same circumstances two years ago.    

[gehringer_2]

1 hour ago, chasfh said:

Injuries is what happened, 

plus guys who aren't injured but whose 2025 was fool's gold -Jones, Perez and McKinstry, our back up catcher is giving us even less than he ever did and Colt's ISO is chasing zero. You have one add in McGonigle, one improvement in Riley, Dingler has been good but was good last season, the rest of the line-up is all negatives.

Edited 13 hours ago by gehringer_2

[papalawrence]

I'm on the verge of being past frustration and into apathy at this point. The grit is gone. I'd rather watch old Sonny and Cher Show reruns

[Tigermojo]

McKinstry has always had defensive and base running value. He's fallen off a cliff in all aspects. Wrong side of 30 and that's it?

[monkeytargets39]

5 hours ago, Tigermojo said:

McKinstry has always had defensive and base running value. He's fallen off a cliff in all aspects. Wrong side of 30 and that's it?

Can you have base running value if you don’t get on base?

[chasfh]

I’m thinking the team misfortunes are just snowballing, the guys are getting frustrated and just having trouble concentrating on every single play, and that’s just making things worse, and the more games that get away from them, the harder it becomes to just show up to go through it again. That’s a very human thing to happen.

I think it’s possible things could still turn around—in the sense of anything can happen, as is 2024—but maybe they need a small bit of success to build on, then their heads will get right, they’ll get back into the game, and then they’ll be back on the horse. Going through abjectly horrible stretches has happened to teams since the dawn of professional baseball leagues. Now it’s our turn. It’s practically everybody’s turn at some point. The Cubs are an actual good team and they just went through a 10-game losing streak. Now they’ve won the last couple and maybe they’ll get back on their horse, too.

When we do the postmortem on this team in a year or two, I think we’ll accept that this was never intended to be the end-game roster Scott Harris came to Detroit to put together and win championships with. He’s still in the rebuilding phase, but while he’s rebuilding, he still has to run a team out there, even when almost literally half the major league roster lands on the injured list. Rebuilding franchises from the ground up is simply not a fast process. 

[NorthWoods]

7 hours ago, Tigermojo said:

McKinstry has always had defensive and base running value. He's fallen off a cliff in all aspects. Wrong side of 30 and that's it?

And hopefully Harris won't cling to the memories......

[Shelton]

7 hours ago, Tigermojo said:

McKinstry has always had defensive and base running value. He's fallen off a cliff in all aspects. Wrong side of 30 and that's it?

I said all offseason that I didn’t see a role for McKinstry on the team this year. Looks like I was wrong, but to be fair I did not anticipate so many injuries and getting to the point that Gage Workman was needed. 
 

But my view was that keeping McKinstry was a mistake if you had faith that McGonigle was going to make the team. And to me that always felt like a lock (despite how much management and their media lackeys tried to poor cold water on the idea).

As a backup SS and left handed utility player, he provided value in his roster flexibility of course, but there are only so many spots and we had Javy available for that utility role. I’m happy that he had that early season success last year and made the all star team and won the weird utility silver slugger. But expecting anything close to that this year seemed like too much. 

[Tiger337]

This year, they have added a platoon DH silver slugger.  

[Shelton]

10 hours ago, gehringer_2 said:

plus guys who aren't injured but whose 2025 was fool's gold -Jones, Perez and McKinstry, our back up catcher is giving us even less than he ever did and Colt's ISO is chasing zero. You have one add in McGonigle, one improvement in Riley, Dingler has been good but was good last season, the rest of the line-up is all negatives.

I think Jones was a fair gamble to try to replicate last year. 
 

But otherwise I think the problem is simple and it’s the injuries. Parker, Javy, Gleyber, and Kerry are all substantial losses. Tork and Colt being a bit below average at the plate is a minor factor, which is amplified when you are without those other guys. That’s 3-4 missing lineup spots being filled by bench players, and bench players being replaced by replacement level players. 
 

But it definitely doesn’t help that the bench players stepping in have been sub-replacement. It was jarring to look at the poor lineup yesterday, and then look at the bench, and realize how bad the bottom 7-8 position players are. 

[SoCalTiger]

17 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

This year, they have added a platoon DH silver slugger.  

Does 0.1 war and 0 home runs with 7 rbi get that award these days 😀 ?

[tiger2022]

Just be honest: Harris has assembled a bottom of the barrel roster.  Anyone who thought this would be a good offensive team was suffering from self delusion.

Last season he didn't address offensive needs and ended up just having everything working out perfectly for the first half of the season.  

But you can only pull the tail of a tiger so many times before you get seriously maimed or worse.  He did absolutely nothing yet again to improve a terrible offensive roster.  

The guys that are injured and used as an excuse for why the team sucks aren't a bunch of world beaters.  Torres and Baez are decent but it's not like the Tigers lost a couple offensive juggernauts.  And Parker Meadows struggled to hit the ball.