For the past four seasons, the Tigers woke up on the first day of each month trying to forget about the last one. Trying to convince themselves that the next one would be better. They played 20 full months of baseball from 2017-20 and finished above .500 in one of them.
The Tigers woke up Thursday, on the first day of July, with a bounce in their step from June. And they woke up in June with a buzz from May. After sweeping the Indians in Wednesday's double-header that stretched into Thursday morning, the Tigers have completed consecutive winning months for the first time since 2016.
This is what A.J. Hinch talked about when he arrived. This is the mindset he wanted to instill in his team: win a game, win a series, win a month. The record will eventually take care of itself. The record in April was awful, another month to forget. The record since May is a sure sign of progress: 28-26.
Related
"That's what we're trying to do," Hinch said in the wee hours of Thursday morning. "The expectation for us to have winning months has to be the norm. We really need that to be a goal. It starts with winning series. Maybe you sweep a team, maybe you have a winning homestand, a winning road trip, those turn into winning months. Obviously we need six good winning months to make it to the playoffs.
"The mindset is really good, these guys care. And we’ve proved it back to back months that we can be winners."
Here's what might be most impressive about Detroit's series win in Cleveland, besides the fact that ... Detroit won a series in Cleveland: neither Casey Mize nor Tarik Skubal took the mound. The Tigers took two out of three without their two biggest guns firing a bullet. They got big hits up and down the lineup and stellar bullpen work when they needed it. Stellar bullpen work!!
Related
Hinch has weaponized Detroit's bullpen by leveraging matchups. He's recently made it more than the sum of its parts, which is more than his two predecessors could say over seven combined seasons. He has an analytical mind with a feel for the game, and now the Tigers have a manager making a difference.
The White Sox come to town this weekend as the only team that's tormented the Tigers this season. Chicago endured seven losing seasons in a row -- and countless losing months -- before vaulting back into the playoffs in 2020. Now it leads the AL Central, and two of its biggest guns -- Eloy Jimenez and Luis Robert -- have hardly fired a bullet.
The Sox represent the reward the Tigers are chasing. Their pain has yielded gain. The suffering has waned in Detroit, and the wins are starting to wax. The Tigers won a series against the Indians, after splitting one against the Astros, after sweeping one against the Cardinals. In their last seven series against teams above .500, they're 3-2-2. The only losses came to Chicago.
The Tigers tripped over April, and they were trounced Monday in Cleveland. They stole the series on Wednesday as they start stacking good months. This is a sign of good baseball, flipping the calendar without turning the page.
"We need to play well against good teams," said Hinch. "That’s a good team over there. They’re beat up a little bit, but they’re ahead of us. You start looking at teams that we’ve played that have had winning records, we want to stand up and defend ourselves. We’ve done that the last few series."