In the seventh full season of a rebuild that began in earnest at the 2017 trade deadline, the Tigers are in yet another developmental year. At least that's how it sounded when president of baseball ops Scott Harris said Tuesday that "we need to build the foundation of this team" before getting serious about raising payroll.
"I don’t know that you’re wrong," A.J. Hinch said Wednesday on 97.1 The Ticket. "I think it’s perspective, though. Do not concede the attempt to win with trying to break in young bats and learn more about your players. Both can happen at the same time. We demonstrated that early, we’ve had a terrible May. We want to keep everything in perspective that we got a lot of learning and growing to do."
After going 17-13 through April, the Tigers are 9-14 this month and have fallen one game below .500 -- and 10 games out of first in the AL Central. They are already buried in a division that was supposed to be up for grabs. It's the Guardians, Royals and Twins who are trying to seize it, with the former two playing much better baseball than anyone expected.
The Tigers got pasted in Kansas City last week, after which Hinch pushed back on the idea that his team wasn't competitive in a series where it lost all three games by at least five runs.
"We’re not trying to not win," Hinch said Tuesday. "It’s not OK when we go in and get beat up in a series or we fall under .500. We want our standards to be really high. But there are going to be a few peaks and valleys when it comes to young players learning their way while we earn the right for contention and competitiveness. Getting into playoff talk, we have to earn that."
Detroit's playoff drought is at nine years, tied with the Angels for the longest in the majors. And this comes in an era where more teams make the playoffs than ever. The Tigers haven't even had a winning season in eight years, over which time they've lost the most games (637) in baseball while other teams like the Royals and Orioles have razed and successfully rebuilt their rosters.
From 2017-22, Baltimore, Detroit and Kansas City were the three worst teams in the bigs, in that order. Now Baltimore (34-19) and Kansas City (34-22) are two of the league's top teams, driven by homegrown talent and additions like Corbin Burnes for the Orioles and Cole Ragans for the Royals, while Detroit (26-27) is fourth in its own division.
And the Orioles are doing this, mind you, in a division with three big spenders in the Yankees, Red Sox and Blue Jays and maybe the sharpest organization in baseball in the Rays. The Tigers play in MLB's only division without a single team in the top half of the league in payroll; every other division has at least two. So when the fans watch their team basically sit out another free agency period and then hear Harris all but delay serious baseball for another year or two, "I definitely understand" the frustration, said Hinch.
"Given, let’s call it the last decade of this fanbase being supportive of the Tigers and wanting to see better times, I don’t fault the fanbase for wanting more, ever. I think the answer, though, can come in a couple different ways," said Hinch. "For us, on the field, we know who’s going to be a part of this moving forward. We gotta get those guys better. And I know we have a ton of support both from the fans and also from ownership and Scott and the front office."
If Hinch and Harris are being honest, which players on the current roster can they say, without question, are "a part of this moving forward?" Tarik Skubal is an ace, Reese Olson is pitching like one and Riley Greene should be a quality hitter for a long time. So should Colt Keith, who's come into his own in May. We can't say anything definitive about Spencer Torkelson other than he's underwhelmed thus far, just like fellow 1-1 pick Casey Mize. Kerry Carpenter is a good left-handed hitter who rarely plays against left-handed pitchers.
In that light, it's easier to understand when Harris says the Tigers "just have to develop the core that we're going to spend around," but no easier to stomach in the year 2024. If the Tigers aren't yet in "a position to supplement (the roster) with free agent agent signings," which Harris said might happen in the "upcoming winters," when exactly will they be? And for how long does Harris get to grant himself impunity? He's not really on the clock until he spends the owner's money. Al Avila wasn't fired until he burned it on Javy Baez and Eduardo Rodriguez.
Even Hinch, in his fourth year of losing in Detroit after five highly-successful (if controversial) seasons in Houston, has to be getting restless. There are two, maybe three hitters he can confidently write into his lineup every day, one of whom happens to be the only veteran bat the Tigers threw a little money at this offseason in Mark Canha. He cobbles together the rest by turning over every rock on the roster for a decent matchup or a semi-hot bat or just a player who might be due. Platoons reflect a lack of everyday talent.
"I look at, how do I squeeze the most out of this offense by getting good matchups and moving guys around a bit? We’re playing the personnel that we have," said Hinch. "We are not always going to have a team that has this much platooning or this much (game-to-game) change. But in trying to have a winning season for the first time in a long time, we gotta try to put our guys in a position to be successful. I get it, it’s not universally praised, but honestly, it’s just trying to be transparent with where we’re at and what we’re doing."
What are the Tigers doing? Are they waiting for Greene and Torkelson and Carpenter and Keith to either live up to or fall short of their potential before seriously addressing the rest of their roster? If that's not the position-playing core -- and it isn't an especially inspiring one -- why are they still waiting on Jace Jung and Justyn-Henry Malloy in Triple-A? Are they waiting instead for a wave of talent headlined by 19-year-olds Max Clark and Kevin McGonigle, who are both in A-ball? They can't be, can they?
And while it's a decision for later, what are the Tigers going to do when Scott Boras comes knocking on their door in a couple years for $300-plus million for Tarik Skubal? Will they be banking on Jackson Jobe instead? Waiting can quickly become wasting.
"I don’t obsess over things that I’m not in control of," said Hinch. "We gotta get these players better and we’re getting there step by step. But for all of us, it doesn’t always come fast enough."
It's been two years for Harris, four for Hinch, 10 for the fans since seeing playoff baseball in Detroit. That's far from the longest postseason drought in Tigers history, just like the 18-year drought that preceded the club's fairytale run to the World Series in 2006. That spawned a lavish era for the Tigers under late owner Mike Ilitch, cresting in four straight division tiles and another AL pennant. But that's not the rule around here. Harris is seemingly in no rush to build the next exception.