Tigers fans are buzzing this week as the team has clawed its way back into the postseason picture, thanks to winning a season-high six straight and 13 out of their last 17.
The team entered Thursday’s series finale with the Angels just 4.5 games back of the Twins for the final Wild Card spot. After eight rough years, it’s totally fair to be excited about the possibility of a first postseason berth since the days of prime Verlander, Miggy and Co.
But manager A.J. Hinch on the Costa and Jansen Show Thursday morning said while the team acknowledges what they’ve done to climb back in the race, “none of it has any bearing on today’s game against the Angels or tomorrow against the Red Sox.”
“Obviously, it’s nice to stack some wins together and we’d like to get greedy and get the sweep,” Hinch said Thursday morning.
But that’s not what happened Thursday afternoon. Detroit was shutout for the first time since Aug. 16 against the Yankees, dropping the series finale 3-0.
Still, the Tigers find themselves within striking distance of the Wild Card with a month to go. And Hinch said he’ll be working to “keep everybody grounded” as they make that final push.
The late-season resurgence has been fueled by an injection of youth with the likes of Colt Keith, Spencer Torkelson, Parker Meadows and, of course the recently debuted Jace Jung and Trey Sweeney.
But it’s also been powered in large part by a “group outing” approach to the pitching staff as Hinch has opted more for “openers” who get a few innings at a time, as opposed to a firm rotation of starters, save Cy Young frontrunner Tarik Skubal, of course.
“I’m not the first to do it, but I do know that it takes a lot of guys to do well to have the games like that. And we’ve done it for a few weeks and it’s starting to normalize a little bit,” Hinch said. The only pushback that I’ve had publicly is we were just going in a different order. We were having these huge bulk outings. It wasn’t as if they were bullpen games, it was just out of order. We got to choose who the leadoff hitter was for Brett Hurter in his first few outings. And we got to choose who the leadoff hitter was for Brian Sammons or Kenta Maeda. They were pitching on rotation.”
That group approach has been working. Aside from a 10-2 loss at Wrigley Field on Aug. 22, the Tigers have largely been holding teams to just two or three runs a game during their hot streak.
“I know from the talk with other managers, It’s hard to manage against that because you don’t know when I’m gonna put in a lefty from a certain angle or a righty,” Hinch said.
“We had James Rowson, who was one of our hitting coaches last year and is now the hitting coach of the Yankees. When I caught up with him in Williamsport, he was complaining to me about as much as you can as an opposing coach on not knowing what was gonna happen. If they don’t know, the hitters can’t really prepare the same and they can’t get a second or third look at the same pitcher. That’s a pretty fun way to manage, but it’s hard to pull off unless the players are all doing well at the same time.”
Despite Thursday’s loss the Tigers are still in the mix for the postseason, thanks to the enthusiastic young lineup and a clicking pitching staff. This weekend will be a pivotal one, as Detroit hosts Boston, one of only two teams standing between the Tigers and the final Wild Card.