Think back to early May. No one, not even A.J. Hinch, could have predicted the Tigers would be here in late August. In case you forgot, the Tigers were the worst team in baseball and tracking to be the second worst team in franchise history after a 9-24 start. Then they won a game against the Twins. Then they swept a series against the Royals. Slowly, they started writing a new story. The Tigers are 52-43 since May 8, tied with the Red Sox for the fifth best record in the AL.
What changed?
"I think we've established our routine of preparation and I think we understand how to win every day, or how to come to the ballpark and prepare to win every day," Hinch said Tuesday before a win over the Cardinals. "We've got a great set of guys who have bought into a simple mindset, which is just, win today. Compete against the guys across from you and if we can get enough players that play better than the guy across the field from us, we're going to end up doing pretty well."
With Hinch, everything is a means to an end. Win today to win a series. Win a series to win a week to win a month. Win enough months and the end will take care of itself. The Tigers made a mess of their first month. But they won May, they won June and they won July, albeit by slim margins. They're 11-10 in August, with five games to go. With September looming — and looming isn't used lightly — the Tigers have a chance to record five straight winning months for the first time since …
2014? Nope. 2013, 2012 or 2011? Nope. 2007 or 2006? Guess again.
The 2021 Tigers, the club that was buried alive in April, has a chance to do something no Tigers team has done since 1987.
Look, all sorts of caveats apply. The 1987 Tigers went 98-64 and won their division; these Tigers are six games under .500. The 2014, 2013 and 2011 Tigers only missed the cut because of the odd .500 month. Five straight winning months has as much to do with timing as talent, and what good are winning months at all if the gains are so small? For all their scrapping and clawing since May, the Tigers still haven't erased the damage of April. And August is hardly in the bag, with three games against Toronto and one each against Minnesota and Oakland still on the docket.
All that said, this is meaningful progress. The Tigers played exactly one month of winning baseball over the prior four seasons. Now they're closing in on four winning months in a row. They're also closing in on their best finish in the division since 2016, a worthwhile chase down the stretch. They're 3.5 games shy of Cleveland for second place.
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"When you look at it in aggregate, we've played really competitive baseball for a long time after a miserable start," said Hinch. "So I applaud our players on where we're at. I think we've established ourselves as raising the bar and having expectations to win. We've won a lot of series, which is something that we try to do, winning homestands, winning road trips, things that I try to motivate our guys with and they've responded. I think it sets the bar."
It does. It sets the bar for next year, when more young talent will arrive in Detroit, and it sets the bar for this offseason, when Chris Ilitch has stated his willingness to spend. A good team deserves expensive upgrades. As much as anything -- and more than second place -- the future is what the Tigers are playing for down the stretch.
"That's what the hope is, that we take this momentum and carry it into a successful offseason and into next season and make it matter," said Hinch. "Again, we want to have a winning August. We're not there yet. We've got a couple more games, we've got a tough schedule, but winning months will turn us into a playoff team eventually."
Ok, the looming caveat. Standing in Detroit's way of five straight winning months, aside from the rest of August, is a treacherous September. Of the club's 29 games in the final full month of the season, 15 come against division leaders, 18 come against playoff teams and 20 come against teams above .500. If they can make a winning month out of that, Ilitch should pay Carlos Correa, Trevor Story and Corey Seager all at once. But what an opportunity for the Tigers to punctuate the statement they've already made.
"We're trending in the right direction," said Hinch, "but we're not where we need to be. I'll always continue to push these guys."
