In 'fighting mode' after deadline, Tigers roaring back to life

When Eduardo Valencia went down swinging against a 97 mph heater from Parker Messick with two on and two out in the third, Gleyber Torres was watching from second. There isn't a more observant hitter on the Tigers' roster than the 29-year-old Torres. In his view, the rookie Valencia was "uncomfortable" due to Messick's quick delivery, "caught in between" the fastball and the changeup.

In the dugout between innings, Torres told Valencia, "Don't try to hit all the pitches. Just pick out one pitch and the other stuff you can see a little bit better." In Valencia's next at-bat, the Tigers protecting a 1-0 lead over the Guardians in the sixth, he loaded up for the fastball so he wouldn't be late, eventually got a curveball that hung at the knees, and drilled it into the left field seats.

"Gleyber was telling me, you just need to be early because he’s quick to the plate. I saw that pitch in the first at-bat and I said, this is a good pitch but we can hit it. And thank God I swung at that pitch," Valencia said with a smile.

How bout this curveball from the Tigers? A club built on expensive, established arms is winning instead with youth, athleticism and just enough know-how. It is succeeding less as a team and more as an organization. When Valencia signed with the Tigers almost a decade ago, he was teammates in the Dominican Summer League with fellow Venezuelan Keider Montero. In his first game in the Gulf Coast League the following year, Valencia was behind the plate and Montero was on the mound.

There they were on Thursday at Comerica Park, the battery reunited in the rubber match of a crucial series between two division rivals. Montero was brilliant over 6 1/3 innings. Valencia steered him through Cleveland's lineup and backed him up with a big swing. The Tigers won 3-0. Valencia hugged Montero after the game and said, "I told you you’re gonna be good today."

Teammates at almost every level in the minors where the season ends in September, Valencia and Montero are helping the Tigers mount another improbable push toward October.

"We are fighting for that," said Valencia. "Everybody in this clubhouse wants to be in the playoffs. And to be with Keider, we got nine years playing together, first game (in the Coast League) he was pitching, I was catching. We've known each other a long time, and we are so proud to play in big leagues together."

A.J. Hinch held a team meeting in Sacramento last week the day after the trade deadline. The Tigers had dealt Tarik Skubal and Casey Mize after months of speculation and an ill-timed stumble at the end of July. The front office couldn't justify passing on the returns for two pending free agents. It felt to some like a surrender. Hinch wanted "to get the guys refocused on, the season’s not over," he said Thursday. "I didn't want the deadline to define us."

"One of the lines I used was, it’s not time for the fantasy football draft. So if I’m gonna use that with the players," Hinch said with a laugh, "I better not be searching those magazines and those websites that are gonna tell me how many carries Gibbs is gonna get." (He's gonna get a ton, A.J.)

Torres could have been one of the rentals traded along with Skubal and Mize. The Tigers opted to keep him, valuing his impact on the team more than the offers on the table. Shortly after that meeting, Torres posted a series of photos on Instagram captioned, "Let’s finish this together and make it special."

22-38 at the end of May, dead last in the American League, a run differential of minus-39, the Tigers have moved into the final AL wild card spot, with the division-leading White Sox in their sights and coming to town this weekend. Their run differential now is an AL-best plus-90. They are 38-23 since the start of June, third best in the majors, and maybe more impressively, 9-3 since a collapse against the Orioles on July 29 that convinced Scott Harris and the front office to sell.

"The front office always has to do their job, and it’s not our business," Torres said after Thursday's win. "Our business is just play baseball. We were really sad about Skubal and Casey, two big parts of our team and they got traded, but the season continued for us. We had a really good conversation together, like, let’s keep going, I know the guys in the room can do the job, too, and we never gave up.

"We know where we are and we want to do something special, because everybody from the beginning of the season was so excited in us, and now we are back on a run. I feel like those type of movements (the trade deadline) are really good motivators for everybody to compete. Somedays when you feel so comfortable, things don’t happen. Now we’re in the fighting mode."

The Tigers were a wreck in May. Injuries were a part of it, especially in their high-priced rotation. The larger culprit was a deterioration of the clean, keen style of play that fueled back to back runs to the playoffs. Their defense collapsed. On the first play of Thursday's game, Torres -- known more for his bat -- made a sliding stop on a ground ball in the second base hole, spun to his feet and fired a strike to Montero who beat the speedy Steven Kwan to first base.

Two innings later, rookie Ben Malgeri -- in the lineup for his ability to hit lefties -- raced to cut off a single by Brayan Roccio in the right field gap that had triple written all over it. He later tracked down a pair of line drives off the bat of Jose Ramirez, the second one leading off the ninth. Not long ago one of the worst teams in the majors in Defensive Runs Saved, the Tigers have risen to the middle of the pack at +11.

Max Clark has added elite speed and real instincts in center field. The return of Javy Baez and recent revival of Zach McKinstry have upped the club's collective athleticism. Kevin McGonigle is Kevin McGonigle, the favorite for Rookie of the Year. Dillon Dingler is Dillon Dingler, worthy of MVP votes. By the measure of fWAR, they are two of the top 10 position players in baseball, a pair of homegrown stars.

Through their own resolve and the admittedly awful American League, the Tigers have climbed into a playoff spot with about 40 games to go. While quick to point out that "we're not at the peak of the mountain yet," Hinch allowed himself a moment of satisfaction Thursday and said, "We take a lot of pride in what we’re doing."

"My job is to get these guys to reset (after every game), but we’re loving every minute of this, to be playing this competitive baseball, the brand of baseball we’re playing, we’re injecting some youth, our fans are way into it," he said. "I know we’ve taken them on a little bit of a journey this season, but we have a chance.

"And they don’t stop the season today. If we’re in a playoff spot, I wish they could end it right now. I still want to win the division, but I like how we’re going about it and I trust these guys to understand that even if we end the night in that spot, we’re going to be laser-focused on the White Sox."

The White Sox led the Tigers by 9.0 games on the first day of July. The Tigers have cut the deficit to 2.5, with three games on tap in Detroit. They will send 24-year-old Jackson Jobe to the mound Friday night and 25-year-old Troy Melton on Saturday afternoon. These are the new headliners of their rotation.

Skubal and Mize are gone. Framber Valdez has largely disappointed. Justin Verlander and Jack Flaherty are on the shelf. That's more than $100 million in combined salary. Montero, to quote a sign in the crowd on Thursday, has been "Un Monstéro." Melton has the lowest ERA (1.46) in the majors since making his season debut in late May. Jobe will make his return to the Comerica Park mound Friday night 14 months after he underwent Tommy John.

The Tigers lead the majors in rotation ERA this season at 3.30. They also lead the majors in rotation ERA since Mize and Skubal made their last starts for Detroit -- at 1.78. Asked if he's surprised by the way the rotation has kept humming despite those departures, Jobe smiled Thursday and said, "Nah, I mean, we got some dawgs in the rotation. These guys work their tails off, so never a doubt, really. And what Troy’s doing has been pretty cool to watch."

Everyone wants to know whether the Tigers have the bullpen to sustain this. It's a valid concern. Their decision to forego relief help at the deadline could come back to haunt them. Only time will tell. For now, the arms at hand are mostly doing the job. Tyler Holton's return to form has been a quietly critical boost.

The Tigers will also have to survive the next couple weeks without Riley Greene. In the second inning on Tuesday, Spencer Torkelson laced a double to left center to stake the Tigers to a 1-0 lead. In the first inning Wednesday, he laced a double to right center to tie the game at two. In the eighth inning on Thursday, McGonigle on second after a single and a steal, Torkelson singled into left to pad Detroit's lead.

Typically a second-half performer, this year has been no exception for Torkelson. Since entering the All-Star break with an average around .200 and an OPS barely above .700, Torkelson is hitting .315 with an OPS of .859. He's homered once in the last three weeks, while hitting about .400. This is how the Tigers will survive without Greene, who hit the 10-day injured list Wednesday with a hamstring strain.

"These last few weeks he’s made a real conscious adjustment to move the ball forward, to have quality at-bats," said Hinch. "The ball in play has been better, there’s going to be the punch-out, and he’s going to run into a homer here pretty soon, but there’s so many at-bats that the game leaves you with that aren’t impacted by a homer. As he’s dialed it back maybe just a touch, he’s been able to get that double to left center or the single to left or the bullet to right he hit on the road trip.

"He’s been integral for us as we’ve had a couple guys who are going through it. Now we’ve been hit with an injury in the middle of our order. Somebody’s gotta pick up the slack, and Tork, day by day, has been doing something right. I applaud him for simplifying things at a crucial time."

This is a heady time for the Tigers. They looked dead in May and could have rolled over again after the deadline. Their league and their division kept them alive, and now both might regret it. It feels like last year in reverse, when the Tigers roared out of the gate and then went down with a whimper, blowing a massive lead in the division. They were a good team for most of the year, a bad one in September.

And really, you could say the same about this year, the Tigers 54-39 but for one brutal month. They were diminished but emboldened by the deadline, united while being taken apart, driven by a desire to live up their own expectations. They are younger and healthier than they've been all season, and even hungrier as a result.

The Tigers are eating. We'll see who has the appetite to stop them.

"From the first day," said Torres, "we knew we had a special group. What we did last year was not lucky. We’ve been doing a really good since last year at making adjustments after bad moments, and this year is the same. I always say, it doesn’t matter how you start, it’s how you finish."