DETROIT — It should not be a surprise when situations like Sunday’s 7-1 loss to the Oakland Athletics occur. President of baseball operations Scott Harris, the architect of the 2024 Tigers, practically gave a warning on the first day of spring training.
“We wanted to be self-aware about the team that we’re about to run out there in 2024,” Harris said. “It’s going to be a lineup that’s going to be filled with young hitters, and as we know from watching baseball over the last decade or so, sometimes an offense filled with young hitters is a little bit unpredictable.”
The Tigers added Mark Canha and Gio Urshela but did not otherwise pursue spending on hitters in a weak free-agent class. They did not waver from that approach even as winter turned to spring and proven veterans remain unsigned. In the larger view of this franchise, that approach may not prove to be incorrect. But when days like this rear their ugly heads — one run scored over the final 18 innings in a three-game series against the hapless Oakland Athletics — it serves as a bitter reminder of why Harris and manager A.J. Hinch carefully avoided ever calling the Tigers contenders. This team has not yet fully arrived. Plenty of positive things are happening in the organization, but the Tigers must prove more before anyone talks of them as real threats in the AL Central.
“Our preaching in the clubhouse is about winning,” Hinch said before the home opener. “We’ve openly talked about it. We’ve got to earn the right to acknowledge it a little more.”
Entering Saturday, the Tigers had MLB’s best record in this young season. They won six of their first seven games in enthralling fashion. The victories reflected the fun side of a young and scrappy team, sure. But baseball is a mercurial sport, where a grounder up the middle or a ball a couple of inches on either side of a white line can flip a game’s outcome. Strange and inexplicable things happen, like how the Oakland Athletics are 21-4 over their past 25 games at Comerica Park.
The Tigers are the first team in MLB history to have each of their first six wins of the season be a one-run win and/or an extra inning victory
h/t @MLBNetwork research squad
— Sarah Langs (@SlangsOnSports) April 6, 2024
The Tigers, though, were designed to win games like their first seven tight-knit contests, with pitching and defense hopefully providing just enough cushion in the absence of runs.
“We knew that we were going to have a lot of young hitters populating our lineup,” Harris said. “We should expect these young hitters to struggle at times. We should be expecting the offense to sputter at times. So we tried to build a dynamic pitching staff around them to keep games games close.”
After losing two of three to Oakland, the Tigers’ hot start has quickly met reality. Sunday, the A’s ambushed Detroit starter Jack Flaherty and his fastball, creating a five-run advantage after two innings. The Tigers never really threatened. Oakland starter Joe Boyle threw 43 strikes and 44 balls. But despite plenty of advantage counts, Boyle threw so few balls over the plate that the Tigers could never inflict damage.
“It’s a fine line between being disciplined and being ready for the middle-middle miss,” Hinch said. “We didn’t do really either.”
Coming off a 4-0 loss Saturday, the Tigers went 16 straight innings without scoring against Oakland before Riley Greene’s eighth-inning home run Sunday. They stranded nine runners and went 0-for-6 with runners in scoring position in the series finale.
“We just couldn’t get some big hits,” said Canha, the most veteran hitter in Detroit’s order. “If we cash in some of those early opportunities in the first third of the game there, maybe we’re more in that ballgame.”
Dropping this three-game series to the A’s does not create reason for panic or time to abandon ship. What the scoreless drought really reflects is the realities of a 162-game season. Highs and lows, winning streaks and rough patches, water finding its level. Like last season, this young lineup has the potential to improve as the year goes on, as the weather warms up and players get more experience and confidence under their belts.
But a roster constructed on young hitters and heavy on platoon bats was always going to encounter difficulties. Before Sunday’s weak offensive showing, the Tigers ranked 24th in batting average, 23rd in slugging percentage and 22nd in FanGraphs’ version of hard-hit rate. Spencer Torkelson has yet to tap into his power, Parker Meadows is already scuffling, Colt Keith is still settling in and Javier Báez remains a source of angst in the lineup.
“This is a talented group, but it’s a young group,” Harris said back in February. “It’s going to be one of the youngest position-playing groups in all of baseball. Candidly, we haven’t earned the right to talk about division titles or playoff berths yet. … We have to focus on outlining for our players how they can get better as individuals. Because if they get better as individuals, we’re going to stack those games and get a lot better as a team.”
Here the Tigers are at 6-3, still in a good position.
And still with much to prove.
(Photo of Kerry Carpenter breaking his bat in the first inning of Sunday’s loss: Duane Burleson / Getty Images)
