A nightmarish season somehow hit a new low this week as the Detroit Tigers were swept by the Cleveland Guardians in a four-game series, pushing Detroit's AL Central deficit to a whopping 9.5 games. A season that began with World Series aspirations has Detroit at 11 games under .500 51 games in, and in last place in perhaps the most winnable division in the league.
A.J. Hinch has received a ton of heat for how the Tigers have played, and understandably so, but their struggles have more to do with players underperforming and the roster that was put together. With that in mind, these individuals deserve more blame than Hinch for what's looking more and more like a lost season.
Detroit Tigers starting pitcher Framber Valdez | Katie Stratman-Imagn Images
The Tigers signed Framber Valdez to form one of the best one-two punches atop any MLB rotation this season, and that just hasn't happened . Skubal 's injury hasn't helped, obviously, but Valdez is in the midst of the worst season of his career. He now has a 4.58 ERA in 10 appearances after allowing four runs in five innings in the opener of this series.
Valdez had a chance to set the tone for Detroit against Cleveland, but wound up doing the opposite, giving up the early 1-0 lead his offense gave him and departing with the team in a 4-1 deficit. Since Skubal went down with his injury, Valdez has gone 0-2 with a 7.98 ERA in three starts, and the Tigers have gone 0-3 in those games. A five-game suspension for intentionally throwing at Trevor Story is just the icing on a disgusting cake. There isn't much for Hinch to do here when Valdez is performing like this.
Detroit Tigers first baseman Spencer Torkelson | Junfu Han / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
Expectations were high for Spencer Torkelson, who looked like he was finally turning into the player the Tigers expected when they selected him with the No. 1 overall pick in the 2020 MLB Draft, but this season has been a disaster. This series in Cleveland just brought more of the same that we've been seeing all year from Torkelson.
The 26-year-old went 2-for-12 this week in Cleveland. Now, he did hit a home run, but 2-for-12 from a player expected to be a middle-of-the-order bat for Detroit in the biggest series of the year is unacceptable. Torkelson is now slashing .194/.306/.376 with seven home runs and 19 RBI on the year. What is Hinch supposed to do when one of his team's best hitters is hitting under the Mendoza Line?
Detroit Tigers relief pitcher Tyler Holton | David Frerker-Imagn Images
As bad as this series turned out to be, the games were actually closer than you might've expected, with three of the four games decided by two runs or fewer. Poor performances from Tyler Holton wound up swinging two games.
In the second game of the series, Holton entered a tie game in the sixth inning. He retired the Guardians in order in the sixth, but wound up giving up a lead-off double to the struggling Steven Kwan in the seventh, and the Guardians found a way to get him home with a bunt and a groundout. It wasn't an awful showing, but with there being no margin for error, Holton didn't get the job done.
And this wasn't the only time he failed, either. The Tigers brought him in the very next night in extra innings, hoping he'd keep the game tied, or at least limit the damage. He did neither. Back-to-back extra-base hits plated a pair of runs, and a two-run deficit proved to be too large for the Tigers to come back from, as they lost 3-2.
Say what you want about the offense - it's been truly pathetic - but Holton entered a pair of tie games and wound up surrendering the winning run both times. He took two losses in this series alone and is now 0-4 with a 4.70 ERA. He hasn't been performing like the reliable left-handed reliever he had previously been for Detroit.
Detroit Tigers first baseman Colt Keith | Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images
No, Colt Keith hadn't been hitting for any power, but he was still finding ways to get hits. He entered this Guardians series hitting .295 despite a recent slump, and was one of the very few Tigers position players showing a pulse. Well, he certainly didn't look like a near-.300 hitter against Cleveland, as he went 1-for-11 in this four-game series. One hit in 11 at-bats. That's what the Tigers got from the guy who led off in both of the games he started.
The Tigers scored a total of eight runs in the four-game series, and Keith's struggles at the top of the order had a lot to do with that. There's only so much that Kevin McGonigle and Riley Greene can do if nobody is on base in front of them, and Keith was the one who consistently failed to set the table. In year three of a six-year deal Keith got before debuting, the Tigers had to have expected more than what they've gotten, especially lately. I'm not sure what Hinch should be doing differently here, since virtually nobody on this Tigers team can get on base with any consistency other than McGonigle and Greene.
Detroit Tigers president of baseball operations Scott Harris | Evan Petzold / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
The individual most deserving of the blame for how this season has gone is undoubtedly Scott Harris, the Tigers' president of baseball operations. Harris had two choices this past offseason. He could have traded Tarik Skubal, ensuring he'd receive a mega-haul for the back-to-back Cy Young winner before he almost certainly departed over the offseason, or he could have kept Skubal and gone all-in. He chose the latter, and it's backfiring spectacularly .
The Skubal injury has confirmed what Tigers fans believed all along about the roster Harris put together: it's not good enough. I won't blame Harris for Valdez's putrid season to this point, but I can and will blame him for not adding anything other than a rookie to a lineup that collapsed down the stretch of the 2025 regular season and scored four runs or fewer in six of their eight postseason games.
Even if Skubal were healthy, there's only so much he can do when the Tigers score 13 runs on a seven-game homestand like they just did. Harris is the one who constructed this feeble offense, and he's the one who made his manager's job the hardest.
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This article was originally published on www.fansided.com as These Tigers made AJ Hinch's job impossible in Detroit's last defense of the AL Central .
