DETROIT – The Detroit Tigers spoiled everyone’s good mood over the weekend by losing back-to-back games against the Athletics and scoring one run in 18 innings.
It was just the latest clunker for an offense that’s delivered plenty of them through the first nine games.
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Offensive ineptitude
You can look at the Tigers’ offense from any angle you like. The numbers aren’t pretty.
They rank among the bottom seven teams in MLB in batting average, on-base percentage, slugging percentage, OPS, hits, and runs scored.
Here’s a list of starting pitchers who have shut them down:
- Garrett Crochet: 6 innings, 1 run, 8 strikeouts.
- Sean Manaea: 6 innings, 0 runs, 1 hit, 8 strikeouts.
- Adrian Houser: 5 innings, 1 run, 3 hits.
- Jose Butto: 6 innings, 1 run, 3 hits, 6 strikeouts.
- Paul Blackburn: 6 innings, 0 runs, 3 hits.
- Joe Boyle: 5 innings, 0 runs, 2 hits, 6 strikeouts.
That’s not exactly a list of Cy Young candidates, but the Tigers were flummoxed by each and every one.
Butto was called up from Triple-A to start against the Tigers in a doubleheader. Boyle was coming off a start in which he allowed seven earned runs over 2.2 innings.
Mark Canha and Gio Urshela have been the only reliable bats so far, and if those are your best hitters, you’re in for a long season. Canha has more strikeouts than hits and Urshela doesn’t provide much extra-base power.
Spencer Torkelson is perhaps the greatest culprit of the team’s struggles, with an unsightly .462 OPS and no home runs. Riley Greene has three homers, but he’s just 6-for-32 at the dish.
Javier Baez’s slow start (4-for-26 with no walks, no extra-base hits, and eight strikeouts) was expected, but Parker Meadows (2-for-23) has been more of a disappointment.
Matt Vierling is 3-for-17. Colt Keith is 6-for-28 with only one double. Jake Rogers is 1-for-15.
The Tigers are doing a decent job walking and putting the ball in play, but nobody outside of Urshela and Canha is impacting the ball with any consistency.
That’s how you end up scoring just 29 runs in nine games against the worst teams in the league.
Is there hope?
Luckily, there are reasons to believe the Tigers’ offense can get at least marginally better.
Nobody expects Torkelson to be among the worst hitters in baseball in terms of hard contact. He doesn’t have a single barrel and is in the bottom 25% of qualified hitters in both hard-hit rate and average exit velocity.
I also expect Meadows to start seeing better results. He’s drawing walks at an elite rate and making pitchers live in the strike zone. Eventually, those quality at-bats will lead to production for someone with his raw skills.
Keith isn’t even 10 games into his MLB career, and I’m encouraged that he’s got as many walks (4) as strikeouts. Clearly, he’s not overmatched.
The only player I don’t expect to improve dramatically is Baez. No, he won’t finish the season with a .302 OPS, but it certainly looks like someone with nothing left in the tank.
A.J. Hinch is using his entire bench on a game-to-game basis, and that means players like Kerry Carpenter, Andy Ibanez, and Vierling should see mostly favorable matchups. None of them are great hitters, but they’re certainly better than they’ve shown so far.
The Tigers have a history of slow starts, and while the bullpen helped mask their offensive ineptitude for a week, it looks like we could be in for another long April.
But by the end of the season, I expect almost every player on the roster will have better numbers than they do right now.
Next few weeks
If the Tigers don’t get it together, the next few weeks could all but sink any hopes of competing for the AL Central.
The Tigers have seven matchups with the division-favorite Minnesota Twins in the next two weeks, and that means they’ll have to face the likes of Pablo Lopez, Joe Ryan, and Bailey Ober.
The rest of April includes series against the defending World Series champion Texas Rangers, the Tampa Bay Rays, and the surprising Kansas City Royals. Those matchups will feature much better pitchers than Butto and Boyle.
Detroit is 6-3, but thanks to the offense, it sure doesn’t feel like it. The rest of April will foreshadow whether this will be the first interesting summer in eight years.