DETROIT: The initial plan called for the Detroit Tigers to have Thursday off so they could move into their new residences and get ready for Opening Day activities.
Rather, the Tigers will hardly have time to unpack their bags before Friday afternoon’s home opener at Comerica Park against the Oakland Athletics, following back-to-back rainouts and a doubleheader on Thursday.Whatever. Euphoria can counteract exhaustion:
The Tigers (5-1) are off to their best start in April in years. They’ve played six nail-biting games so far this week while traveling, winning five of them.
Tigers manager A.J. Hinch stated on Thursday night, “We’ve won back-to-back series and now we get to head home and we can’t wait to be at Comerica.”
What was the closeness of these games? The scoreboard read as follows at the start of the ninth inning:
After their Thursday afternoon loss to the Mets, the Tigers knew their start would be solid but not spectacular. They are no longer the only baseball team still without a loss.
However, the game’s path was almost exactly the same as the previous five, although ending with a L rather than a W.
The loss also gave us the opportunity to talk freely about something we wouldn’t have been nice to discuss during a winning streak: the offense hasn’t been that good, despite the Tigers’ outstanding pitching in the first week of the season.
However, the games against the Oakland Athletics (now 1-6), Chicago White Sox (now 1-5), and Mets (currently 1-5) have all fallen on a favorable schedule.
It is anticipated that the White Sox and A’s will be among the weakest baseball clubs this season. The Mets were not, but thus far, they’ve appeared the part.
The Tigers required this extra push. They had three records going into May: 10–17 in the previous year, 7–13 in 2022, and 8–19 in 2021. Before May 1, the Tigers had a 25-49 record in Hinch’s first three seasons as manager.
Maybe bad teams and good luck have inflated the present 5-1 record. But, in order to keep their hopes of making the playoffs alive through the summer, the Tigers must get out to a solid start.
