Last year's Tigers caught lightning in a bottle; this year's team is staying lightning hot

New York Times

20 hours ago

BALTIMORE — How surprised were the Detroit Tigers to find themselves in the playoffs last year? Vacations were scheduled, parties planned. Outfielder Parker Meadows, among a swath of Tigers who were married this offseason, was hoping to miss his own late-October bachelor party in Florida. Unfortunately for Meadows, it went off without a hitch when the Tigers lost to the Cleveland Guardians in the American League Division Series.
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Veteran manager A.J. Hinch spoke October baseball into being last spring, but that wish came to fruition only because the 2024 Tigers mirrored his confidence down the stretch, playing out of their minds to the tune of a 31-13 finish.
No one on this year's team is making plans until November. If you haven't been paying attention, the 2025 Tigers are the best team in the American League and enter Friday with the second-best winning percentage in all of baseball. The usual 'it's early' or 'can they keep this up?' monikers shouldn't apply. Dating to Aug. 11, no team in baseball has more wins than Detroit (76-38). Only two other teams have more than 70 wins over that stretch, big-market behemoths both (Dodgers and Mets).
'It's a hot streak at first,' said starting pitcher Jack Flaherty, who re-signed with Detroit as a free agent this winter. 'If it continues, you realize maybe this isn't a hot streak. This is just a good team.'
The defending champions in Los Angeles swept the Tigers in their season opener, but they've lost just four series since. A Tigers team that stormed into the national consciousness last fall with ace Tarik Skubal — perhaps the best pitcher in baseball — and 'pitching chaos' now has a legitimate rotation and a still-improving young core supported by a few savvy winter additions like Flaherty, Gleyber Torres and Tommy Kahnle.
'We created an identity last year, and now it's transferred over into success,' said first baseman Spencer Torkelson. 'It's not like we caught lightning in a bottle, it's how do we stay lightning hot? This (year) is a more sustainable brand of baseball.'
Flaherty, who was part of the Tigers' selloff at last July's deadline — a decision general manager Scott Harris made to get younger — was vocal about his desire to return to Detroit. He has no regrets about going to the Dodgers midseason and getting a ring with his hometown team — how could he? — but he started to see the potential in Detroit last year around the All-Star Break. They'd beaten the Dodgers in extras, won a series against them and then Toronto.
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'It's not even in the how (you win), it's that confidence you can win those games. You get that mindset of, We're good, we're meant to be here, instead of looking at teams like the Dodgers and San Diego and feeling like we're the underdog,' Flaherty said. ''It's, No, we can play with them. That instills confidence in the team as a whole, and I don't think these guys have let go of that feeling at all.'
The Tigers don't have the star power of the Dodgers or Padres or Mets; they are without a single position player in FanGraphs' Top 35 in WAR. (As of Thursday, 30-year-old Zach McKinstry is the highest-rated position player at 1.9.)
Detroit is 10th in MLB home runs and last in stolen bases, but every day a coaching staff that includes Joey Cora and George Lombard challenges players to think about how to get an extra 90 feet, whether facing a pitcher who throws a lot of dirt balls or a catcher who struggles to corral them. The Tigers are fourth in the majors in base-running runs above average (4.2), and that's a crown they're constantly vying for. Pitching chaos isn't a thing in 2025, but base-running chaos is still very much in vogue in Detroit.
Cora, who coaches third base, isn't afraid to push the envelope. When the Tigers signed Torres to a one-year deal this winter — one that is thus far working out magnificently — Cora told him he better be ready to run. The amount of base-running work in spring training shocked those who had been in other camps.
'That's where most of our runs come from,' said outfielder Riley Greene, who laughed at his team's unsexy style of baseball. 'Then we hit a deep fly ball for an RBI. It's just the little things. We try to do the little things right.'
Everything matters. It's what Hinch has preached, and his players have listened (so much so that the slogan appears on team T-shirts.) Detroit wins in the margins, and Hinch matches up and maximizes his roster perhaps better than any other manager in baseball. He also helps stabilize a young team.
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The Tigers only have to look across the field at a young, talented but underperforming Baltimore team to know how important experience can be. Hinch demands a singular focus every day, and the clubhouse has been buoyed by both last year's run and the additions of Flaherty, Kahnle and Torres, the latter of whom has received rave reviews in hitters meetings.
Experience matters, and the Tigers have more of it, even if the bulk of their roster is so young and close-knit it reminds Flaherty of the group he came up with as a 21-year-old in St. Louis in 2017. 'We blended and bonded and spent every waking moment around each other, and it made the team better,' he recalled. 'And that's the case here, it's just a group of really unselfish guys who like to have fun.'
The question will be how to keep the fun going.
If the Orioles provide a cautionary example, it's that promising windows can shut quickly. Baltimore under GM Mike Elias has had two tepid trade deadlines where Elias largely kept the top of the O's farm system intact but was unable to push the big-league team over the top. The O's have not won a playoff game under the new regime despite winning 91 and 101 regular-season games the previous two seasons.
Harris, who has said no one is untouchable at the trade deadline, has the difficult task of keeping the Tigers' competitive window open as long as possible and giving the proper reverence to a season in which almost everything has gone right. Detroit has the seventh-best farm system in the game, according to preseason rankings from The Athletic's Keith Law. Midseason acquisitions have a way of galvanizing a team, but doing too much — or not enough — could haunt the Tigers for years.
October baseball last year was a near impossibility. October baseball this year is an expectation.
The players are embracing that pressure. Detroit has legitimate World Series odds. The city is buzzing about June baseball for the first time in more than a decade. The Tigers sold out last week's series at Comerica Park, where they are 23-9, and are hopeful that reinforcements, whether in the form of players returning from injuries or new additions, are on the horizon.
'We definitely have targets on our backs,' Greene said. 'But we're just focused on having fun and knowing that A.J. is going to put us in the best position to win every single night.'