Inside the Article:
Despite having scored six runs last night, albeit in a losing effort against the Arizona Diamondbacks last night, the Detroit Tigers were once again in the throes of an offensive slump in today’s game. The Diamondbacks picked up the series win by shutting out the host Tigers by a 5-0 final score, meaning Detroit has now lost a season-high eight straight. And in the mind of manager A.J. Hinch, there are a “billion” reasons why.
The Tigers have now lost 8 straight games
The shutout loss was the third time this year that the Tigers failed to send a runner across home plate, despite a pair of doubles from Miguel Cabrera. The recently returned Kerry Carpenter had two hits on the afternoon, while Jake Marisnick added another. But it was a pair of multi-run home runs hit off starter Matt Boyd from Lourdes Gurriel Jr. and Nick Ahmed that did Detroit in. The Diamondbacks improved to 39-25 so far in 23 with the win, while the Tigers dropped a full 10 games below .500 at 26-36.
The Tigers squandered an opportunity in the 6th inning with the bases loaded thanks to a hit from Carpenter and a pair of walks to Spencer Torkelson and Nick Maton; a flyout to center field from Zack Short would end the threat.
A.J. Hinch said there’s no shortage of reasons for Detroit’s skid
“I think it comes down to a singular at bat, because we’re doing it with two outs,” Hinch said. “There have been times when I talked at this podium about too many missed opportunities and now we’re talking about too few. We haven’t been able to find a ton of momentum on offense.”
“With two outs and nobody on, (Carpenter) hits the base hit and then we start to build the inning and it comes down to (Zach Short‘s) at-bat, he hit the ball hard into the middle and deep part of the field but we came up with nothing. The two-out component of that is tough, it was a one shot to make something big happen in a game that was going to need some sort of jolt to get back into it.”
When asked exactly what he could attribute his team’s recent skid to, Hinch responded that it wasn’t limited to any one factor.
“I mean, there’s a billion things,” he said. “I could stand up here and talk about a lot of different things, and you’re not going to make excuses at all. We just have to find a different way. We played a lot of small ball lately, that hasn’t really sparked us a ton….obviously, getting some guys back would help. I mean, it’s just missed opportunities and struggles by a large number of the group. That’s part of baseball.”
“It’s the Big Leagues, and we have to find a different way. We haven’t done that in this stretch.”
Wrapping It Up: The Tigers must find a way to get out of this funk
It wasn’t long ago that the Tigers were in the conversation to be able to challenge the Minnesota Twins for the American League Central Division lead, but today, they now find themselves in 4th place behind the Twins, Chicago White Sox, and Cleveland Guardians.
They’ll have an opportunity to salvage one game from Arizona when they reconvene for the third and final game of their series tomorrow at Comerica Park.
