Are the Tigers Really This Bad?
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Tigers Slow Start
Matt Bassin: I want a team, like you said, second, worst record in baseball right now, 8 and 19. They’ve lost 12 of their last 14. Thank God. The Reds are at 5 and 23. Second least running scored on the season, at 78, the Royals are actually worse with 76, but the Tigers have the worst offense per game at under 3 runs per game.
The Royals are just over 3 runs. They ranked 25th in offense. They are lasting home runs. They’re last in power percentage, they’re just on base, slugging, in everything they’re 27, it’s just bad. And no one’s anywhere near, the closest to 300, is Austin Meadows, who’s been sick for a little bit and he’s at 280 something.
But other than that, you’re looking at Grossman at 260 something and then everyone else is 250 or below. It’s just an embarrassment of bad hitting, impatient plate performances and just not clicking whatsoever, because like you said, our pitching staff, our bullpen, like we’re not giving up a ton of runs.
Eternal Optimism
If you look at others, I think we’re second best in the Central when it comes to runs, aloud, but we cannot score to save our lives.
A.J. Reilly: No, and no losing Javier Baez for the middle stretch of these 27 games, yeah, it definitely hurts those power numbers.
I keep going back to the word brutal when we talk about the Tiger’s offensive performance, but here I go with that eternal optimism, I don’t think it’s going to stay like this all season. It can’t stay like this all season.
What’s gonna happen is, you’re probably gonna see that top 10 team, ERA fall down a little bit, and you’re going to see that bottom rung, batting statistics and offensive statistics move and level out, right?
Like water always finds the level, and you have to imagine that an entire team of MLB players is not going to slump for the entire season. And how much did having a shortened spring training hurt the timing of the hitters?
Injuries and Days Off
There’s something to be said about that for the early part of the season. Now this continues and we were 27 games into the season. I get all of that. The timing should be worked out, but you’ve had injuries. You’ve had days off and guys that you thought were going to perform Jonathan Schoop, Jeimer Candelario, all those guys are struggling.
Torkelson has been good for a rookie to start a season, but he’s still hitting under 200 and striking out too much. I don’t expect that all season long. I think that this is still going to be an exciting team come August. Probably too far outside of contention at this point, because every game, even though there’s a lot of them, counts.
But I don’t know. I’m excited that baseball is happening and there still can be a buzz about this team. Like you said, the plate discipline and the timely hitting started to happen a little bit more.
For crying out loud, they scored 13 runs the day Miggy gets his 3000th hit and then it seems like they can’t score any runs after that.
Matt Bassin: I can’t blame the shortened spring training. Everyone had the same shortened spring training and not everyone’s struggling now. Yes, there are better lineups obviously than Detroit, but if you look at similar lineups, they’re all doing better than Detroit.
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