Tigers slump – Seattle’s win streak ended Wednesday, but the Mariners still hold a 2.5-game lead as they begin a 10-day road run through Detroit, Baltimore, and Washington DC. For Detroit, the season’s promise has curdled after Tarik Skubal was placed on the IL on May 4 with
When the Mariners’ eight-game win streak snapped on Wednesday, it didn’t feel like a collapse—more like a warning flare.
Seattle still carries a 2.5-game lead over the Athletics, and the series win over the Mets kept the momentum alive. But now comes the part of the schedule that tests everything: the team is heading out on its longest road trip of the season. a 10-day stretch with no off day. The route is set—Detroit, then Baltimore, then Washington DC.
During that extended run, Seattle will be reinserting Bryce Miller and Luis Castillo into a six-man rotation, a move that signals the Mariners are thinking beyond one series and straight into fatigue management.
Detroit. meanwhile. has spent much of this year trying to catch up to expectations that didn’t show up on time. The Tigers entered the season as the favorite to win the AL Central. With two straight playoff appearances. a competitive showing in the ALDS against the Mariners last year. a bolstered starting rotation. and one of the top prospects in baseball ready to debut. it looked like Detroit was positioned to climb into the AL’s top tier.
Through the end of April, the Tigers were around .500, still battling for the division lead. Then on May 4, Tarik Skubal was placed on the IL with bone spurs in his throwing elbow. Since that move, Detroit has gone 7-21 and has fallen to the bottom of the AL standings.
Skubal has been the storyline. But the strain isn’t only on the mound.
In May, the Tigers scored just 2.89 runs per game. More than five runs in a game has happened only three times in the month of May. A few names have still managed to look alive inside a team that hasn’t been able to turn rallies into results: Riley Greene, Dillon Dingler, and Kevin McGonigle.
Greene is in the midst of his best offensive season yet, though his BABIP is an unsustainable .439. His power output has also subsided in a way that matters in a lineup that hasn’t been producing consistently.
Dingler’s step forward has been harder to see because Shea Langeliers’ breakout has taken over the spotlight. Langeliers has already blasted 14 home runs and has accumulated 2.5 fWAR.
McGonigle, in his first taste of the majors, has been performing extremely well and is currently the favorite to win the AL Rookie of the Year award.
Detroit did activate Gleyber Torres and Kerry Carpenter off the IL last weekend, pushing the lineup closer to full strength. Still. the question hanging over the Tigers is simple: if the roster is nearly complete. why has the offense struggled to string together the kinds of innings that change standings?.
That same unease shows up in the pitching picture.
Framber Valdez, familiar from his time in Houston, signed a huge free agent contract with the Tigers this offseason. The plan was a formidable one-two punch at the top of Detroit’s rotation with Skubal. That hasn’t played out the way the offseason promised. Valdez has struggled early. and a 10-run meltdown against Boston has done a lot of heavy lifting in inflating his high ERA.
His strikeout rate and his groundball rate are the lowest they’ve ever been. During his time with the Astros, those were his calling cards. Now he’s allowing more contact, and much of it is in the air.
Keider Montero has been pressed into service as a core piece of the Tigers rotation. He’s spent most of the last two years bouncing between starting and relieving. but he’s handled the shift well as a replacement for the injured Justin Verlander this year. Montero doesn’t rely on overpowering stuff. Instead, he uses a deep repertoire to induce a lot of weak contact. His changeup is nearly impossible to square up. but it still isn’t producing enough strikeouts—batters either pop it up or mishit it into lazy flyballs.
Jack Flaherty is another example of a season shaped by feel and control. When his breaking pitches are there, everything plays. When they aren’t, hitters can settle on the fastball. That’s been the issue early in the year. Through his first nine starts, Flaherty walked 15.9% of the batters he faced. Over his last four starts, he walked just three total. The other problem is that his breaking pitches haven’t been generating the chases out of the zone or the swings and misses he needs.
Those issues have combined to balloon his ERA over five.
All of it matters even more because Detroit isn’t playing in a vacuum.
Both the Athletics and the Rangers won their respective series this week to keep pace with the Mariners. The Astros dropped their series against the Pirates and fell to 5.5 games back in the division. The A’s and Astros meet in Houston, while the Rangers host the Guardians this weekend.
For Seattle. the trip begins with Detroit—an opponent that may have its lineup getting closer to full strength. but still carries the weight of May’s scoring collapse and the absence of its biggest injury headline. For Detroit. the standings don’t lie: the path back up starts with whether the offense can find speed and whether the pitching answers can hold.
Mariners Tigers AL Central Tarik Skubal IL Bryce Miller Luis Castillo Gleyber Torres Kerry Carpenter Framber Valdez Keider Montero Jack Flaherty Riley Greene Dillon Dingler Shea Langeliers Kevin McGonigle