Murphy’s Law states that everything that can go wrong will go wrong. Just ask Braves catcher Sean Murphy, whose season ended prematurely due to injury this year.
After stranding two runners in the first, one runner in the second, two runners in the third, two runners in the fourth, two runners in the fifth, one runner in the sixth, and two runners in the eighth, the Tigers have lost nearly two weeks’ worth of games (13) in the span of three weeks.
Tigers lose, 3-0, getting swept out of their own six-game
homestand. Their American League Central division lead remains for now, however, as the Cleveland Guardians’ ten-game win streak came to a close in Minnesota after they concurrently fell to the Twins, 6-2.
Detroit’s magic number is 6.
Stranding a dozen baserunners in the most important home game of 2025 to date warrants no further summary or discussion. Instead, let’s take this recap to the big-picture scale of the moment, and I will fill you in on key storylines from today’s game as we walk through.
Sticking to the theme of “laws”, Sir Isaac Newton’s Third Law of Motion states that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Detroit, 0f course, burst onto the contender scene beginning August 11 of last season, and their star burned bright all the way to a 2-1 ALDS lead over the Guardians with a game at home and a Tarik Skubal start in hand. Sure, the Tigers could have lost their mojo after missing their opportunity in that instance, but instead, they sent six players to the 2025 MLB All-Star Game.
Beginning before that (embarrassing) All-Star Game — remember the Seattle series? shudders — Newton’s Third Law has gone into effect.
The team that went 18-9 in April and 19-9 in May is nowhere to be found. Hell, the team that went 15-11 in June and 16-12 in August is nowhere to be found! If you thought July’s 11-14 record was difficult, try 5-13 now in September.
Where does the fault lie?
If we look at Detroit’s team wRC+ numbers in September — a statistic which weights league-average composite hitting production at 100 — then, entering today, Jahmai Jones has posted a monstrous 275 wRC+ in 28 PA. Additionally, Spencer Torkelson has notched an excellent 147 wRC+ in 71 PA, Parker Meadows has surged to a 141 wRC+ in 50 PA, Kerry Carpenter has posted a very respectable 122 wRC+ in 51 PA, and 2025 MLB All-Star Gleyber Torres has managed a 103 wRC+ despite his .217 batting average and weak power in 74 PA.
These are the five men fighting the good fight for Detroit.
From here, things get ugly. Dillon Dingler has posted an 83 wRC+; 2025 MLB All-Star Zach McKinstry a 76 wRC+; Wenceel Pérez a 62 wRC+; 2025 MLB All-Star Riley Greene a 45 wRC+; 2025 MLB All-Star Javier Báez a -12 wRC+; Trey Sweeney a -84 wRC+. Three of Detroit’s four All-Stars are posting terrible months of varying magnitudes, and the fourth is playing league-average ball.
Now, let’s turn to pitching. Across Major League Baseball in September, a league-average ERA is 4.28 (I’d use FIP- to get something similar to wRC+, but nobody seems to carry a leaderboard anymore). Entering today, 2025 MLB All-Star Casey Mize — who led Tigers pitching in fWAR this month entering today — had posted a 3.31 ERA this month (he posted a 4.76 ERA in today’s start, failing to rise to the occasion, though not totally imploding).
Jack Flaherty has posted a 3.14 ERA this month; Tarik Skubal a 2.76 ERA this month; Tyler Holton a 3.38 ERA; Tommy Kahnle a 2.00 ERA (he loaded the bases today; he also escaped a bases-loaded jam today!); Rafael Montero a 3.00 ERA; Bailey Horn a 1.69 ERA; Keider Montero a 3.46 ERA; and Troy Melton a 3.55 ERA. That’s… most of the starting arms, and a few relievers. (And, to be fair, the relievers sometimes come in with runners on base and give those runs up.)
Will Vest has a 6.43 ERA this month. Chris Paddack has a 7.82 ERA this month. Charlie Morton has a 12.75 ERA this month. Sawyer Gipson-Long posted an 18.47 ERA this month. Nine Tigers pitchers have posted above-average ERAs over the past three weeks. Four pitchers, meanwhile, have posted terrible months of varying magnitudes, and two still remain on the team (most would argue only Vest should remain, but the numbers suggest he should have been relieved of high-leverage duty three weeks ago).
Yet, funny enough, Charlie Morton and Chris Paddack aren’t the problem. You see the problem the moment you see those two names to each other, right? The problem isn’t Morton, nor Paddack. The problem isn’t Dillon Dingler, or Zach McKinstry, or Wenceel Pérez. The problem isn’t even Riley Greene or Javier Báez, or even Trey Sweeney or Sawyer Gipson-Long, two guys who should not see further play time beyond Triple-A this season.
We all see the problem. In the comments; in the staff roundtable; in the Comerica Park concourses; in Tigers-loving households across Michigan, the USA, and the world.
Yes, we can blame the players for slumping and not playing great team baseball. Yes, we can blame the coaches in Chris Fetter and Michael Brdar for not drawing up the perfect game plan. Yes, we can blame the manager in A.J. Hinch for not pulling the right strings on the bullpen (although I am laughing like Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker after today’s miserable effort from Tanner Rainey in his Tigers debut).
But there’s only one man who had the keys to a sports car this deadline and drove the car off a cliff like Phil Connors and the groundhog instead of getting an oil change like the rest of us would have in his position. The Detroit Tigers faithful are in their own hellish Groundhog Day loop thanks to another “smartest man in the room” figure, a man who refuses to take feedback from the educated consensus around him. The man who must zag when others zig.
Scott Harris, should this article make its way across your screen, this is a public declaration that you are to blame for the greatest free-fall in the past two generations of Tigers baseball. I’m not calling this the greatest collapse just yet — Cleveland finally showed their mortality today, and Detroit finally showed a little more grit at the plate in the ninth inning.
But any success for the Detroit Tigers from this point forward in the 2025 season will be in spite of your putrid deadline, and in spite of your ego-driven refusal to top Boston’s counteroffer on Alex Bregman late into this offseason.
(Remember how long those negotiations dragged on? It didn’t have to be like that. He surely would have been worth the price this season, and with him likely making more this offseason following his opt-out, you would have had him longer-term.)
You acquired two arms that have decimated Detroit’s yearlong division dominance. You failed to observe Will Vest’s regression at the back end of the bullpen and move accordingly (yes, Kyle Finnegan has been good; we clearly need more, especially with everybody expecting Pitching Chaos 2.0).
You have continued to ignore shortstop when there isn’t even a viable shortstop in the system (ironically, McGonigle and Keith play their best defense at the same position over at second base, and they’re the two players under team control into the 2030s).
Yes, Kevin McGonigle appears to have been an excellent pick, and perhaps the same with Max Clark (although Wyatt Langford is 23 and has posted a 3.9 fWAR this season, which would sure be useful right about now).
If you needed any further indicators on whether it’s important to strike while the iron’s hot, go ask Justin Verlander, Max Scherzer, and Miguel Cabrera if they think the concept of a window is an illusion. The division lead sits at one, and Cleveland awaits.
Tarik Skubal faces off against Gavin Williams at 6:40 PM in downtown Cleveland. To quote the great Detroit rapper Danny Brown in 2016, a year in which the Tigers could not pull through in September: “Ain’t it funny how it happens?”
