DETROIT — The only thing predictable about the Tigers these days is the Trade Deadline questions they get, and the answers they provide.
They came again on Thursday, with the Tigers back home for the first time since the All-Star break. They responded with many of the same answers they provided on their week-long road trip.
“My consecutive streak is alive of having to answer a Tarik Skubal question every day for, like, three months,” said manager A.J. Hinch, slightly exaggerating, before their series opener against the Royals at Comerica Park.
The answers are pretty much the same, revolving around staying focused on the next game, controlling what they can control on the field, letting the rest sort itself out. But the more they win, the more they let their play do the talking.
“It doesn’t really matter unless we win today’s game,” said Skubal. “We have to continue to play good baseball.”
Hours later, as they celebrated a 4-3 win over the Royals on Dillon Dingler’s go-ahead eighth-inning double, they had the kind of gritty win that characterized their 2024 run to the playoffs. And they took another small step toward making the buy/sell debate more difficult.
Detroit’s fifth win in seven games out of the All-Star break brought the Tigers within four games of the final American League Wild Card spot and six games of the AL Central lead. They’ll send Skubal to the mound on Friday for what lines up to be his next-to-last start before the Deadline.
“I think we have a chance to win a World Series. I’ve said that since Spring Training,” Skubal said. “That’s never changed, that belief in this team has never changed throughout the season. Obviously, we put ourselves in a tough situation, but I think we’ve come out of that tough situation playing really good baseball.”
Their brand of baseball on Thursday was more timely and pragmatic. Shut down for six innings by former Toledo Mud Hen Randy Dobnak and veteran lefty reliever Matt Strahm, the Tigers fell behind on an Isaac Collins two-run home run that chased starter Troy Melton in the sixth, only to rally on a three-run homer from waiver claim James Outman in the seventh on a fly ball that barely cleared the wall.
“It’s been a ton of fun,” Outman said of his Tiger tenure. “I think we’re playing really good baseball. We’re winning a lot of different ways. It feels like we show up to the yard and we expect to win, and it’s really special when you’re on a team like that.”
After the Royals tied it in the eighth, rookie Hao-Yu Lee — whose three-run homer powered the Tigers to victory Wednesday night at Wrigley Field — played the table setter with a single that set up Dingler for his 35th two-out RBI of the season.
“You can have the excuse of us playing a little bit on low energy,” said Dingler, whose team arrived home from Chicago in the wee hours of Thursday morning. “But overall, it was a great win.”
With Kenley Jansen unavailable after pitching two of the previous three nights, Hinch mixed and matched in the ninth with Drew Sommers and Kyle Finnegan. The Tigers, who escaped a bases-loaded jam in the first inning with a rare strikeout/2-1 putout, escaped two on in the ninth with a double-play grounder from longtime Tigers nemesis Salvador Perez.
“We didn’t want to use Finnegan there, either,” said Hinch, who used Finnegan for the third time in four nights. “We just have earned the right to go for it. … We went from being down and kind of sluggish today to the jolt from Outman’s homer to take the lead. That switched the entire plan. Gutsy performance at the end.”
It wasn’t pretty, but it didn’t have to be. The Tigers have done pretty; their plus-29 run differential on the season is by far the best of any Major League team with a losing record. They entered Thursday with the fewest wins (13) and most losses (33) in games decided by two runs or fewer. Even with a 12-5 record in July that trails only the Red Sox for the best in the Majors, the Tigers are 2-2 this month in games decided by two runs or less.
The Tigers and Red Sox have the same record since June 1 (27-16). Only the Brewers (29-17) have been better.
“This group has given everything they’ve got, every day,” Hinch said. “I’m just very proud of this group, and I want it to continue. We’re trying to win every game. We’re not going to win every game; it’s the state of baseball. But when we get in a position like that, guys are stepping up and doing some extraordinary things.”
