Detroit — It comes down to this:
The Tigers, once 24 games over .500 and held the best record in baseball for four months, who have owned the top spot in the Central Division alone since April 23 with a 10-game cushion as recently as Sept. 4, now go into Cleveland for three games starting Tuesday with the lead down to one game.
“I’m going to remind everybody that we’re a first-place team,” manager AJ Hinch said after the Atlanta Braves extended the Tigers’ losing streak to six and finished off a three-game sweep Sunday with a 6-2 win at Comerica Park. “Right now it’s hard for everybody to look at us that way because of the way the last week went.
“But we’re going to wake up tomorrow in first place with our destiny controlled by us against a team that’s been as hot as you can be in baseball. And we get to play them in a three-game series? Sign me up.”
The Tigers, who have lost nine of their last 10 and finished their final homestand of the regular season with an incomprehensible seven straight losses, kept their skinny lead in the division after the Minnesota Twins snapped the Guardians’ 10-game winning streak Sunday.
“The opportunity is still in front of us,” said Casey Mize, who soldiered through a solid 5.2 innings, allowing three runs. “As bad as it’s been. We’re facing two tough series (at Cleveland and Boston), but it’s still in front of us. We have to go in expecting to win the game and compete hard like we always do.
“We can flip a switch and make it happen.”
Still, it feels like a series between two teams going in opposite directions with everything on the line at Progressive Field.
“I have all the faith in the world in this team,” first baseman Spencer Torkelson said. “We all play for each other. We love each other. When times get tough, which they are, I feel like we all have each other’s back. This is what it’s all about. This is what you play for.
“Obviously, this isn’t what we expected but it’s as real as it gets in the regular season, for sure.”
There is a difference between panic and pressing. Panic is born out of desperation. Pressing is born out of a over-zealous competitive desire to force a positive result. On Sunday, for sure, the Tigers were guilty of the latter.
“Trying to do a little too much is easy to say when we start expanding the strike zone,” Hinch said. “The game is not really speeding up on us, but it’s not slowing down … We gave ourselves so many chances to break through but we couldn’t quite hold the strike zone when we needed to the most.”
The third inning provided a nutshell demonstration of how things have gone for the Tigers during this horrific slide.
With a runner at third and two outs in the top half of the inning, Mize threw a 95-mph sinker that darted in on Ronald Acuna, Jr.’s hands. The pitch broke his bat, but Acuna was able to muscle it just over Gleyber Torres into short right field.
The exit velocity off his bat was 67.9 mph but it still changed the scoreboard.
In the bottom of the inning, Braves starter Spencer Strider walked Parker Meadows and Torres ahead of the heart of the Tigers’ batting order.
Kerry Carpenter flew out to right field, not advancing the runners. Riley Greene and Torkelson, the Tigers’ top two run producers, struck out against a barrage of sliders and changeups.
The frustration in the dugout and the crowd was palpable.
“Look at what Strider did today under some duress,” Hinch said. “It looked like he was throwing the ball out of the zone and we kept bringing him back into counts and missing the biggest at-bats by expanding the zone.
“Is that mental or physical? It’s baseball.”
That angst was compounded in the fourth inning. Once again, the Tigers put the first two runners on against Strider. But Zach McKinstry struck out and Javier Báez hit into a fast 5-4-3 double-play.
The Braves, meanwhile, kept cashing in on their opportunities.
Ha-Seong Kim jumped a 92-mph four-seam fastball in the fourth inning and launched his fifth homer. With two outs in the fifth, Mize left another four-seamer (94 mph) in the middle of the plate against Drake Baldwin and he sliced it down the left-field line.
Greene made a dive for it, but it bounced past him to the wall. Baldwin ended up at third with an RBI triple.
Mize finished his day striking out Kim and Marcell Ozuna in the sixth. Once again, his stat line belied how well he pitched. The three walks were bothersome but he struck out five and got seven whiffs on 13 swings at his splitter along with 10 called strikes with his four-seamer.
“I competed hard,” Mize said. “I grinded. But we came up short. The scoreboard is the biggest thing and we were on the wrong side of it. I’m frustrated with that.”
The Tigers ended up 2 for 13 with runners in scoring position, 1 for 11 when the game was still close. Still, Hinch didn’t save any bullets. With two on and one out in the sixth inning, down 3-0, he sent up left-handed hitting Jace Jung to pinch-hit for Báez, anticipating that Braves manager Brian Snitker would counter with a lefty.
Which he did, bringing in Dylan Lee. That actually gave Hinch two right-handed swings off his bench. But Lee got both pinch-hitters, Andy Ibáñez and Jahmai Jones to end the inning.
“It was time to take a shot,” he said. “If they give the right-hander on Jace or the lefty on Ibanez, and then I have Jones right behind him. We hadn’t scored and their bullpen only gets tougher as you get deeper.”
The Tigers didn’t get on the board until the ninth inning, after the Braves had expanded their lead against right-hander Tanner Rainey, who was brought up Sunday morning after Charlie Morton was released.
“It’s been rough going,” Hinch said. “But we have the most important road trip of the season staring us right in the face. I continue to say we control all this and we do. But we need to find results and solutions, not just identify the issues.”
Hinch was asked about the challenge of taking a clean slate into Cleveland.
“We can handle it because we have a good team,” Hinch said. “I know we have to demonstrate it and we need to finish the games that we start. But the only thing we can do it play the schedule. I know everyone has to be tired of the same answers and we’re tired of the same results. I get it. But it’s part of sports.
“You do everything you can to get a win and right now it feels like it’s eluding us in so many different ways. But we have an exciting week of baseball ahead with the biggest challenge this team has faced.”
chris.mccosky@detroitnews.com
@cmccosky
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