The Super Bowl is over, and you know what this means. It is now officially baseball season! Alright, maybe it\u2019s unofficial until pitchers and catchers report on Wednesday, but we\u2019re close. The weather in ol\u2019 Michigan may even take a turn for the better this week. We could use a break, winter.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s talk about A.J. Hinch for a bit before camp gets underway, with the full squad set to follow pitchers and catchers on February 15.<\/p>\n
Over the last five seasons, Detroit Tigers manager A.J. Hinch has been a transformative figure within the organization. His influence runs deep from revamping player development and developing a coherent organizational philosophy, to actually becoming the Tiger de facto spokesman once Al Avila was fired, to operating as one of Chris Ilitch\u2019s main advisors in selecting Scott Harris to take over running the ballclub. His impact in the dugout along with his well regarded coaching staff has only been one element of his impact on the Tigers.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s hard to believe, but Hinch has now managed the Tigers for as many years as he managed the Astros. After signing an extension of unknown length back in October, he\u2019s sure to exceed his Astros\u2019 tenure by quite a bit. He was there through the second half of the club\u2019s rebuilding effort, and now he and his coaching staff have taken a team that didn\u2019t look too much better than average on paper to the final game of the ALDS in back-to-back seasons.<\/p>\n
We can look back at the Tigers collapse in September with some angst, particularly in Hinch\u2019s inability to turn the ship around where a few key players\u2014looking at you, Riley\u2014were concerned. On the other hand, having essentially three functioning starting pitchers and a mess of a bullpen didn\u2019t help. We have to remember too that he\u2019d led that same team to the second best regular season record in the game from August 1, 2024 through July 31, 2025. That he got them to clear their heads, defeat the Guardians in the Wild Card round, and then go toe-to-toe with a red-hot Mariners club that had a deeper, more dangerou lineup and a significant bullpen advantage, all speaks to his ability to get it done when given the tools, and sometimes even without the tools.<\/p>\n
His Astros tenure, and the stain of their sign stealing scandal, will never go away, but Hinch is well on his way to rebuilding his legacy in the game. He combines a scouting and player development background to his major league catching experience, and now has a lot of years running a team to draw from as well. Combined with the drive to win in Detroit and put his managerial career in a new light, and the organization is very lucky to have him running the show, my opinion.<\/p>\n
How about you? Maybe you don\u2019t love him. Let\u2019s hear about it. Like any manager there must be a few things about him that drive you nuts. I love Jim Leyland, but I\u2019ve got a long list of Leyland moves that made me crazy as well. Overall though, what is your confidence level in A.J. Hinch as he prepares for his sixth season running the Tigers?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Super Bowl is over, and you know what this means. It is now officially baseball season! Alright,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":562426,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2386],"tags":[5,147,53,72746,2583,4,594],"class_list":{"0":"post-562425","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-detroit-tigers","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-detroit","10":"tag-detroit-tigers","11":"tag-detroit-tigers-discussion","12":"tag-detroittigers","13":"tag-mlb","14":"tag-tigers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116041207158137131","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=562425"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562425\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/562426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=562425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=562425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=562425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}