Detroit Tigers: Once they’re down, they’re out

The Detroit Tigers suffered another utterly embarrassing loss on their home field falling to the Oakland A’s 17-3 on Thursday afternoon in the opener of a four-game series at Comerica Park.

The month of May has not been very kind to the Detroit Tigers at all. Detroit is 5-10 so far this month and is currently on a four-game losing skid. Thursday’s blowout loss marked the fourth time the team has surrendered double-digit runs in a less than two week span, two of those times coming in just the past three days.

The main thing that seems to really be hurting this Detroit Tigers team is the inability to mount any sort of comeback after going down early. During this current four-game losing streak, the Tigers have been outscored 41-9 by their opponents. With the starting rotation in a bad way and a bullpen that has been in shambles for as long as anyone can remember, the Tigers’ offense is simply much too weak to do anything on its own.

Back on May 4th, Kansas City went up 7-0 early and did not have to fear the Tigers coming from behind at all cruising on to a 15-3 victory. Last Thursday, the Angels came out and put up two runs in the top of the first inning and then never looked back going on to shutout Detroit 13-0. On Tuesday, Houston also got out to an early seven-run lead going on to beat the Tigers 11-4.

Tigers fans came into Thursday with some hope that maybe the team could start to get back on track. After all, Oakland is another sub-.500 team currently sitting in last place in the AL West, but that did not matter at all.

Spencer Turnbull had his worst start of the season surrendering six runs on five hits in just four innings, although only one of those runs counts as an earned run. However, things did not get any better once the bullpen took over.

Blaine Hardy, Reed Garrett, and Victor Alcántara all surrendered multiple earned runs coming out of the bullpen. This led to manager Ron Gardenhire deciding to throw infielder Brandon Dixon on the mound for the ninth inning where he gave up a two-run shot to Oakland’s Mark Canha.

The Tigers just couldn’t do anything on the mound, at the plate, or in the field that even remotely resembled decent baseball. In fact, it was Dawel Lugo, who was called up from Triple-A Toledo earlier in the day to replace Jeimer Candelario, who was the only one able to generate any sort of offense for Detroit, launching a three-run HR with two outs in the bottom of the ninth to give Detroit its only runs on the day.

Thursday afternoon was extremely rough for the Detroit Tigers, but tomorrow is a new day. The Tigers still have three games left against the A’s this weekend to still try and right the ship at least somewhat. If Detroit wants to have any chance at ending this skid, it is of the utmost importance to not dig itself into a hole early on.