Detroit Tigers: No, the Tigers don’t have the most negative fan base

The feel-good feeling from the Houston Astros series for the Detroit Tigers has clearly vanished into thin air as the frustrations of the team’s recent struggles have spilled onto social media.

Venting on social media is nothing new. If you go back to the days of newspapers, social media just another evolution of the “keyboard warrior” or the local radio caller who calls into a station, sometimes with a well-formulated “hot take” or one that has been said before but the caller before “stole their thunder”. Sue from China Township was not a fan of Tim Allen getting paid.

There was a question that was posed this morning by David Laurila of FanGraphs on Twitter that spurned quite a debate in the Motor City Bengals Slack channel and on Twitter itself. If you have not checked out David’s “Sunday Notes”, it is a must-read worth checking out every week.

His poll was simple. Who has the most negative fan base in MLB with the two choices being the Detroit Tigers and “other”.

The responses to his question were a few fans saying the negativity is justified based on the current state of the team. Others responded with Pittsburgh, the Yankees, or the Phillies.

The Reality for the Detroit Tigers is…

The truth of the question David poses really depends on your experience with the Detroit Tigers. Looking at it objectively, anytime anything is written negatively on this blog, there is a good amount of fans who may dismiss it as an angry section of the fan base who think they can do it better. On the flip side, you have a set of fans who appreciate the angle of “telling it how it is”.

An example of this is the videos done by Chris Castellani and Scott Bentley.  Baseball fans, not just Tigers fans appreciate the articulation done by both Chris and Scott. On the written form, while disagreement can be had about Miguel Cabrera, our own new writer Christopher Mangum has strong feelings about Miggy just walking away. 

Fans have every reason to be exasperated about the product on the field. The stats speak for themselves and learning this first hand, there is really no way to win a debate online whether or not Al Avila has done a good job navigating through since David Dombrowski was fired. Chris Brown, myself, and others have all highlighted when he has won a trade.

When you see how the team did not spend in the off-season as much as expected with contracts coming off the books, the seeds of anger were already there. The slow start has spurned the growth.

On the other hand, fans, thanks to the Detroit Tigers, want us to remember the good times.  The warm glow of nostalgia is a welcomed one and there is nothing wrong with that.  Whether it’s the past World Series winners or the early 2010 Tigers teams, fans remember how good the team was. They are willing to be patient with what the prospect talent will bring soon.

Realistically, Tigers fans have been more than patient.  Yes, they understand this is a process and this could take a while before we see anything from the draft classes. But the most negative? Nah. Fed up with the results on the field? That’s more than fair to say. If the Detroit Tigers were humming along like they were in Houston, this article would not even be a suggested idea. Instead, we would be praising the team’s start and everything would be on the up and up.

After today, there will be 139 games left in the season so plenty of time to turn it around and make the offense much more watchable.  Manager A.J. Hinch said every bad stretch has a beginning and an end. He has tried endless lineups to get the offense going.   

"“The only people that can end it are in the clubhouse….It’s not going to get any better by coming to work in a bad mindset or pouting. What’s going to make it better is going out and beating the Royals today.”"

For the sake of a restless fan base, they would like to see results soon and that’s a reality we can all agree on.