Detroit Tigers: 5 terrible decisions from the 2022 season

In order for the Detroit Tigers to be this bad, they have to make a lot of poor decisions

The Detroit Tigers have made a lot of bad decisions this year. Whether it be from individual players, A.J. Hinch, the front office, all the way up to ownership, no one has been immune to poor decision-making this year.

You don’t get to a 60-92 record at the end of September without some bad decisions. Everyone is responsible when your team is this bad.

For this list, everything is up for grabs. These decisions can be from anybody in the Detroit Tigers organization, at any time during the season. I thought about including this past offseason as well, but that’s not technically part of the season. But just so our comments don’t get flooded with this…yes, the Javier Baez signing was a poor decision—both at the time and in hindsight.

So without further ado, here’s five bad decisions made during the 2022 season.

Waiting until the All-Star break to option Spencer Torkelson to Triple-A

This one still boggles the mind. At no extended period in time during the first half of the season did Spencer Torkelson look like he was figuring things out at the plate. They gave him the entire first half—about 300 plate appearances worth—to iron out the kinks, when it was clear about halfway through that sample that he was riding the struggle bus.

I get it, the thought process at the time was that there wasn’t anything that he could learn in Triple-A that he couldn’t learn in the big leagues. But watching him struggle so much and seeing his confidence dip with every late swing couldn’t have been much better for his development.

He’s doing better now, and it’s clear that playing in Toledo for 5-6 weeks was good for him. He’s still got Toledo hitting coach Adam Melhuse with him to keep working on things, but it’s pretty clear that he should have went down sooner.

I mean, it’s not like the Tigers were going anywhere this year. Not having his bat in the lineup wasn’t going to hurt their chances at making the playoffs or anything. It would have been better for both Tork and the Tigers if they had sent him down before the All-Star break.