AJ Hinch’s levelheaded facade finally cracks with frustrated comments on Tigers’ spiral

The Detroit Tigers can't seem to get out of their own way. For a team that entered a season with high expectations, it can be unnerving when the manager's urgency doesn't match the tenor of the fanbase. It can be a tired take to suggest managers need to lose their heads and flip tables when things come undone, but considering the 5-18 record the Tigers have in May, it's reached the point where A.J. Hinch may need to break character.

To be fair to Hinch, there's only so many things a manager can say when things have done this far off the rails. Eventually, the onus falls with the players. Having said all that, it reaches the point where a spade needs to be called a spade.

After a 10-6 loss to the Los Angeles Angels on Tuesday night, that might be the point Hinch has reached. The decisive blow was a grand slam hit by Vaughn Grissom in the eighth inning, and after the game, it felt like Hinch stopped just short of placing the blame at Will Vest' feet.

If nothing else, frustration appears to have settled in for the Tigers. As Hinch told reporters last week, when that happens, it may already be too late.

“If we’re getting frustrated now, then we’re late,” Hinch said, asked about the long list of underperforming players. “Where we’re at, we’re going to have to stay together, work together and really dig ourselves out of this one step at a time. But I worried about frustration a long time ago. This has been a grind for a lot of these guys, and you’re right: Their track record is not matching what we’re getting, and that’s always tough.”

A.J. Hinch is sounding like the orchestra on the Titanic

Even with Tarik Skubal making strides in his recovery, and Kevin McGonigle looking every bit as special as Tigers fans hoped, it's hard not to look at Detroit as anything other than a sinking ship.

The bigger concern is that Hinch is falling back on the Tigers' track record, and even that feels like an lazy explanation for what has gone wrong. If the Tigers were solely making decisions based on the team's track record, they would have looked harder at the downfall of the team last September and how exhausted they looked during the playoffs. That reality was ignored, and Scott Harris and Co. simply thought they could manifest the current group taking a step forward.

It's certainly been frustration, but bigger than that, the organization grossly misevaluated their player development and that will have huge implications for the team ahead of the trade deadline later this summer.

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