AJ Hinch's tough love for Jackson Jobe after Twins rout might be too little, too late for Tigers

The Tigers looked like they forgot how to play baseball on Monday night. Jackson Jobe, in his first start of the year, was decent through his first three innings, but he gave up a leadoff homer to maligned former Tigers utility man Kody Clemens in the fourth and needed 27 pitches to get out of the inning, without much help from the defense behind him.

An error from Hao-Yu Lee and a walk put two runners on for Ryan Jeffers in the fifth, and he tomahawked a Jobe fastball well above the zone for a three-run homer.

Yilber Díaz, one of the Tigers' September call-ups, gave up four more runs. Zach McKinstry, in his second relief appearance this season, gave up two more on a walk and the first career homer of rookie Walker Jenkins.

It was a failure from the top to the bottom of the Tigers' roster. The offense mustered all of one run in response — a solo homer for Lee. But AJ Hinch saved the bluntest part of his criticism for his starter.

"He's got to grow up and learn and continue to battle and compete and get away from tinkering with mechanics and trying to overdo things," Hinch said. "You saw a lot of frustration from him when he didn't execute."

It takes a lot to get the Tigers' very level-headed manager to call out a player so directly. They probably could've used a little more of that earlier this month.

Tigers experience total system failure in 11-1 blowout loss to Twins

You know a team is young when 25-year-old Riley Greene is one of the longest-tenured position players on the roster. Four of the players in Monday's starting lineup are rookies. By the end of the game, after Hinch shuffled some things around to get some of his everyday players off their feet, there were six rookies on the field.

Jobe, while not a rookie anymore, is just as young as any of them, having just turned 24 in July. He's been rocky ever since he came off the IL. Some Tigers fans have had their issues with the way that Hinch manages his team, but even they have to admit that trying to corral a team of early-20-somethings with very little experience has present a unique kind of challenge.

But some tougher love probably would've helped before the Tigers re-dug themselves into this hole and probably (at least privately) called it quits on the season.

This is the most exciting Detroit's young core has been in years — even more than when it was Greene, Spencer Torkelson, and Casey Mize establishing themselve sin the league — but they still have a lot of growing up to do.

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