AJ Hinch sets Tigers fanbase straight with blunt comments about team's performance

Through play on July 7, the Tigers had a 15.5-game lead over the fourth-place Guardians. Exactly a month later, they have only a six-game lead over the second-place Guardians. It's still the biggest first-to-second place deficit in baseball, but the Tigers are slipping fast. Their series loss to the Twins was the sixth in their last seven.

Detroit is 7-15 since July 11 and Cleveland are 16-7. The Tigers have 46 games to go ahead of play on Aug. 8.

It's not hard to pinpoint what's going wrong with the Tigers lately. It's mostly the pitching staff's fault, and some of those trade deadline acquisitions haven't helped at all, but also ... the bats that fueled Detroit's first-half performance have gone quiet since the All-Star break. Riley Greene is batting .177 with a .448 OPS over his last 15 games. Javy Báez is hitting .188/.501.

"We better worry about ourselves," AJ Hinch said. "I don't care if you have a one-game lead or a 20-game lead, if you don't play good baseball, I'm going to sit up here and tell you we got to be better. [...] [The standings are] irrelevant until we get later (in the season). I've been very, very consistent that you got to play your 162 (games), and we haven't done it yet, and we're going to, and we're going to get tested."

AJ Hinch, Tigers aren't looking at the standings despite diminishing AL Central lead

Luckily, the Guardians didn't do much of anything at the trade deadline. Of course, it would've helped the Tigers more if they'd sold (they only gave up Shane Bieber and Paul Sewald, who came to the Tigers), but maybe they didn't foresee this ascension in the standings for themselves either, because they didn't buy at all.

It's probably best for the team that Hinch is preaching a little bit of healthy ignorance — they can't be so busy looking behind them that it distracts them from simply getting better going forward. Tigers fans can't help but watch the gap shrink and get really worried on the team's behalf.

Hinch and some Tigers players have said that these struggles are just part of the season; they're still a good team, and it's just a hump they need to get over. But that was a few weeks ago, and other than that brief oasis against the Diamondbacks, the Tigers are still in the desert. At the very least, though, Hinch is owning up to the struggles and is doing his version of sounding the alarm.