Don't let Tigers' depressing playoff odds distract from turnaround, promising future

On Tuesday night against the Angels, the Tigers raised their winning percentage above .500 for the first time since early June and extended their winning streak to five games. There are a couple of ways that opposing teams' fans could rain on Tigers fans' parades — their opponents were the White Sox and Angels, not exactly the cream of the baseball crop — but that doesn't distract from the fact that this team looks very good right now.

With Wednesday's win, the Tigers improved to 4.5 games out of the last Wild Card spot, tied with the Mariners and behind the Red Sox, who are behind by 3.5 games and who the Tigers will see this weekend when the Sox visit Comerica.

There's just one month of the regular season left and just under 30 games, but the Tigers' postseason odds aren't completely dead yet. Per FanGraphs, Detroit still has a 5.1% chance of making it to October. It led Jon Morosi to tweet the following: "The Tigers wake up today with a better chance at reaching the postseason than the Rays, Cubs, Cardinals, or Giants, per FanGraphs."

It felt like Morosi was trying to get Tigers' fans hopes up. As good as the Tigers have been and as fun as they've been to watch, they'd have to go on the most incredible and improbable run to make it to the Wild Card. However, that shouldn't detract from the reality that this team really does look like it could be truly competitive next season.

Tigers' recent surge is a good sign that things are working despite low playoff odds

At the beginning of the season, Scott Harris and AJ Hinch basically begged Tigers fans for patience with the young core. They were, after all, making an untested prospect (Colt Keith) one of the hinges of their future. Riley Greene, Spencer Torkelson, and Kerry Carpenter had promising 2023 seasons, but two of three got hurt and still needed time to shake off the cobwebs.

For a long stretch of this year, it looked like Harris and Hinch had gotten it all wrong. By the end of June, the Tigers were .452, and by the end of July, they only had two starters in their rotation. There are still warranted pitching concerns and it will be necessary for Detroit to spend in the offseason if they want to remedy them, but almost all of the position players have been steadily improving throughout the year. Torkelson and Parker Meadows have both worked hard to prove that demotions can actually make players come back bigger and better.

So, while the postseason is very much out of the cards for this team this season (unless ...), next year is actually looking much more promising than it has in a very long time.