Tigers destroying all their pre-season fan goodwill after embarrassing loss to Royals

Anyone who tells you there's a must-win series before Memorial Day is either being hyperbolic or just doesn't know baseball.

That said, the Detroit Tigers entered Kansas City after playing a great series in Arizona with a chance to prove they're serious about being a contender in 2024. Add in the fact they were facing another young team on the way up, and you had all the makings for a great test to see how far each franchise has come. Only one of them passed.

That was, simply put, a complete embarrassment of a series for the Tigers. They got outpitched, outhit, and laughed right out of Kauffman Stadium, losing 8-3, 10-3, and 8-3 and never really feeling like they were in a game for long. Each time they punched, the Royals punched back harder.

The Tigers are now 6-13 in May, a season-worst three games below .500, and 9.5 games out of first place in the AL Central. This after starting 5-0 and being a rather fun team to watch for th first month-plus of the season.

There's certainly time to turn things around and most nights the pitching is still good enough to give the team a chance to win more often than not. But if ever there was a terrible, no good, dispiriting series that made you question why you watch this team play baseball, the series against the Royals was probably it.

The Royals appear to have passed the Tigers in every way

The series was an old fashioned butt kickin'.

It started with pitching. Reese Olson may have been knocked out of Monday's game by a comebacker in the third inning, but following a great emergency effort by Beau Brieske the bullpen fell apart. Casey Mize got lit up so bad he didn't make it out of the second on Tuesday. Ace Tarik Skubal appeared to be suffering a finger issue Wednesday (though he made no excuses) and only made it through five. In each case the bullpen only made things worse.

The lineup was equally bad. They combined to hit .194 with both a .286 on-base percentage and .286 slugging. They struck out 24 times in 112 plate appearances. Spencer Torkelson, who the Tigers need to get back to 2023 form and even showed some signs of breaking out, went 0-for-12.

Meanwhile, the Royals are 8-2 in their last 10 and a franchise that appeared to have no aspirations other than to exist looked for all the world like they've passed the Tigers in the rebuild process. They're 32-19 on the year and just 1.5 games out of first. That's really not a good sign for Detroit's future hopes.

Teams have bad series, bad weeks. Even good ones go through those periods. Then they break out of it.

At one point, the Tigers looked like they might just have the ingredients to be good team. No one asked for them to go out and win the whole thing. But fans were looking for a team that would at least be able to keep them entertained most of the summer months and thought they'd have just that.

Instead, yet again, it's not even June yet and people are just asking when football season begins. The Tigers certainly still have a lot to prove.