Tigers reliever's strange history evokes 2000 team, highlights pitching issues

The Tigers pitching staff is limping, and nothing made it clearer than their decision to go to Brenan Hanifee as the opener in their Thursday series finale against the Mariners. Not only was Hanifee a weird promotion to begin with, he'd also just closed the game the day before with a (mostly) clean inning to keep Seattle at two runs on the night.

Although AJ Hinch said the Tigers had a plan to cover for their starting pitching deficit, all they really did was call up two relievers, Hanifee and Sean Guenther (who has since been replaced by Brant Hurter), and go from bullpen game to bullpen game around scheduled Tarik Skubal and Keider Montero starts.

Hanifee pitched two innings on Thursday, both hitless with one walk, so things worked out okay, but it was the first time the Tigers have sent out a pitcher to close and then start consecutive games since Steve Sparks in 2000, a year when Detroit got off to one of their worst starts to a season in franchise history, with a 6-17 record in April.

Tigers usage of Brenan Hanifee during Mariners series recalls one of Detroit's worst teams

Before going to Hanifee as the opener, Hinch texted Sparks, a former teammate on the 2003 Tigers (funny enough, literally the worst Detroit team in the franchise's history), and said, "Hey, heads up. I’m going to get your name back in the news.” When Sparks did it, he pitched a scoreless ninth against the then-Devil Rays on July 26 at home before flying to Texas to pitch 5 1/3 innings against the Rangers the next day. Sparks fared worse than Hanifee, giving up eight hits and four runs during that start.

If this was part of the plan that Hinch mentioned, then maybe they need to go back to the drawing board. Hanifee fared well with the double-duty, but this shouldn't become a habit for a team that's already risking running their relievers into the ground by working overtime.

At this point, though, they can only hope Reese Olson continues to progress well from a shoulder strain and kick themselves for sending Casey Mize to the 60-day IL despite the fact that he felt well enough to come back at the time. While they might not have anything to lose as a team that's playing for pride at this point, this hardly inspires confidence in ... much of anything.