Tigers collapse suddenly in sight after nightmare ending to Guardians series

Going into Thursday's series finale against the Guardians, Tigers fans had every reason to be optimistic that Detroit would be able to prevent a series sweep and get their division lead over Cleveland back up to 5.5 games with Tarik Skubal on the mound.

Skubal days are usually good ones. The Tigers have won 21 out of 29 games he's started this season, even when Skubal himself ends up slapped with a no-decision. Guardians batters have a lifetime .211 average and .601 OPS against him.

And, to no one's surprise, Skubal kept his side of the street mostly clean. He gave up one run — a homer to Jhonkensy Noel — and labored through a 10-pitch battle with Steven Kwan in the fourth that he eventually won, but which forced his pitch count up early. Still, he ultimately got through six innings of one-run baseball for his 20th quality start of the season.

The rest of the team was a different story. Things started out okay; Guardians starter Tanner Bibee gave up three consecutive hits in the second (two for extra bases) and a run scored, but then the Tigers left runners on the corners, and that would basically become the story for the rest of the game.

Rookie Troy Melton took over for Skubal in the top of the seventh and gave up a one-out walk to Angel Martínez before José Ramírez crushed a two-run homer. The Tigers had nine more chances, but they didn't make anything happen. Detroit's lead is now down to 3.5 games.

Tigers' AL Central lead shrinks to 3.5 games after suffering a series sweep against the Guardians. Is this a collapse?

The Tigers themselves may not want to admit it, but there is now every reason to be worried that they're going to lose their hold on first place, which they've now maintained for 148 days. With that win, the Guardians are on a seven-game winning streak and are due to see the Twins next, who they have a 6-3 record against so far this year.

AJ Hinch said after the loss, "We got our ass kicked in pretty much every aspect, and they swept us. They're going to get another shot at us, or we're going to get another shot at them, whichever way you want to look at it, but we got three games in front of us that we better deal with to continue to chip away at the win total. It's not easy to talk about. [...] These are tough times when you go through these stretches at the wrong time of the year, but it's going to take the games to figure them out."

What games? The Tigers have three regular season series left, and one of them is against the Guardians. They can try to figure out it against the Braves, who come into town next, but if they're not right when they have to go on the road to Cleveland in just five days' time, they can basically kiss that lead goodbye.

The Tigers have been willfully ignoring the fact that there's been something going incredibly wrong in Detroit lately. It's unclear exactly what it'll take to give them a wake up call, but hopefully this awful series will do the trick.