Tigers seem just as confused about Dillon Dingler's inexplicable descent as fans

Jack Flaherty might've jinxed everything on August 6, when he tweeted, "Ding belongs in a certain conversation."

Dillon Dingler was hitting .278 with an .877 OPS, 26 homers and 78 RBI through the Tigers' game against the Mariners that day. He had just hit his third home run in as many days. He was one of the lineup's only bright spots during their 6-22 May, and he was working some magic behind the plate.

At the time, the MVP conversation wasn't totally out of the question. With Aaron Judge sidelined for over three months, Yordan Alvarez was the heavy favorite, but Dingler figured to be a spoiler if he could finish the season strong. Alvarez would have to win the Triple Crown to impress voters as a mostly full-time DH.

But Alvarez has stayed on that Triple Crown pace, and Dingler has disappeared. The day after Flaherty's tweet, Dingler went into an 8-for-80 stretch through the rest of the month. It took 29 days for him to hit his next home run. He's hitting .144 with a .395 OPS since Aug. 7 entering play on Friday.

The prevailing theory has been plain exhaustion. When Dingler was at his best, AJ Hinch would put him in the lineup as their DH even when he wasn't catching. But Dingler refused to blame it on overuse.

"I don't want to blame it on fatigue," he said. "I don't want to blame it on anything. It's just something I wish I could have gotten out of sooner."

Dillon Dingler has no answers to his puzzling late-season slump with the Tigers

He continued, "Sometimes you're really hot. Sometimes you're really cold. It's a weird game."

Hinch added, "There's flashes in there of performance, albeit not as dominant as the first half. My question is more, 'What can we do better?' Or what (are the) signals of him being banged up a little bit? Or just the rigors of the position, what could we do better to help him?"

The Tigers haven't had a truly dominant slugging catcher since, arguably, Hall of Famer Pudge Rodríguez. They've had low expectations for their catchers on the offensive side, but now they're going to have to adjust.

Dingler's struggles and Riley Greene's IL stint coincided closely with the Tigers' slide through August. The Tigers' offense struggles immensely without these two players, and Greene had to go through his own learning curve between 2025 and 2026 — it's Dingler's turn to do the same ahead of 2027.

Add us as a preferred source on Google

Follow