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The Dispiriting Season
This was not 2003. Nor 2002, 1996 or 1975.
Those were bad seasons for the Detroit Tigers. The 1975 team lost 19 games in a row, the 2003 team came close to matching the 1962 Mets 120 losses (119, saved only by a four-game sweep of Minnesota at season’s end), the 1996 team was the first year without Sparky Anderson and the 2002 team just stunk.
But this, this was different. After a decent first six weeks that saw them at 18–20 after beating Kansas City on May 5, at home, and then didn’t win another home series the rest of the season. They won five games in both June and July and only won two series after May 5, both on the road, in 2019.
Finishing with a record of 47–114 is bad enough, but when you look at the season from May 5 forward, these toothless cats were 29–94, a .236 percentage. Had they not had a handful of improbable wins, including a 2–1 win over Houston and their ace Justin Verlander (who used to pitch somewhere else) on two home runs, the only two hits Justin allowed and a highlight-reel catch by JaCoby Jones against the Nationals, among others, this team might have lost 130 games.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wcmwg_XC87w
In a season that saw teams hitting home runs at a record pace (both Minnesota and the Yankees broke the 300-barrier for the first time), the Tigers hit 149, last in…
