By Zane Miller
On Sunday, September 29th, the Detroit Tigers closed out their 2019 season with a record of 47-114, the worst record for a Major League Baseball team this season. On a grander scale, they had the 16th-worst record in MLB history, just narrowly getting ‘beat’ for 15th place by the 2018 Baltimore Orioles, who had the worst record last season as they went 47-115.
The Tigers actually started out the year pretty strong, as they held a winning record throughout most of April. However, mid-to-late May would be where things began to fall apart for the team, losing 10 straight games and suffering three straight series sweeps to sink from an 18-20 record to an 18-30 record.
Unfortunately for the team, they would not be able to turn the season around in June, as they managed only five wins throughout the entire month of June, wrapping up the month with a 27-53 record. The team wouldn’t fare much better in July, winning only five more games during the course of the month once again. The lone bright spot came in the form of Tigers closing pitcher Shane Greene, who made his first career All-Star Game appearance on the strength of a very impressive 1.09 ERA.
It would only more downhill for the team from there, however, as the Tigers continued to struggle in August and September and eventually finishing out the year with the abysmal 47-114 record.
It’s safe to say that very little went right for the team this season. On the offensive side, the team appropriately finished dead last in RBIs driven in with 556 on the season, compared to the league-leading Minnesota Twins, who earned 906 RBIs. On the defensive side, the team struggled as well as they gave up the third-most earned runs on the season with a total of 835, slightly better than their performance on offense, but still not nearly good enough to avoid their spot at the bottom of the league standings.
Tigers pitcher Matthew Boyd led the team with nine wins, however, none of the team’s starting pitchers were able to manage a winning record of their own. The Tigers’ longtime designated hitter Miguel Cabrera also had an uncharacteristically underwhelming season, but was still able to lead the team on offense with 59 RBIs to go along with a .282 batting average.
What makes this season even tougher, and why I am nominating them, is due to how it didn’t look like it was going to be this bad as the season started. They had a 64-98 record in 2018, certainly a mediocre record, but still showing room for improvement for the upcoming season, and their game was looking pretty good to start out the year, however with a record of 47-114 going into next season, it will be a lot tougher to bounce back from heading into 2020.
Now for my words of encouragement: There’s always room to improve. After all, think about the Colorado Avalanche from the National Hockey League in the 2016-17 season. That year they had one of the most horrendous seasons I had ever seen with a record of only 48 points for the entire season, but just two short years later they were back in the playoffs and even knocked out one of the best teams in the NHL. I’m not saying that a turnaround will come that quickly for the Tigers, but it is something to keep in mind.
Link to stats database: https://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/DET/2019.shtml
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