What the Tigers are missing, among too many necessary items, during this slide: home runs
Their pitching either is in the infirmary, on suspension, or (Kenley Jansen) perhaps past its shelf life, but it's the perplexing lack of power that has made this May tumble surprising, and sobering.
Sunday Brunch on Mother’s Day, and thank you, all these years later, Virgene Henning, for having been just about the perfect mom:
— You knew five pitches into the bottom half of the first inning Saturday night at Kansas City that the Tigers probably were cooked.
Two pitches after Burch Smith began his start, there was a smoked double to left-center (107.3 exit velocity) by Maikel Garcia. Three pitches later, a 101.7-mph liner from Bobby Witt, Jr., into the right-field corner, botched by Kerry Carpenter, and the Royals were up, 2-0.
The Tigers were, in fact, done. They got one run and four hits. They lost, 5-1.
Five straight defeats, and nothing suggests any aspect of this team’s current malaise is about to change.
The pitching rotation is confetti and will remain so until bodies begin to return. That’s not happening immediately.
The hitting is a hollow representation of what AJ Hinch’s lineup promised at the season’s start.
Mostly, the hitting ills are tied to a mystifying power-outage. The Tigers have hit three home runs in their last 11 games.
They haven’t had multiple bombs in a game since April 26 at Cincinnati.
No long-ball baseball, and every other facet of your big-league product better be purring.
But the Tigers too often either have been putting the team in an early hole, or (hello, Kenley Jansen) failing to secure a well-pitched duel the Tigers were about to win in former ways, as they did when things were clicking late in 2024 and early in 2025, and then in October’s playoffs when they were one run from playing in the American League Championship Series.
One way to overcome some bumpy pitching is by way of those bats that have, in short bursts, been acceptable. But only six teams have hit fewer homers than the Tigers.
Spencer Torkelson hit five in five days from April 22-26. Otherwise, one homer in his other 35 games this spring.
That’s astonishing. But not nearly as flabbergasting as Colt Keith batting .312 with no homers and only seven extra-base hits.
Torkelson has a minus-0.3 bWAR (Baseball Reference’s version of Wins Above Replacement) for the 2026 season. Carpenter, who also has the co-lead in homers with Torkelson and Dillon Dingler at six, is at minus-0.2.
