DETROIT — This time last year, the Detroit Tigers were exciting fans on a surprise run to the postseason that looked improbable for most of the season.
The Tigers spent months chasing the Cleveland Guardians, Kansas City Royals and Minnesota Twins in the American League Central only to end up grabbing the final Wild Card spot in the AL in the final week of the season.
In 2025, the story is much different as the Tigers have 12 games remaining and a 6.5-game lead in the AL Central, with the possibility to clinch the division with a sweep of the second-place Guardians at Comerica Park from Sept. 16-18.
The Tigers aren’t ready to rest on their regular season just yet, but over the course of a year they are seeing the earned product of their day-to-day focus.
“We earned both. We had to earn our way into the competition last year, into the conversation last year. That was a different team and a different circumstance,” manager A.J. Hinch said. “This year we’ve earned where we’re at now, too. It’s not over yet, there’s nothing been won yet. We haven’t gotten to celebrate anything.
“At the 150-game mark, I’m really proud of our guys, and I continue to stay confident about our team, our approach, our ability to not worry about those two emotions. Whether it was the journey last year or the journey this year.”
Instead of hunting the teams in front of them in the AL Central, the Tigers have been tasked with watching their backs most of the season.
While they’ll gladly take their current lead over the spot they were in last season, players believe it’s a tougher ask in terms of daily effort to maintain their edge as the hunted rather than the hunter.
“It’s a lot different, definitely, but you want to stay like the hunter. You want to keep that mentality of that prey drive,” first baseman Spencer Torkelson said Tuesday. “We’re still chasing something, we can’t get complacent. We’re still trying to get after it and go win. I feel like last year we kind of had that hunger. And this year we have that hunger, too, but it’s harder to find it every single day, which is natural, but we gotta turn it on and find that hunger again.”
The enormity of potentially winning the organization’s first division title since 2014 and another run in the postseason coming up isn’t all about business and a blind eye to all that Detroit has accomplished to this point.
Hinch says he’s having a blast and — as a fan of the game — believes that this is the best time of year in baseball.
That excitement can go hand-in-hand with keeping the Tigers hungry in their drive to bring a pennant to Detroit.
“I love where we’re at, I love what’s ahead of us,” Hinch said. “We put ourselves in a really good position to play some incredibly important baseball. That, to me, is a moment where I can tip my cap to our team and enjoy it, and then you quickly get back to what’s at stake today.
“It’s not a ton different (this year) because we earned our way into both circumstances, but both things can happen at the same time where I can reflect and be really happy about where we’re at and then realize, ‘Hey, boys, it’s go time against a good team.’ We need some more wins.”