ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Pushing the panic button would be an overreaction.
It’s only three games.
But the Detroit Tigers were outscored, 21-3, against the Tampa Bay Rays. They had 14 hits in 95 at-bats, launched one home run, walked six times and struck out 30 times. The Tigers failed to “dominate the strike zone” in their first three games of the Scott Harris era.
The product on the field — even with new position players Matt Vierling and Nick Maton from the Philadelphia Phillies — appeared identical to last year’s 96-loss team from the Al Avila era. There were some lessons learned at Tropicana Field.
“I think we all can learn that playing clean, aggressive baseball matters,” Tigers manager A.J. Hinch said. “I think (putting the) ball in play matters. Staying within a plan matters. They play winning baseball. It’s why they’ve won a lot of games.”
On Thursday, the Tigers were blanked in a 4-0 loss for the franchise’s first Opening Day shutout since 1989. On Saturday, the Tigers were blown out in a 12-2 loss. On Sunday, the Tigers were no-hit into the seventh inning in a 5-1 loss.
“We just lost three games in a row,” Tigers center fielder Riley Greene said. “We’ll try not to look back on it and just look forward. We have 159 more, so let’s try to just focus on that and work hard and play hard.”
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The Rays’ offense took advantage of mistakes — too many mistakes — for extra-base hits. The Rays, unlike the Tigers, rarely make mistakes on the mound, in the field or at the plate.
“Their style is a little bit unique because they never let off the gas pedal,” Hinch said. “They’re not just going to roll everything out there and try to beat you. They’re going to shift the game in different ways that they can to get the advantages that they can. Pretty textbook Rays baseball this weekend, and unfortunately, it was against us.”
Meanwhile, the Tigers’ offense looked like the worst in baseball.
Vierling was 0-for-7 with zero walks and three strikeouts in two games; Maton was 0-for-6 with two walks and one strikeout in three games. Austin Meadows led the Tigers with four hits, followed by Greene, Miguel Cabrera and Kerry Carpenter with two hits apiece.
“I feel good. I feel on time and everything like that,” said Vierling, who started against lefties Shane McClanahan and Jeffrey Springs. “Just ran into a couple good pitchers that made some good pitches, in my opinion. I’m going to put together more at-bats and keep on going.”
The pitching staff walked 12 batters (and hit three more) in 24 innings.
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Starting pitchers Eduardo Rodriguez and Joey Wentz allowed three runs Thursday and Sunday, while Spencer Turnbull surrendered seven runs Saturday without escaping the third inning. The bullpen wasn’t dominant without high-leverage relievers Andrew Chafin (Arizona Diamondbacks), Joe Jiménez (Atlanta Braves), Michael Fulmer (Chicago Cubs) and Gregory Soto (Phillies).
“I would say don’t make mistakes,” Rodriguez said after his first start of the season. “Because you pay for it all the time.”
“That’s the difference,” Tigers catcher Eric Haase said after Turnbull’s first start. “These are big-league hitters that are going to make you be in the (strike) zone. They hit mistakes, and we didn’t execute, so that’s exactly what they did.”
Thirty-four of the next 37 games — taking the Tigers into mid-May — are against teams coming off non-losing records in the 2022 season, plus three games against the Boston Red Sox. The Tigers won 40.7% of their games last season and averaged 3.44 runs per game.
The Tigers play three games against the Houston Astros (106-56), Red Sox (78-84), Toronto Blue Jays (92-70), San Francisco Giants (81-81), Milwaukee Brewers (86-76), New York Mets (101-61), St. Louis Cardinals (93-69) and Seattle Mariners (90-72), six games against the Cleveland Guardians (92-70) and seven games against the Baltimore Orioles (83-79).
Those teams, including the Rays (86-76), won 55.4% of their games last season.
The Astros, against whom the Tigers begin a series on Monday night at Minute Maid Park, won the 2022 World Series.
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“It’s a bad weekend,” Hinch said. “We got to get to a new challenge. We’ll get on a plane to Houston, another really good team. We’ve got to do a lot better in a lot of areas if we want to play competitive.”
“We’re going to play as hard as we can,” Greene said.
Expectations were low coming into the season. Nobody predicted the Tigers to shock the world and advance to the postseason, but Harris — the new president of baseball operations — shared his target in spring training: “Our goal for this year is to play competitive baseball as deep into the season as we possibly can.”
Three games is 1.9% of the 162-game season, so the sample size is too small to give up, but the process that led to the results — uncompetitive baseball without any sign of resiliency — makes the opening series a tough pill to swallow.
It feels like the season is already slipping away.
Contact Evan Petzold at epetzold@freepress.com or follow him on Twitter @EvanPetzold.