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The Detroit Tigers haven't been quite as dominant in the month of June, but they still have the best record in baseball as we enter the final week of the month. After a couple of sluggish performances against the Tampa Bay Rays on Friday and Saturday, Detroit bounced back with an impressive victory in the series finale on Sunday. The Tigers still lost the series, but the ability to bounce back in impressive fashion is why the Tigers are having such a good season.
A couple of bad losses can easily spiral into a disastrous stretch, but the Tigers haven't let that happen yet this year. While things have been harder in June, the team still finds a way to put the poor games behind them, and they find ways to get wins with their backs against the wall.
“Our reset button has been really good,” Tigers manager AJ Hinch said, according to an article from MLB.com. “We play well. We can pitch. We usually play defense. We put up a good fight against the [opposing] starting pitchers. We’ll play our 27 outs. We’re not playing for a certain win total in June, and we’re not really after any sort of recognition on what we’re doing. We just reset and play the next series. I love this team for a lot of reasons, but one of the main reasons is that we come to play every day.”
A big reason why the Tigers were able to salvage this particular series against the Rays was Riley Greene. He was fantastic all series long as he went 6-10 at the plate with two home runs and four RBIs, and he also made numerous spectacular plays in the outfield. He collected three hits in Sunday's finale.
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“[Greene] made excellent defensive plays, and that’s not even talking about his bat,” Hinch said. “The ebbs and flows of the season are really hard, but there’s some consistency. One, it’s going to rain in Florida. Two, it’s really hot in Florida this summer. Three, Riley Greene will be in the lineup. He doesn’t get a break. When those droughts come whenever he’s not getting a lot of hits, it’s just because you see him in there every day. When he’s good — like, just average — it’s better than most players.”
Riley Greene is from Florida, so whenever he goes down there to play in front of his family, he unlocks another level.
“It’s awesome, and I love that my parents were here,” Greene said. “It’s great to have a happy flight home after some long days. We’ve had rain delays, a double-header [Thursday], things like that. But at the end of the day, we’ve still got to win baseball games. So this was big.”
After beating the Rays on Sunday, the Tigers improved to 49-30 on the year. They have a good opportunity at home starting on Tuesday to get some more wins as the Oakland Athletics will be in town for a three-game series.
