DPR: Motor City meltdown

1964 Phillies. 1969 Cubs. 1978 Red Sox. 1995 Angels. 2007 Mets. 2012 Rangers.

Look, we all just know this to be true about baseball: Collapses are forever.

And right now, the 2025 Detroit Tigers are in an existential fight to avoid history. Twenty-one days ago, the Tigers had a 10-game lead in the American League Central and the most wins in the American League.

Today, the Tigers have 0.0 game lead in the American League Central and, technically, are out of the top spot because they have lost the season series with Cleveland. The Tigers have a slim one-game lead over Houston in the wildcard race … so they have a very real chance of missing the playoffs entirely.*

What the heck is even happening? We’ve been charting the rising panic in Detroit since starting the DPR, but seriously: WHAT IS EVEN HAPPENING? Tuesday night, in their latest effort to break free of this fog that has descended on the Motor City, the Tigers started their superhero Tarik Skubal against Cleveland on four days’ rest. That might not sound like anything (four days rest used to be standard; the break-glass scenario was starting a pitcher on THREE days rest), but all year the Tigers (with only rare exceptions) have given Skubal at least five and sometimes six days between starts. I believe the Milwaukee Brewers were the team that popularized this in an effort to keep their pitchers healthy.

Anyway, Skubal went on four days’ rest so that he could get two starts this week — it’s become that dire — and he was typically brilliant for five innings, allowing just two hits and striking out five. The Tigers built a 2-0 lead.

Then Skubal came out for the sixth, and the Guardians did their scrappy, annoying Guardians thing. This club cannot hit, like, at all, but they came in having won 15 of 17 thanks to what is probably the game’s best bullpen and a whole lot of scrap. Steven Kwan laid down a high-chopping bunt that got him to first base. Then, Angel Martinez followed with a sacrifice bunt of his own that Skubal tried to punt-snap through his legs to first base. Unfortunately, he snapped the ball over the first baseman’s head — quick aside: the snap over the punter’s head is Michael Schur’s favorite play in football — and Kwan raced to third, Martinez ended up at second.

I cannot even imagine how many neutron bombs were going off in Skubal’s brain when he got Jose Ramírez to hit a slow chopper to third base, and it ended up being an infield single. Kwan scored. Martinez went to third. This is what Cleveland can do to even superheroes. Skubal then threw a wild pitch in the dirt, scoring Martinez and moving Ramírez to second. He balked Ramirez to third. He gave up ANOTHER little infield chopper that scored Ramirez.

And the Tigers were suddenly down 3-2 without allowing a ball out of the infield.

At that point, Skubal was done, and the game was essentially over because, as mentioned, Cleveland may have the game’s best bullpen, and the Tigers have one of the game’s worst, especially in recent days. That Detroit bullpen gave up two more runs in the seventh, and the Tigers have now lost seven in a row, 10 of their last 11, and, well, you know the rest.

I’ve thought about what my message would be if I were the Tigers’ manager A.J. Hinch. I don’t know that any message can make a difference when you’re in freefall like this, but what I would try to get across is this: The Tigers are still tied for first place in the division. They still have two more games with Cleveland. You have to just reset.

I’d say: “If at the beginning of the season, someone had told us that with five games left in the season, we would be tied for first and entirely in control of our own destiny, we all would have taken that. We are lucky. We can write our own history.”

As for the Guardians, the message is a lot simpler. “Just keep being annoying.”

I don’t think the plan was for the Yankees to trail the lowly Chicago White Sox 2-1 with two outs and a runner on third in the bottom of the ninth. But the White Sox are not as lowly as they used to be — my old Charlotte Knights pal Colson Montgomery banged his 19th home run in just 66 games — and this was the scenario.

Then the White Sox, as Mufasa instructed in The Lion King, remembered who they are.

And now the Yankees are going to the playoffs. And with the Blue Jays losing to Boston 4-1, the Yankees are now just a game back in the American League East.

The Mets trailed the Cubs 6-1 at one point, but then, they showed some moxie, came all the way back, Francisco Alvarez hit the game-winning homer in the eighth, and now New York leads the wildcard by a game over the Reds (who somehow lost to the Pirates home even without Paul Skenes on the mound) and the Diamondbacks (who beat the Dodgers by scoring two runs in the bottom of the ninth.

Being in New York, I have run into a few people wearing Mets hats, and I have tried to ask, in subtle ways: “How do you feel about the Mets’ chances?’

None of the responses I’ve gotten so far are fit for print in a family newsletter. But we’ll keep trying.

We’ll have a lot more to say about this once we get through the pennant race and playoffs, but MLB announced on Tuesday that the Automatic Ball-Strike challenge system — where batters, pitchers and catchers are allowed to challenge a ball-strike call immediately after the pitch is thrown — will be a part of MLB in 2026.

I have very much liked the challenge system in the minor leagues. It’s quick, painless, clear and it seems to fit into the flow of the game. But, here’s the thing about replay — and really the use of any sort of technology in any walk of life — It never stops creeping into the game. Within a few years, the challenge system WILL become automated balls and strikes. It just will. You know what they say about genies and bottles. Even tennis — where the challenge system was immensely popular — has now, in most tournaments, turned to having no lines judges and just letting the machinery call the games.

Maybe you love that and are ready to get rid of home plate umpires forever — they’ve blown calls for too long. Maybe you loathe the very idea ot taking this human element out of the game and breaking with baseball’s past. Maybe you don’t care.

Don’t worry, over the next year or so, there will be a million hot-take arguments about all this happening on all of your favorite hot-take stations. I’ll just tell you my view: That’s not the big story here. The big story is that this is the beginning of the end of the home plate umpire. This is the future we already know.

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