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Gage: Will Tigers' sputtering stop during 10-game homestand?
DETROIT -- Perhaps the best way to view the Tigers' season so far is mathematically.
As a team, they've been unimpressive 82 percent of the time.
As a team, they have to do better than that -- obviously.
When the Tigers lost in Cleveland on Wednesday, before coming home for the start of a 10-game homestand, it gave them a 26-33 record since they began the season 11-2.
Giving credit where it's due, even though the time was short, their hot start lasted for 18 percent of the games they have played so far.
If you don't have the standings in front of you, the games they've played so far amount to 72.
The Tigers are 37-35.
That would be O.K. for a lot of teams. But for one with the depth of talent that the Tigers have, it's not O.K.
And to be 26-33 in the last 82 percent of what constitutes their season so far, is far less than O.K.
They've been starting and stopping, good then bad, bad then good, spinning their wheels, treading water, constantly sputtering.
And they're still sputtering -- providing occasional signs of how good they can be, then lapsing back into what they have been.
What they haven't done yet, though, is disappear. That, of course, is to their end-of-June benefit.
If a potentially average team underachieves, it can vanish from sight at this time of year. Look at what the Red Sox have done so far.
From the start, it didn't look a great Boston team -- but without much going right for them, the Sox are solidly in last place in the American League East.
An average team vanishing, in other words.
The Tigers aren't last, and won't be last, but neither have they played up to their potential. Injuries have been part of the overall reason, of course -- but you've watched how they have played, we all have watched how they have played.
They've sputtered.
And the penalty for sputtering is the so-so record that they have today.
It would be easy to say this, however: "The Tigers are back home. They'll get it going here. They'll get it going this time."
But do you really believe that, or do you just hope that? The Tigers are 18-18 at home. They have a better record on the road, so why should it be this time that they'll get it going?
All you can say is that one of these days they could, maybe even should, because they still have a capability to do so.
Yes, they've missed Victor Martinez. They've missed him sorely. But he's back.
And they have three players in their daily lineup -- Miguel Cabrera, Yoenis Cespedes and Jose Iglesias -- who deserve to be starting All-Stars.
But David Price can't become the only reliable starter, and the bullpen -- no matter how you have judged it's been -- can't afford to have the first half of this season end up being its better half.
You're right, though, if you claim in their defense, that the Tigers aren't even to the halfway point yet. But this 10-game homestand will get them there.
It's a long enough stint for them to look a lot better as a team at its conclusion than they do now.
It's long enough, in fact, to catapult them in a positive way into the second half of the season.
This team is puzzling, though. Any number of times, it has looked as if it is putting tough times in the past, only to stall again.
That's why it is barely over .500 -- and has searched, mostly in vain, for answers the last two months.
There's no better time on paper, however -- no more opportune time -- to find answers than a homestand that begins with four games against the lowlier White Sox, a team that likes its math even less than the Tigers do.
Does the sputtering stop now? It could -- but that's no guarantee it will.
