MINNEAPOLIS – It's early, but the Detroit Tigers are playing losing baseball.
The Tigers have a 4-7 record for fourth place in the American League Central through 11 games, but more notably, they've lost seven of their past nine games. Among the 30 MLB teams, the offense ranks 12th, the rotation ranks 16th and the bullpen ranks 14th.
There are 151 games remaining in the 2026 season.
"Team-wise, you're always pushing to play winning baseball," manager A.J. Hinch said Wednesday, April 8, before the third of four games in the series against the Minnesota Twins at Target Field. "Right now, we haven't done that. We're trying to find ways to get back to our brand of baseball that produces those wins without overreacting."
Before Wednesday's game, Hinch revealed what the Tigers have been working on with all of their players early in the season – which extends throughout the entire 162-game schedule.
For position players, it's refusing to chase bad pitches and hitting the ball hard. For pitchers, it's throwing first-pitch strikes and getting into leverage with two strikes.
"It's a tricky time when you look at guys coming out of the spring," Hinch said. "They're hot or they're cold, or they run into some bad luck or don't get something to fall, and there's the psychology that comes with the big board putting your numbers up there."
For MLB position players, the average chase rate is 29.9% and the average exit velocity is 89 mph.
The Tigers have seven players chasing less than league average: Gleyber Torres (15.4%), Spencer Torkelson (16.3%), Colt Keith (18%), Riley Greene (24.8%), Kevin McGonigle (28.4%), Parker Meadows (29.2%) and Zach McKinstry (29.3%). The Tigers also have four players hitting the ball harder than league average, Keith (95.1 mph), Dillon Dingler (93 mph), Kerry Carpenter (92.1 mph) and Jake Rogers (90.9 mph).
Only Keith shows up on both lists.
For MLB pitchers, the average first-pitch strike rate is 59.8%.
The Tigers have eight pitchers throwing first-pitch strikes more often than league average: Kenley Jansen (71.4%), Justin Verlander (68.4%), Framber Valdez (67.3%), Kyle Finnegan (66.7%), Tarik Skubal (66.2%), Casey Mize (65.2%), Enmanuel De Jesus (62.5%) and Brant Hurter (61.9%).
"The elements come into play a little bit," Hinch said, referencing the cold weather in Detroit and Minneapolis over the past four games, all losses, "but we've got to get over that play in the same elements everybody else does and know that it's part of the start of the season."
To be clear, the Tigers aren't panicking about their 4-7 record to start the season because it's only been 11 games.
But the Tigers remain determined to play winning baseball.
"In April, you can certainly overreact to a lot of things as the competition gets stronger," Hinch said. "You can also underreact if you just chalk it up to just April. I think it's a fine line in coaching to address the things that create success and create wins."
Contact Evan Petzold at epetzold@freepress.com or follow him @EvanPetzold.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Detroit Tigers record not up to par early in AL Central standings