Yes, Detroit’s offense has slipped recently. That’s OK when you start as the best in baseball.
The Detroit Tigers came out of the gate hot in 2025. Our very own Patrick O’Kennedy ran the numbers in detail at the time , but to summarize, through 40 games the Tigers were dominant offensively. The team went 26-14, had a team-wide wRC+ of 114, and had scored 213 runs, good for a league-leading 5.3 runs per game. In short, they showed a fantastic blend of star-level production and high-quality bench pieces as AJ Hinch dipped into the reserves at Toledo.
In early May, however, things changed a bit. Over their last 39 games since May 11th (this was written on an off day poorly timed for symmetry), the Tigers have had a bit of an offensive slump. Their wRC+ is down to 105 and they’ve only scored 178 runs, or 4.6 per game. This all despite the weather warming up and making it theoretically easier to hit for power and score in bunches. That being said, the Tigers still went 23-16 over that 39 game stretch. While it’s interesting to explore what’s changed, it might not be necessary to panic quite yet. Let’s see how worried we should be.
When diagnosing what’s gone wrong, the simplest first step is to compare how each player has performed in each time period. To limit this to the main contributors, I only looked at players who had 50 or more plate appearances in either time period, with the hopes that the two time frames would have a similar list of names. The numbers worked out surprisingly smoothly.
Each time frame has 11 total players with 50 or more plate appearances, and in terms of personnel, the lists are very consistent. 9 players appear on both lists. Easy! The only changes are Andy Ibanez and Justyn-Henry Malloy being replaced by Wenceel Perez and Parker Meadows, who both came off the IL. Here’s a table to summarize the findings. Note that the stats for the first 40 games are on the left, the stats for the next 39 games are on the right, and I put Ibanez/Perez and Malloy/Meadows together to show the changes from those spots in the lineup. It’s not quite apples to apples, but it’s close.
Immediately, a few things stand out. Firstly, Riley Greene has gone nuclear recently, and Wenceel Perez came back from the IL hitting like Mike Trout. Javier Báez hasn’t missed a beat either, and with Gleyber Torres still doing nice work the offense has held up nicely.
Unfortunately, that hasn’t been enough to cover fully for Kerry Carpenter, Dillon Dingler, Spencer Torkelson and Trey Sweeney collapsing. And when I say collapsing, I mean that this group of four lost, on average, over 200 points of their OPS. That’s the equivalent of replacing Trea Turner with Keibert Ruiz, four times. Ouch. For the sake of looking ahead, each of those cases deserves a brief explanation and a bit of further investigation.
Starting with the bad, things aren’t quite as bad as they seem. At least for everyone except Sweeney, anyways. Almost all of Sweeney’s offensive production came during a roughly 20 game stretch where he posted a BABIP over .400; the other 60 games have mostly shown a decent walk rate, a really high strikeout rate, and very little hard contact. He’s due for a reset in Toledo very soon; expect McKinstry and Baez to share shortstop duties at that point.
Carpenter is potentially just playing injured, and I’m not sure why he’s still in the lineup when he’s clearly hampered by the hamstring issues that first popped up in late April. We’ll assume the Tigers have done their homework here and aren’t taking a wild risk with his health, but the fact remains that he isn’t hitting and he can’t run the bases normally either. The good news is he was as elite as ever when he was healthy; the bad news is he just isn’t healthy right now and probably won’t be until he takes time off. We need healthy Carpenter, not the current version that can’t generate power in his lower half. Get him healthy again, and the Tigers look a lot more threatening at the top of their lineup.
Torkelson has fallen back into the trap he was in for most of 2023; hitting the ball hard right at people, particularly to center field at Comerica Park. Even during this slump, his plate discipline and power has kept him almost at league average. If this lasts too much longer, we might have an issue, but right now, it looks like a decent hitter in a bit of a down stretch, not the utterly overwhelmed version we saw in most of 2024. It hurts for now, but he should be able to pull out of it.
Dingler is easily the most positive of these cases. He was never going to sustain a 120 wRC+ with such a low walk rate, but even his regression has been to a 90 wRC+, which is just fine for a catcher of his skills. He could stand to walk a little more to stabilize his whole profile, but on the whole, it seems he’s a streaky hitter who works out to be a bit above average. Considering he’s arguably the best defensive catcher in the majors right now, that’ll play. Hopefully he catches fire again later in the year in the power department. For now he’s handling a lot of the workload and it would probably help him hold up throughout his first major league season if Jake Rogers can handle a few more starts.
Now for the good: Greene and Perez. Riley Greene is just a superstar doing superstar things at the plate. He’s upped his swing rate and started reaping the rewards in the form of a career-high slugging percentage without sacrificing much OBP. As for Perez, well, he probably isn’t Trout reincarnated, but he’s noticeably bigger and stronger than he was in 2024. By being a little more aggressive, he’s leveraging his newfound power and long-held bat control into an absolutely blistering start. He really does look like a new hitter, especially from the right side; expect regression, of course, but it’s probably safe to assume Perez is an above average hitter on the balance. That’s a big improvement from last year.
With the trade deadline coming up, it’s only fair to wonder what comes next for Detroit. The offense is mostly intact, but has some holes. Matt Vierling can really only fill one of them, likely by forcing Sweeney to Toledo and Baez or McKinstry into more full-time shortstop play. That’s fine major league talent at those positions, but a very shallow depth chart. Otherwise, it’s pretty much time to cross their fingers and hope Torkelson and Carpenter get their groove back while patching the leaks in the pitching staff. If they can’t, it might behoove the Tigers to look for some offensive help in July.
Overall, the offense is still doing reasonably well. Coming off the heady highs of the early season, it’s easy to be disappointed, but even during these struggles Detroit ranks 9th in runs scored. That’s good! This is the worst they’ve looked all year, yet they’re still top 10. There isn’t any immediate need to panic or overreact. They’ve had some recent pitching struggles that exasperate the offensive downturn, but ultimately, it’s just a really-good-but-not-quite-elite offense in a rough patch. A rough patch in which they’re 23-16. Even when it’s bad, it’s good in Detroit these days.