For the Detroit Tigers, a season that felt like a march for a title has suddenly become a desperate crawl for survival after losing their sixth straight game, and falling 6-2 to the Braves. Detroit is now 1-9 in its last ten games with just one game lead over the Cleveland Guardians, which lost to the Twins in their last faceoff after winning 10 consecutive games.

Now, Tigers manager A.J. Hinch wants to remind them that everything is still in their control. “I don’t see our guys quitting… don’t see our guys down…  don’t see our guys pouting. I don’t see our guys conceding. I’m going to remind our guys that we’re a first place team…We’re going to wake up tomorrow with our destiny controlled by us.”

But someone had to be accountable for blowing a massive 15.5-game lead in the American League Central. And that blame is being placed squarely on their President of Baseball Operations, Scott Harris. Commentator Ben Verlander summed up the frustration with a public statement. “Man. The Tigers are a disaster. I told y’all. Scott Harris didn’t do enough for this team,” Verlander wrote on X. And Verlander isn’t the only one.

Zane Harding of the blog Bless You Boys penned a harsh critique of Harris’s inability to strengthen the team when it mattered most.

“We can blame the players for slumping and not playing great team baseball. Yes, we can blame the coaches.. the manager in A.J. Hinch..But there’s only one man who had the keys to a sports car this deadline and drove the car off a cliff,” Harding wrote. “Scott Harris, should this article make its way across your screen, this is a public declaration that you are to blame for the greatest free-fall in the past two generations of Tigers baseball.”

And it directly stems from Harris’s trade deadline decisions.

Harris acquired pitchers Charlie Morton and Chris Paddack to add depth. But neither has performed well. Morton has posted a horrendous 12.75 ERA in September, and Paddack has been just as bad with a 7.82 ERA during the same time. But the failure goes beyond just two pitchers.

According to Harding’s claim, Harris literally refused to counter Boston’s top offer for Alex Bregman late into the offseason. He even failed to foresee Will Vest’s regression in the bullpen. It was brutally exposed when the closer, who has a 6.43 ERA this month, blew a key game against the Braves. And even continuously “ignore shortstop when there isn’t even a viable shortstop in the system.” So, it feels like the collapse was inevitable.

How the Tigers tumbled..

April and May gave Detroit a fast start, with an 18-9 and then a 19-9 record early. June and August slowed the momentum, but nothing compared to September’s 5-13 collapse. Now, if we dissect who stopped hitting and which arms melted under heat late in games, we will see a full-blown collapse at the worst possible time.

The offense has completely gone cold and only a a handful of players are still hitting.

In 28 appearances, Jahmai Jones has posted a great 275 wRC+, and Spencer Torkelson posted a 147 wRC+ in 71 plate appearances. Leaving them only three other players who have wRC+ over league average. Parker Meadows with 141 wRC+, Kerry Carpenter with 122 wRC+, and 2025 All-Star player Gleyber Torres just managed 103 wRC+, though he had a .217 batting average. Now, if we sideline these five, things get uglier.

All-Star players like Zach McKinstry and Riley Greene posted just 76 wRC+ and 45 wRC+. Even worse, All-Star Javier Báez has an unbelievable -12 wRC+. And you simply cannot win when your star players are performing that poorly.

The pitching staff, a strength for most of the season, had a league-average ERA of 4.28 in September. Ace Tarik Skubal continues to pitch well with a 2.76 ERA this month. But he cannot pitch every day.

Now, everything comes down to the final week, where the Tigers’ magic number to clinch the division is six. Their season will be decided in a final and an irony of fate series against the one team chasing them: The Cleveland Guardians. A drama too intense not to pay heed to…