A.J. Hinch gives Tigers elimination speech with changed tone: 'Hope this is the last year'

OAKLAND, Calif. — On the day A.J. Hinch managed his 1,500th game, the Detroit Tigers were eliminated from the 2023 postseason. During Friday's 8-2 loss to the Oakland Athletics, the Minnesota Twins fended off a comeback from the Los Angeles Angels to clinch the American League Central, by far the weakest division in baseball.

The Tigers haven't made the playoffs in an MLB-longest nine seasons.

The morning after Hinch's milestone, the 10-year MLB manager addressed his players and coaches in a closed-door team meeting in the visitor's clubhouse at the Oakland Coliseum. For the third straight year, Hinch delivered an elimination day speech to his team.

"I always do that, and I hope this is the last year that I have to do it," Hinch said Saturday morning, immediately after the team meeting. "The goal when you show up in spring training is to make the playoffs, and with eight games left, we were mathematically eliminated."

Hinch has come up empty through three seasons with the Tigers, but he has managed 1,502 games for a reason.

"I hope it's many more after this as far as games go," Hinch said.

He posted five consecutive winning seasons with the Houston Astros, including three straight 100-win seasons and a 2017 World Series championship, in his five-year tenure from 2015-19. The Astros developed prospects into elite players, pulled off lopsided blockbuster trades for Hall of Fame-caliber pitchers and were ahead of the curve in the arms race of analytics.

It takes a village — ownership, front office, scouting departments, player development, manager, coaches and players — to build a winning team. Every village needs a leader, like Hinch, to foster a group culture with messaging, build individual relationships with communication and push the right buttons in pursuit of the ultimate goal.

For the Tigers, Hinch has been the leader for three losing seasons. The elimination day speech that he delivered Saturday morning was a different type of speech compared to the past two seasons.

"It's not the same speech because we're in a completely different place now than where we were," Hinch said. "Where we're at right now, I think we're getting closer and closer to fulfilling what the fans deserve."

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The Tigers, of course, didn't win enough games and were eliminated with eight games remaining on the schedule. Winning is the ultimate culture every team craves, but Hinch likes what the Tigers are brewing.

That's because there were some silver linings in this losing season.

"I mean, it's (expletive) Sunday in Oakland, and we're doing early work on the field and guys are getting their work in on the mound," said left-hander Tarik Skubal, who returned from flexor tendon surgery and has a 2.95 ERA in 14 starts. "It's the culture that you want, and I feel like that's not how it is in a lot of places. I feel that here."

Individually, the Tigers should feel confident in Skubal, Spencer Torkelson, Riley Greene, Kerry Carpenter, Jake Rogers, Parker Meadows, Reese Olson, Casey Mize, Matt Manning, Jason Foley, Will Vest and Tyler Holton as key contributors in the 2024 season. Top prospects Justyn-Henry Malloy and Colt Keith should make the Opening Day roster and could be the catalysts for an improved offense.

The Tigers, collectively, dominated rival AL Central teams, and with Sunday's 2-0 win over the Athletics, locked in a winning record on the road. (For the first time since 2011 and just the second time as an AL Central member, the Tigers won their season series against every division foe.) But the 30-16 record against divisional opponents and 41-40 record against road opponents didn't result in a winning overall record.

"What does it mean that we won the most games against our division? Not a lot if you don't win the division," Hinch said. "We will obviously take the positive out of it, but at the end of the day, you need to end up with more wins than your opponent, and we haven't. That stings more than the joy you get out of having some sort of specialty record around the division or on the road or at home."

Indeed, the Tigers need to build upon the small steps forward.

"Could you think back to eight games that could have gone our way differently? We would have come out of it still in the mix," said Hinch, reportedly under contract through the 2025 season. "When you put it in that perspective, one (win) in a month or one-and-a-half (wins) in a month, we're not that far off. I think we will learn from this and grow. I also told the players, I've never been more encouraged to be a Tiger."

He spoke that way, in part, because he recognizes the culture he has instilled throughout the organization over the three losing seasons, as well as the camaraderie amongst the players on the current roster. Early Saturday morning, before Hinch's elimination day speech, a majority of the players pulled up a chair around table in the middle of the clubhouse to eat breakfast and watch college football games together. There was great banter at the round table.

"I don't want to go to war with anyone else besides these guys," said Greene, who thrived in his sophomore season before season-ending elbow surgery. "What we have as a team, the team chemistry, it's awesome. It's probably some of the best team chemistry I've been a part of, and we just hope to keep it going."

That is one of many examples.

"They've really bonded," Hinch said. "It's something we ask out of the players every year, to build that bond, build that culture, build that chemistry that we feel right now with this group and that we want to carry into whoever makes up our team next year."

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Hinch held up a picture of the Commissioner's Trophy — the hardware given to the winner of the World Series — on his first day of spring training leading up to the 2021 season, his first campaign with the Tigers. Six years ago, Hinch hoisted that trophy with the Astros, so he knows how to win. The roster has changed significantly over the years, but his message has stayed the same: Win today's game.

Preparing to win, regardless of the past results, is a part of the culture, too.

Look no further than what Torkelson, the 2020 No. 1 overall pick, said about the Tigers' process in August. His words are a direct reflection of Hinch reconstructing the hitting department by hiring Michael Brdar, Keith Beauregard and James Rowson in the offseason.

"We're better players than we were last year at this time," said Torkelson, who has 29 home runs through 153 games in his sophomore season. "And then, we're understanding the league and how guys are pitching us. We're understanding the approach that we have against guys. In the scouting report, we look at what the guy throws and how they're going to attack us.

"The last question is, how are we going to do damage off him? We're not going to look for his best pitch to get a single on it. We're going to look at where his best pitch makes a mistake that we can do damage on. We're getting better information, and we're using that."

With 1,502 games managed, Hinch ranks 90th among 838 MLB's managers all-time. He also ranks seventh among the 30 active managers, trailing only Bruce Bochy, Dusty Baker, Terry Francona, Buck Showalter, Bob Melvin and Bud Black.

"I'm proud that I've been around long enough to say that," Hinch said of reaching 1,500 games. "You need opportunity, and I've been given a lot of opportunities. ... You look at guys around the game and how long guys get to manage and how difficult these jobs are to get or to keep. I'm very thankful for that."

The final six games will elevate Hinch to 1,508 games in his managerial career by the end of the season. The Tigers, unable to pass the first-place Twins, set a short-term goal of catching the Cleveland Guardians for second place in the AL Central. The gap, as of Monday morning, is half a game, with Cleveland finishing the season with three games in Detroit.

It's not just Hinch.

His players want to catch Cleveland.

"That's the goal to finish," Skubal said. "You want to win the division, but if you can't win it, you want to come in second. It'll be a fun series at the end of the season. There's kind of a lot on the line there."

Contact Evan Petzold at epetzold@freepress.com or follow him @EvanPetzold.

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This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Detroit Tigers' A.J. Hinch manages 1,500th game on day team eliminated