The grind of baseball in the summer can be excruciating.  Teams usually only get two to three days off a month and as the weather gets hotter it gets harder for players to recover as fast from playing consecutive games in a row.  

The Detroit Tigers began the week with the best winning percentage in baseball even though both the San Francisco Giants and Oakland Athletics had more wins on the season.  This is the case because they had three games cancelled because of weather in the first month of the season.  These cancelled games could make the summer months even harder for the best team in baseball.  

The Tigers were originally only scheduled three games off in the month of June.  Now thanks to a makeup game with the Kansas City Royals they only have two days off and will cause them to play 20 games in 20 days.  They will have time to recover, though, as the all-star break is right around the corner from that stretch.  

The break gives the majority of the team four days off to rest and prepare for the second half run, but the make-up game issue strikes again as they will come back and play a doubleheader just one day back from the break.  As the summer gets hotter in August the amount of days off are even fewer as the Tigers only have two scheduled days off, and thanks to a make-up game with the Minnesota twins, another double header that causes them to play 27 games in 27 days with one day off.  Can the Tigers keep up this pace with these obstacles in their way?

No, I don’t believe they can, and their recent four game losing streak seems to be showing the chinks in the armor.  The key to the team so far has been the starting pitching and this week the two superstar aces of the staff Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer were beat up by the rival Cleveland Indians.

 In those games the top of the order, Ian Kinsler, Torii Hunter, Victor Martinez and Miguel Cabrera continued to do their work but the regulars in the lineup are hitting a combined .234 on the year.  Another sign that points towards a downfall of the Tigers is the combined earned run average of the bullpen regulars, 3.80, and even that is skewed slightly by Ian Krol’s magnificent ERA of 1.62.

With all of these chinks in the armor showing already it is hard to foresee that this team will be able to keep up the pace that they’ve been on early in the season.  The bullpen is weak, the lineup isn’t solid and although the rotation is solid, it isn’t perfect either.  There is no way they can keep up this pace that they started the season on, but there is good news for Tigers fans.  

The rest of the American League Central is not very good and are all hovering right around .500 on the year.  The Tigers will likely win the division again even with the rough road ahead of them, but it is unlikely that with this incomplete team as it is that they will take that next step to the World Series.