A.J. Hinch explains how 2025 Detroit Tigers will be different from 2024 version (2024)

Detroit Tigers manager A.J. Hinch emphasizes a culture of winning by focusing on details and making in-game adjustments.

Evan PetzoldDetroit Free Press

When you were hired to manage the Tigers in October 2020, did Justin Verlander (whom you managed from 2017-19) give you an idea of what to expect about postseason baseball in Detroit?

A.J. Hinch: "When I got the job, it was more about the fanbase in general, like the Detroit logo, the English D, the state of Michigan, what the Tigers mean to all the people who follow the Tigers. I mean, JV, and Miguel (Cabrera) and Curtis Granderson, guys that have played here at its height. They tell you how great it is and how the state supports you. They're right. We had to earn that. We've had to come a long way to get to relevant baseball or competitive baseball or things that matter late in season. When we did that, the fans did their part turning Comerica Park into a madhouse, in all the positive ways of creating an atmosphere that the players had only experienced in ceremonies — the Miguel Cabrera retirement, the Jim Leyland number retirement, Opening Day. All that was cool, but we had actually earned the back end of this season and into the playoffs. It was about this team and about these players and about this group."

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You've been the manager of the Tigers for four seasons, and you've created a culture of winning. How do you get players to buy in?

Hinch: "One game win and then try to win series and try to win weeks and months. All of that came out of trying to instill a mindset on a team that, quite honestly, didn't really have a way at the time. When I got here, we talked about winning like, everybody wants to win, that's why you sign up. I think the players started to gravitate towards, how do we do it? Like, how do we actually win? Or, what is the mindset behind a team that's won? My coaching staff, a lot of guys had won, and then you start sprinkling in players, and then you start winning at the minor-league level. All of those little ingredients are what we've tried to instill here. I say everything matters all the time. Everything matters, whether it's a detail on your primary lead, whether it's a positioning card, whether it's first-pitch strikes, whether it's understanding that when I pinch-hit so much, I'm not taking you out of the game, I'm putting somebody into the game to give ourselves the best chance to win. If you're willing to do it, then we can take a step forward. Piece by piece, year by year, we've been able to stack some positive gains in those areas. This year's team, the back half of this season, this young group that came up really opened their hearts to do whatever they had to do to win, and then they went out and did it. The players really bought into focusing on every single detail that (bench coach) George Lombard goes over in the baserunning meeting or the defensive positioning meaning, or when (third base coach) Joey Cora obsesses over the depth of which the infielders play. We bombard these players with every sort of little detail, and they just kept asking for more and then going out and performing. The players, the buy-in part of it is really set by the players inside that clubhouse of what type of chemistry they can build. But then we proved to ourselves how beneficial that can be down the stretch in these important wins."

How did you see the 2024 Tigers embrace those philosophies, not only in the 31-11 run at the end but also throughout the entire season?

Hinch: "We talk a lot about it. You never quite know how these meetings go in the early part of the season. You talk about the importance of the bullpen decisions that go in the middle of the game, and as those started to get sooner and sooner into the game, how are those guys going to respond? Or you talk about pinch-hitting, when Kerry Carpenter goes out of the game, I know what that means, or when you insert somebody off the bench and what we expect them to do. Those philosophies and those conversations were not like, on Aug. 1, we're going to decide to do these things. We've been training for these opportunities a ton and asking a lot out of their routines to be ready to play every day. Once they saw a little bit of success of that, and once we started to feel that was a good path to a win for us, then it was really easy. Late in the season, the guys were wondering why I didn't do something more than why I did something. I think the players being open books to use me however you want, and I'm going to be ready for the next day, that really grabbed ahold. I think part of it is the personalities of this team. I think part of it is the willingness. If you're really willing to win, how could you argue? We were using almost 20-plus players per game, and it was producing wins. Are you going to walk in my office and say, I don't buy in. No, you're going to do your part to try to make this a playoff team. And we did it."

You've managed Justin Verlander, Gerrit Cole, Zack Greinke, Dallas Keuchel and other great pitchers. Everyone is a little bit different, so what makes Tarik Skubal different and what stood out about his Cy Young-caliber season?

Hinch: "I don't know if it makes him different as much as it makes him himself — his unique quality is, this dude is authentic. The emotion you see is the emotion he feels. The chip on his shoulder is because of the perseverance through injury and maybe a late bloomer into the top prospect category. People weren't talking about him in this type of impact. We all look back now, and we're like, I always knew Tarik Skubal was going to be good. I'm not sure people put their name on him until he actually broke through and became a beast. What I love about Tarik is his No. 1 priority is to win the game that he pitches. He only gets to play every five or six days, and he's obsessed with winning the day that he pitches. Our team feels that. Secondly, he's made adjustments. This wasn't a magic carpet ride of a premium prospect all the way through the minors and it's the same pitch repertoire, the same usage or even the same mentality. He became a dominant strike thrower. Not just, I throw strikes. No, a dominant strike thrower with elite stuff. He's had to make some adjustments along the way with pitch grips and delivery and where he is on the rubber and how to properly use his stuff to impact the hitter the most. That is a development story. That is a story of perseverance. That is a story of elite ability. And all of it came together in an epic season that is as good as I've been around. Obviously, JV won the Cy Young (in 2019), Dallas Keuchel won the Cy Young (in 2015). I don't think it's hard to predict who's going to win the Cy Young this year. Those seasons are incredible to watch up close and personal because you know what happened behind the scenes to get there."

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The Tigers have a lot of young players, especially on offense. What is the biggest challenge in developing hitters in this era of baseball?

Hinch: "The hitting thing is a real topic because not only is it matched up with the hardest era to hit in, it's also matched with the highest scrutiny the fastest. Literally, there's reactions to every at-bat on social media and throughout the industry inning by inning. We used to talk about 100 at-bats being a barometer for a guy settling in — 100 at-bats. Do you think social media has patience for 100 at-bats before we render a judgment. No, that's not the era that we live in. Young hitters are getting pulled at in a lot of different ways. Another part that is interesting is everybody has a guy. Everybody has a personal coach. Everybody has people in their ear. These young hitters come up, and it's hard to marry the same message to a hitter. Your coaching staff, plus the coaching staff that they just had, plus a long-time coach, brother, friend, uncle, anybody that can sprinkle some advice in. It can get sort of overwhelming for a young hitter. That's in play, as well. Our hitting department (Michael Brdar, Keith Beauregard, Lance Zawadzki) is really good. The hitting department is not judged by exactly what the group does as a whole, but it should be looked at with the individual contributions throughout the year. Look at what Colt Keith developed into. Look at Wenceel Pérez coming up and transitioning into the big leagues. Look at what Matt Vierling did, getting the ball elevated this year a lot more than he did last season. Those are small gains. Sometimes, we look at the hitting department by how the team offense does. But within those is a ton of development and a ton of progress. My group will say to me all the time, they're never allowed to have a good day. The reason is because you could have a 10-run outburst and win the game 10-2, and probably two or three of the nine hitters, and probably the pinch-hitter who came off the bench, didn't have a good day. Guess where those guys go? They go to the hitting department to get some help. We had a great day and scored 10 runs, but these three guys are absolutely losing their mind in the cage after the game because they don't feel good, or they don't have a good swing, or they didn't have great results. There's a ton of pressure on the hitting department. There's a ton of attention that's put on them. Our group does a good job of breaking them out individually, both psychologically and mechanically, to give them a chance against that pitcher that night. I think we have one of the better game-planning coaches in (hitting coach) Michael Brdar, who really does call the plays early and then audibles during the game. You'll see hitters go over to the iPad with him all the time before they go to the on-deck circle. The hitting coaches are the last coach to talk to a hitter before they go in the on-deck circle and have these monstrous at-bats. We're going to bring them back, obviously, and I'm proud of the group's growth within my coaching staff."

You returned to the postseason as a manager for the first time since 2019 with the Astros. Have you reflected on what that meant to you? It wasn't quite a nine-year drought, but four years probably felt like a long time.

Hinch: "It was a long time. Obviously, we all want it to happen every year. Once you play in one October, you want to play in all of them. My first playoff as a manager was in 2015. We were able to put a really good run together while I was in Houston and then we got here, and it's been a steady build towards the reward of getting to play in the playoffs now, and then what's going to be the next topic is we all want to be a playoff team every year, starting next year. For me, personally, I love October. I love it as a fan. I love it as a coach. I loved it as a player. It is the reason that you get to spring training early and get underway, to see if you can match up and play in October. I think the reward is watching these players get to experience it for the first time. I had a few coaches that had never been in the playoffs as a coach. My coaching staff got to enjoy what October means. And then these players, watching them mature and grow and be able to handle all of the growing attention, and then go out and win a series in Houston (in the wild-card), be in a position to win a series (in the ALDS), and then have heartfelt losses in Games 4 and 5. That's why you do this as a coach or as a manager, it's to live it through your players and their joy that the group played with throughout the postseason."

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How will the 2025 Tigers be different than the 2024 Tigers?

Hinch: "One of my coaches always says, the moment is over as soon as something happens, and then you got to move on to the next thing. We've got to be able to have two thoughts in our mind. Scott (Harris, president of baseball operations) and I talk about this all the time. You have to be able to be proud of what you did and celebrate accordingly and enjoy what 2024 was, and then you got to be driven to move on and get to the next step, which is 2025. Every team is different. I say that to my team every year. No team is ever the same. We're not going to try to replicate 2024 because that's in the past. To give you an analogy, when you run, if you run with your head forward, you're going to run faster than if you run looking backwards. We are going to look forward. We are going to get to the next step. We need development out of these guys. We have guys that need to get a lot better. We're in a good place with Parker (Meadows). We're in a good place with Riley (Greene). We're in a good place with Tarik. Our bullpen pieces are largely coming back. That's all a really good sign. But we've got to be able to get a little bit better across the board for us to stack the wins that we need to stack over the course of next season. And then, obviously, the changes to a team, the roster construction and how I'm going to mange it is all going to happen over time. We realize what eyes are going to be on us. They're going to be on the front office and how this offseason goes. They're going to be on spring when we roll out and people are going to look at us a little bit differently because of the run that we made and because of the playoff appearance and winning a playoff series for the first time in a long time. You can rest assured that I'm not going to look a lot different. I'm going to get these guys refocused on the task at hand because it takes six really good months to get to where we want to get to, so we'll focus on all those details throughout the offseason and then when we get into the spring."

Contact Evan Petzold atepetzold@freepress.comor follow him@EvanPetzold.

Listen to the entire show with A.J. Hinch on the "Days of Roar"podcast atApple,Spotifyor wherever you listen to podcasts. And catch all of our podcasts and daily voice briefing atfreep.com/podcasts.

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