Key Points
Bullet point summary by AI
- Fans of the Detroit Tigers, Boston Red Sox, and Seattle Mariners are searching for explanations as their teams struggle to meet preseason expectations in the early weeks of the season.
- Each team is grappling with specific weaknesses that have led to disappointing records and heightened frustrations among supporters.
- The performance gaps have sparked debates about accountability and strategy, with supporters looking for answers to turn things around.
Patience is hard to come by in early April. Fans have been waiting to see meaningful games for months, and while slumps are natural over the course of 162 games, they're particularly tough to stomach right out of the gate — when you don't have any other evidence to combat the idea that your team just stinks.
So, naturally, now is the time for the assigning of blame, some scapegoat (or scapegoats) at whom fans can channel all that pent-up anxiety. They're far from the only early-season disappointments this year, but for the Detroit Tigers, Boston Red Sox and Seattle Mariners, AL pennant aspirations have given way to recriminations. These teams are too talented to be mired in last place, and everybody wants to know what they can get mad at.
Detroit Tigers: Riley Greene and a moribund offense
If you'd told Tigers fans in spring training that both Kevin McGonigle and Colt Keith would be in the midst of breakout seasons with OPSes above .850, they would've assumed their team looked like a World Series contender. And yet, Detroit entered Wednesday at just 4-7 after dropping the first two games of a four-game set against the lowly Minnesota Twins this week.
Granted, the offense as a whole hasn't been too bad, ranking 12th in the league in OPS. But with the back half of the Tigers' rotation in flux — and especially with Justin Verlander already on the IL — Detroit needs its lineup to carry it through the early portion of this season, and that simply hasn't been the case. The team has scored three or fewer runs in six of 11 games thus far, and Greene, along with Spencer Torkelson and Kerry Carpenter, has been the biggest reason why.
Hitter | 2026 OPS |
|---|---|
Riley Greene | .554 |
Spencer Torkelson | .622 |
Kerry Carpenter | .654 |
Gleyber Torres | .674 |
Rather than building on his 36-homer campaign in 2025, Greene has regressed, with just a .554 OPS so far in 2026. If you're looking for silver linings, you could point to the fact that he's making better swing decisions and has slashed his K rate significantly; if he keeps that process up, better results will come. But the lack of production has an already antsy fan base frustrated, as the prospect of Tarik Skubal's final year in Detroit going down the drain looms over every loss.
Boston Red Sox: The starting rotation (and, you know, everyone in charge)
Boston's early-season discontent is far more existential. They finally got back in the win column on Tuesday against the Milwaukee Brewers, but over the first couple weeks it's been hard to identify really anything this team does well — from hitting to pitching to even playing defense. For an organization determined to contend for a World Series this season, it's been a complete and total failure, one that's led fans to start asking tough questions of manager Alex Cora, president Craig Breslow and owner John Henry.
This team is better than what it's shown so far this year. But it's damning that, after an offseason in which "run prevention" was the phrase du jour, Boston's rotation has been such a mess — 27th in starter's ERA, with Ranger Suarez and Brayan Bello looking particularly dreadful.
Again, it would be one thing if the Red Sox brought back Alex Bregman, signed Kyle Schwarber and had to try and cobble things together on the pitching side. But after getting spurned by Bregman and most other big bats in free agency, Breslow poured almost all of his resources into stacking up pitching depth, acquiring Sonny Gray and Johan Oviedo while throwing nine figures at Suarez. And yet, this team is having a hard time getting outs.
Of course, if you want to argue that this is small-sample weirdness, I won't push back too much. But Gray and Suarez were both older arms who came with red flags this winter, not to mention the opportnity cost of an incomplete lineup.
Seattle Mariners: Julio Rodriguez
Maybe this isn't fair to Julio. After all, he's far from the only Mariners hitter mired in a dreadful slump right now. In fact, it would be quicker to list the hitters that aren't ice-cold for the worst offense in baseball right now.
- OPS: .594 (30th)
- AVG: .187 (30th)
- OBP: .285 (27th)
- SLG: .308 (30th)
- SO: 129 (29th)
Seattle is at or near the bottom of the barrel in pretty much every meaningful hitting category right now. Brendan Donovan and Randy Arozarena are holding up their end of the bargain, and young second baseman Cole Young is showing some encouraging growth, but Rodriguez, Cal Raleigh and Josh Naylor — you know, the three engines of this lineup — are all batting below the Mendoza Line and have just one home run among them. That is, to put it politely, not what you want.
It's also nothing new for a Mariners team that has struggled for offense for years now and seemingly never starts strong, whether because of the cold weather in the Pacific Northwest or a brutal home ballpark or some combination of the two. And in a way, the shape of the slump is encouraging; we know what kind of hitters those big three are, and if the ancillary pieces are still hitting by the time they wake up, Seattle should be in business. After all, the bar is pretty low when you have as much pitching as the M's do.