Tigers fans won’t like seeing where their team sits in latest power rankings originally appeared on The Sporting News.
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There was a lot of hope for the Detroit Tigers heading into the 2026 season. They held onto their ace, Tarik Skubal, and added another frontline starting lefty in Framber Valdez during the offseason.
However, the team would learn in May that they would be without Skubal for a while. He underwent arthroscopic surgery to remove loose bodies in his elbow earlier in the month.
Without the reigning two-time AL Cy Young Award winner, they have struggled. Detroit posted a 6-22 record this past month, which has them sitting in the basement of the AL Central.
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Tigers fans won’t like seeing where their team sits in latest power rankings
If you were to ask Tigers fans before the season started if they expected to be 10 games behind the Chicago White Sox, they likely would have looked at you like you were crazy, but here we are.
The Tigers have already dug themselves a deep hole, sitting 11.5 games behind the Cleveland Guardians, who hold the top spot in the division.
There’s not a lot of hope surrounding this team at the current moment, and Bleacher Report’s Joel Reuter ranks them as the worst team in his latest power rankings.
“The Tigers wrapped up a disastrous month of May with a 6-22 record and just 81 runs scored in 28 games while batting .204 as a team. Along the way, they plummeted from tied atop the AL Central standings to 11.5 games back in the cellar, and it won’t be long before the vultures start circling their roster ahead of the summer trade market.”
There’s growing concern that Detroit has already dug itself into a hole too deep to climb out of. And with this comes selling ahead of the trade deadline, which Reuter warns the fanbase about.
This is where Detroit fans envisioned their team would be at this point of the season, but it’s now a reality. This team could look awfully different if things don’t start changing now.