Through play on July 7, the Tigers had a 15.5-game lead over the fourth-place Guardians. Exactly a month later, they have only a six-game lead over the second-place Guardians. It's still the biggest first-to-second place deficit in baseball, but the Tigers are slipping fast. Their series loss to the Twins was the sixth in their last seven.
Detroit is 7-15 since July 11 and Cleveland are 16-7. The Tigers have 46 games to go ahead of play on Aug. 8.
It's not hard to pinpoint what's going wrong with the Tigers lately. It's mostly the pitching staff's fault, and some of those trade deadline acquisitions haven't helped at all, but also .