"It [stinks] that we're not going to the postseason, because that's what you start all the work in Spring Training for, and that's your goal, and we didn't attain that goal. In that sense, we fell short. But sometimes there's the bigger picture, and the bigger picture for me was how they went about their business and how their performance carried us nearly to the postseason, to the last game of the season."
In many ways, it felt like two seasons -- a struggling first half that had Ausmus' future in speculation, and a surging second that caught many by surprise and brought the Tigers back into the race.