DETROIT — For a moment, A.J. Hinch stood out by the pitcher’s mound as delirium engulfed the rest of the playing field.
As his players and his coaches celebrated, Hinch stood removed from the action. He hugged his wife and his daughter. He craned his neck and looked toward the stands, soaking in the revelry of a fanbase that spent 10 years starved of postseason baseball. That drought ended Friday. Hinch managed a team that overcame a more daunting climb than perhaps any other. The trivia has been rattled off numerous times all week: These Tigers and the 1973 Mets are the only teams in history to be eight games under .500 in August and make the playoffs. No one in the Wild-Card Era has come as close to mathematical impossibility and battled back to seal a playoff berth.
Hinch managed the 2017 Astros to a World Series, then served a one-year suspension for his compliance in a monumental sign-stealing scandal. Now he is part of history again. Over four seasons in Detroit, 3 1/2 of them spent managing a losing team, he took a long road back to October. There were many nights when he exited the Tigers’ parking garage and turned his car north toward his suburban Detroit home, unable to stop his mind from racing, his mood simmering after another loss. Asked Friday night how he is different as a leader than the last time he managed in October, he responded quickly: “I’ve had to be a lot more patient.”
Here is the culmination. Hinch stood in the center of the clubhouse Friday night after beating the Chicago White Sox 4-1. Plastic covered the walls. A cart overflowed with alcohol. Hinch held a bottle of champagne and addressed his team. “When I asked you in the middle of the season … remember I asked you, ‘What kind of team do you want to be?” Hinch said.
He paused for effect.
“I guess you wanted to be a playoff team.”
I GUESS WE WANTED TO BE A PLAYOFF TEAM pic.twitter.com/MaaFrcO5st
— Detroit Tigers (@tigers) September 28, 2024
Hinch uncorked the champagne. Players spewed the brut all over the room. His eyes burned.
A half-hour later, he sat at a dais and did his best to maintain the front of a manager focused on the next task, until finally the smallest cracks began to show.
“When I came to Detroit, one, I didn’t know if I was gonna manage again,” Hinch said. “It means a lot to me to be a leader of this team and for an organization to take a chance on me.”
Thinking back to his gaze around the field, Hinch said, “I don’t know the emotion, I don’t know the word … I’m just so proud of this group.”
If the trash-can bangs and the monitors had never happened, if Hinch had put a stop to the blatant cheating, if Jim Crane had not taken a hardline stance and fired his manager after MLB levied its suspension, this would all be different. Maybe Hinch would still be the manager of the Houston Astros. Maybe he would have presided over the closest thing baseball has seen to a modern dynasty. Nine playoff appearances, seven division titles, the infamous World Series victory in 2017 and another title in 2022. With Hinch as the manager, maybe the Astros would have had even more hardware, an even stronger claim to that dynastic title. In this alternate universe, Hinch would be the most decorated manager in the game, blazing a path that would end with a plaque in Cooperstown.
On the hard days, it would have been natural to wonder … what if? But on nights like this, the path seems more clear. The twists and turns make a bit more sense.
Hinch is here because former Tigers general manager Al Avila called him minutes after the 2020 World Series — and Hinch’s suspension — ended. He is here because the White Sox, in the infinite wisdom of owner Jerry Reinsdorf, hired Tony La Russa. Hinch canceled his flight to Chicago and never interviewed. Hinch had spent the better part of his year away in the shadows. His family rented a house in San Diego, where they tried to block out all the vitriol over the scandal and the fear over COVID-19. He then took a difficult job with a rebuilding organization. He instantly reclaimed his credibility as one of the game’s most thoughtful and best prepared managers. His first Tigers team got off to a miserable start, then finished the season 68-61. One could easily envision the tidy script, the neat redemptive arc that could have ended with Hinch moving consistently upwards, on a path to iconic status in Detroit.
The next season, though, was a disaster. The season after that was similar to the first: Brutal start, strong finish. There were glimpses of promise, and more games where the future seemed murkier than the day Hinch took the job. “Manager years are like dog years,” Hinch said two years ago, on the morning of his 48th birthday. Now into his fifth decade of life, his hair has grayed, his face has aged. And his baseball team has finally started winning.
The Tigers staged this run thanks to the resilience of their players, the Cy Young-caliber heroics of Tarik Skubal, the All-Star play of Riley Greene. But it is impossible to tell their story without making note of their manager, the one who mixed and matched his bullpen after the team traded away its most veteran players, the one who uses pinch-hitters at a rate 38 percent higher than the average manager, the one whose team now features 12 rookies and a cluster of unheralded and unproven players heading to the playoffs after a startling 31-11 stretch.
Thursday evening, rookie Justyn-Henry Malloy said with wide eyes: “A.J. does a really good job of just being able to predict the game. It’s kind of weird, like how he kind of knows.”
The next evening, in the throng of a celebration, Tigers president of baseball operations Scott Harris explained the sentiment.
“We built the roster a certain way on purpose because we knew he would get the absolute most out of this roster,” Harris said. “Yesterday we used all 14 position players. Today we had a bullpen that could mix and match in different pockets. When you have a talented manager like A.J., it’s pretty fun to build a roster.”
Hinch has managed his Tigers teams with a deft hand despite their previous records. Players praise his direct communication style. They sometimes awe over his ability to hold court and captivate with stories from his years in the game. Never is Hinch’s impact more evident, though, than in the games, where he is well-regarded as one of the sport’s top tactical managers. His players always seem to be in positions where they hold a mathematical edge.
“I think he’s gonna take this place into a championship team once again,” Marlins manager Skip Schumaker predicted back in May. “I think they got the right guy leading that team.”
In an era where managers are not supposed to matter, Hinch has again proven himself a difference-maker in the dugout. For the first time in his Detroit tenure, the record and the end-of-year result supports the theory .
“He was here long before I got here,” Harris said. “He’s seen through the ups and downs in this organization. He should take a lot of pride in what we did this year, because he was in the middle of all of it.”
His mantra is “win today’s game,” and for the better part of the past six weeks, he has so often deflected questions about standings and the playoff race. He preaches a consistent message to his team. But he also watched games one evening last week with a multiview pulled up, emotionally invested in the happenings around the league.
His dugout persona is stoic. His temper rarely flares. Sometimes fans have pleaded for him to show more emotion, to blow up an umpire after a botched call, to light into a player after a boneheaded mistake. That’s never been his style. But the losses over these past four years have eaten at his psyche, gnawed at his competitive soul. After the Tigers won Thursday, he let out a smile. “I know what it feels like to accomplish something, and I want so desperately for these guys to taste it,” he said that evening. “We’re getting closer and closer by the day.” After the Tigers won Friday, Hinch hugged his coaches and flashed a boyish grin.
In the public eye, he chooses each word carefully. He can be calculated and conscientious to a fault. Yet he snipped at radio hosts one day this summer, irked at the direct question: Do you think you’re doing a good job?
Contradictions and all, Hinch managed a team that swung the odds, that won dramatic games, that just kept believing until clichés turned to results. The field for American League Manager of the Year is crowded, with Cleveland’s Stephen Vogt and Kansas City’s Matt Quatraro also holding compelling claims. But Hinch has put his hat in the center of that ring. A team the PECOTA projection system picked to win 75 games now has 86 victories with two more to play. Their playoff seeding remains to be determined. They will open the AL Wild Card round in either Baltimore or … Houston.
In the days ahead, whether it’s the Astros or the Orioles, the manager will continue to say the right things. Wearing a navy shirt reading OCTOBER BOUND, Hinch made clear the Tigers’ ambitions are grander than just getting there.
“I’ll be just as steady through this next series as I’ve been through this stretch,” Hinch said. “Am I enjoying it? A ton. Am I gonna be locked in on trying to beat that team? You’re damn right, because I know what October brings and the decision points and the pressure and the anxiousness for veteran teams, let alone a young team, and they won’t see any flinch out of me.”
But consider the journey and read between the lines. Observe the twinkle in his eye as he looked out into the crowd. There’s so much more bubbling inside.
“I’ll be emotional in my own way, probably behind closed doors,” Hinch said. “I’ll hide it from you guys, on what getting back to October truly means to me.”
(Top photo: Junfu Han / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images)
