Tigers look to locate offense in series opener vs. Royals

The Detroit Tigers will look to get their offense back on track when they begin a 10-game homestand with the opener of a four-game series against the Kansas City Royals on Thursday evening.

The Tigers lost their last two games — by 5-0 and 5-1 scores at Milwaukee — with their only run coming on a Spencer Torkelson homer on Wednesday.

Torkelson has team highs of six homers and 13 RBIs, but Riley Greene, considered the team’s premier offensive threat, has been in a slump. Greene has just one hit in his last 32 at-bats.

“I know he’s carrying the weight of the last at-bat into the next at-bat,” manager A.J. Hinch told the Detroit News. “And when you are going through these stretches, everybody looks for solutions and you have a lot of people in your ear. We’re just trying to grind him through this a little bit and get him swinging at better pitches.”

Greene isn’t the only one struggling at the plate.

“Offensively the last couple of games, we haven’t done a lot,” Hinch said. “When teams start to go multiple innings in a row without scoring, you see everybody trying to do a little too much with their at-bats.”

The Tigers also were limited to one run in their series finale against Minnesota on Sunday.

“We just haven’t had consistent at-bats back-to-back-to-back and then delivering the big punch like we have for most of the season,” Hinch said. “We need to reset, go home against a division opponent we know well. This is the first series we’ve lost in a while, so we will wash this off, get back home and get to better times.”

Right-hander Reese Olson (1-1, 6.00 ERA) will start the series opener for Detroit on Thursday. Olson allowed four runs in 4 1/3 innings against Minnesota on Friday in his last outing, a 7-6 Tigers victory.

Olson has made five career starts against the Royals, posting an 0-2 record and a 3.80 ERA.

He’ll be opposed by former Tigers right-hander Michael Lorenzen (1-2, 3.71 ERA), who gave up three runs in 5 2/3 innings in a 6-3 loss at Cleveland on Saturday. Lorenzen held the Guardians scoreless in the first three innings, then allowed a single run in each of the next three frames.

“It was a frustrating game,” Lorenzen said. “Just kind of stepping back, I think they were 5-for-6 on first-pitch balls put in play with the sac fly (from Jose Ramirez). I think when you have games like that, they’re frustrating. But if you step back and say, if I can convert two or three into outs instead of hits, you are looking to go deeper into the seventh (inning).”

Lorenzen made 18 starts for Detroit in 2023 before he was dealt to Philadelphia. He had stints with Texas and Kansas City last season.

Lorenzen is 2-1 with a 2.11 ERA in eight career appearances against Detroit, including three starts.

The Royals also are enduring offensive issues. They’ve lost three straight and six of their last eight games. They have 16 runs during that eight-game stretch. They lost 4-3 to the New York Yankees on Wednesday while generating just five hits.

–Field Level Media