What a difference a month makes.  In May, it started to look as though the Tigers would end up wasting what was supposed to be a great season, after losing game after game with little hope in sight.  Nothing was working back in May — starting pitching, relief pitching, offense, defense — everything was sputtering at best.  And then, Curtis Granderson started what would be a 15 game hit streak. Marcus Thames strung together a 6 game home run streak (tying the team record).  And the starters pitched.  Then, Fernando Rodney and Joel Zumaya finally came back, and after shaking off some rust, they brought a major boost to the bullpen.

Suddenly, the Tigers are the hottest team in baseball.  They just put up their sixth win in a row against division rival Minnesota last night, and they had a six-game win streak earlier in June.  The Tigers have won 18 of their last 24 games.  They have a winning record — 42-40.  With the season half over, they’re now just 5 games behind division leader Chicago with about 80 games left in the schedule.  And just like that, this 2008 season is far from over.

How did the Tigers turn it around so quickly?  Well, part of it has to be the return of some injured stars — Gary Sheffield came back this month, along with Rodney and Zumaya.  But outstanding play from Tigers rookies like Clete Thomas and Matt Joyce has also helped.  Plus I visited Comerica Park at the end of the month to watch the Tigers win by one run and go above .500 at exactly the halfway point of the season, so that’s gotta be good for something.

The weakness of the opposition has also been beneficial.  The Tigers just finished a swing through the National League, and they abused everyone they saw.  A sweep of the Colorodo Rockies, yet another series win against St. Louis, series win against San Francisco, and so on. Another factor in the turnaround has been the Tigers’ ability to win close games.  The last three wins have all been by exactly one run each.  A dramatic come from behind victory in the bottom of the ninth has happened twice in the last week.  Great teams find ways to win the close ones — and that’s exactly what the Tigers have done.

Despite all this success, some trouble is on the horizon.  The schedule gets decidedly rougher in the coming weeks, with plenty of games against the red-hot Twins.  There’s also some troubling injuries going around: superhero Magglio Ordonez just hit the disabled list, and fellow super slugger Miguel Cabrera is also going to miss time due to an injury.  Backup catcher Brandon Inge is also on the DL.  The Tigers are deep enough to be competitive even with serious injuries like these, but against tough teams like the Twins, we’ll need everything we’ve got.  July is going to be an interesting month for this fascinating team.

As old Tiger Stadium finally begins to come down, the 2008 Detroit Tigers have made sure that their focus is squarely on the future — not the past.  There’s plenty of baseball left in 2008, and the Tigers finally look like the team we knew they could be.