Ongoing Tigers collapse could end up worse than the 2007 NY Mets disaster

It wasn’t all that long ago New York Mets fans were staring at possibly erasing the 2007 collapse to the Philadelphia Phillies. There was an opportunity to be down 7 with 17 to go as the case was in 2007. Then the Phillies swept the Mets. Ever since, New York has been battling to keep their head above water.

Nothing about 2007 changes, but that team may soon have company. Over in the American League Central, the Detroit Tigers are falling hard. It’s looking like one playoff-worthy club will miss out on making it to October with 7 teams vying for 6 spots. The Tigers, now losers of 5 straight, have the Cleveland Guardians hot on their tails. They’ve won 10 in a row and sit a half game behind the Tigers. They are tied with the Houston Astros for the third Wild Card spot as well.

As SNY’s Andy Martino shared upon seeing the pillars wobble, it could end up as a worse mathematical collapse than the one the Mets went through almost two decades ago.

The Tigers are giving the worst collapse in Mets history a run

We got to see the Tigers earlier this month when the Mets took 2 of 3 from them in the Motor City. They didn’t seem so scary. The Mets handled their pitching just fine. The Mets scored 10 runs in the first game and another 12 in the second. Detroit finally got the better of the Mets in the finale.

Cleveland can put a dagger through the Tigers this upcoming week with three games at home against their AL Central rivals. Then the Tigers have to face the Boston Red Sox to finish the season. They’re still fighting for something. Meanwhile, the Guardians get to wrap up their season against the Texas Rangers who just couldn’t go from pretenders to contenders. Sure, they’ll give the Guardians some fits. It’s difficult to believe the Tigers will be able to regain momentum when they aren’t such an impossible to beat team. They have no one on their team named Chumbawamba. When they get knocked down, I’m not so sure they’ll get up again.

What’ll make this a potentially worse collapse than the Mets in 2007 goes beyond the 8.5 dropped in 17 games. Not even making the playoffs at all, which is realistic for Detroit at the moment, would cancel out any consolation prize. The current Mets have had the mentality of just getting in and seeing what happens, something not provided in 2007 when the MLB playoffs were thinner.

At 38-22 in the second half, the Guardians are behind only the Milwaukee Brewers. The Tigers are 26-32. The Mets, for what it’s worth, are at 25-33.

Not all tumbles hurt the same. The Mets stumbled much earlier than Detroit and are regularly bumping their heads. The Tigers haven’t hit the pavement yet, but they’re lying if they say they don’t smell the warm asphalt they’re about to smash into.