DETROIT -- The music in the Tigers clubhouse was playing, but no one was giddy.
You wouldn't expect them to be.
Two games aren't enough for a team to overthink a season's start -- even if it has won both with a 15-0 difference in runs.
As the Tigers have.
But it is more than a "so far, so good" scenario thus far. So far, so dominant is more like it.
Two shutouts in a row? Stunning.
Alex Avila hitting .750 and Jose Iglesias hitting .857? Yeah, sure.
Two games aren't even enough for a team to think of their start as a start. Just as the Lions wouldn't think they're off and running 12 minutes into the first quarter of their first game.
Such is the football equivalent of two major-league games.
But what the Tigers have shown so far is this: They were mentally prepared to leave Florida and to buckle down to the business of competing.
"Everyone was ready to go, everyone prepared," said Ian Kinsler. "Spring training is about knowing yourself and getting ready for the season.
"We have a lot of guys who know what to do."
Or as Avila put it: "Our mindset of expecting to win begins in spring training -- as does knowing we have to come prepared for every single game."
The credit for being prepared goes mostly to the players themselves, of course.
But some of it goes to the manager and his coaching staff -- because if it were the other way around, and the Tigers were 0-2 instead of 2-0, that's where some of the blame would be going.
The fact of the matter is this: When the gate opens, and the race begins, Brad Ausmus' teams don't just stand there saying, "Now what?"
Their first steps are fast. They get a nose front as soon as they can.
In fact, Ausmus is the first Tigers manager since Red Rolfe in 1949-50 to post multiple-game winning streaks at the beginning of his first two years.
They went 4-0 last year. They are 2-0 this year.
The caveat is what we've already talked about. Two games are more a start of a start than a start itself.
But the Tigers have won both, so it does indeed qualify as a multiple-game, multiple-year winning streak -- which isn't always easy.
As manager of the Tigers, Alan Trammell's 2004 team began the season with a four-game winning streak, if you will recall.
But only after losing their first nine games in 2003 -- the year Trammell was a rookie manager.
Jim Leyland's first Tigers team, in 2006, went 5-0. But in 2007, the Tigers lost their opener.
Phil Garner won his first game in 2000, but lost his first two in 2001, then his first six (and was canned) in 2002.
Buddy Bell won just one of his three openers as Tigers manager.
So to charge out of the gate as the Tigers have doesn't happen as often as you might think -- and could mean more than we suspect.
It could even be more than a sign that the Tigers appear to be good and the Minnesota Twins appear to be ... never mind, that's their problem.
Or is it?
"I definitely think we have 160 games remaining," said an unfazed Torii Hunter.
The Tigers didn't come close to beginning last year with consecutive shutouts, but they sprinted out of the gate all the same.
They beat Kansas City 4-3 in their opener, then 2-1 in 10 innings. After that, they pummeled Baltimore 10-4 and weathered a five-run ninth by the Orioles for a 7-6 victory in their fourth game.
That's considerably different than two consecutive shutouts, but everything the Tigers have ever done is different than beginning with two consecutive shutouts -- which they have never done before.
Game-wise, obviously everything big -- meaning pitching and hitting -- went well again for the Tigers, who also blanked the Twins in the final game of the 2014 season.
But everything that is going right isn't what was expected to.
Avila with one hit in one at-bat but four runs scored because of three walks? It certainly made for an odd-looking line in the box score.
As did the four hits next to Iglesias' name, the first four-hit game of his career.
The Tigers are taking no bows, though. In fact, the clubhouse music wasn't even all that loud.
But they've done as well within the context of two games as a team can
And because they haven't had back-to-back starts like this in the first two years of any manager since the dawn of television, I'm sending some of the credit -- like a soap bubble -- over to Ausmus.
Careful, though.
Such bubbles pop easily.
***If multimedia does not appear right away, please click refresh***
