MINNEAPOLIS — Jim Leyland makes his own rules.
Jim Leyland sits at a borrowed desk, his feet propped up in their navy blue, white-tipped socks, and Jim Leyland owns that desk, if only for three days.
Lined up neatly on that desk are a cell phone — vintage 2002, one of those silver flip phones that was at the time a novelty — some pens, a pack of Marlboros and a blue lighter. One by one, those Marlboros pass from pack to mouth, their ashes tap, tap, tapped into a disposable Gatorade cup.
Jim Leyland smokes indoors in a city where no one else can. It's not a statement. It might be a bit of a schtick. But really, it's just Jim Leyland being himself.
There's a certain irony to it all, to this manager with such a sense of who he is leading a team that's at times played like anything but itself. Many projected Leyland's Detroit Tigers to be the majors' best team in 2012, and through Friday, there were 19 teams with better winning percentages than Detroit. Even after the Tigers beat the Twins, 10-6, Friday and, 6-3, Saturday, there are still divisions — the AL East and NL East — in which every team's record is better than the Tigers' 22-24 mark.
No one projected that.
Projections — they're the stuff of speculation. They're one of those torturous punishments that analysts and fans inflict upon themselves year after year, proving with each false prediction that we're all gluttons for punishment when it comes to these games.
But it was easy to buy into the Tigers before this season. All the guesses were so informed; there was no need to integrate multiple new players or adapt to a new system. The team was good last year, really good. It won 95 games. Its .277 team batting average was the third-best in the majors, and it scored the fourth-most runs of any team (787). Its pitching was average, with a .404 staff ERA (18th-best overall and seventh-best in the AL), but with Justin Verlander boasting the most wins and fourth-lowest ERA of any pitcher in the majors, it was hard to complain.
The team returned nearly all of its major contributors; designated hitter Victor Martinez, who landed on the disabled list in February with a knee injury and likely won't return before September, was the biggest loss. Even that was overshadowed by Detroit's biggest addition, first baseman Prince Fielder, whom it signed to a $214 million contract in January.
Fielder's wins above replacement (WAR) number in 2011 was 4.3. He's one of the league's best hitters and was one of the most highly touted free agents last offseason. With Fielder, with Verlander and closer Jose Valverde, who converted 49 saves in 49 opportunities, with Miguel Cabrera — how could this team not be the best?
Here's how: It could play like it's played so far this season. It could be the victim of slump after slump from key players, first Cabrera and then Fielder, with Alex Avila and Jhonny Peralta struggling all the while. It could see atrocious defense from a squad already predicted to be shaky in the field; Cabrera and Fielder are on pace to commit 22 errors each, a career-high for Fielder and just one shy of Cabrera's worst total.
But through all of this, Leyland has stood by his team. He stood by as Cabrera's average dipped to .222 in April, as his team turned a 9-3 start into a 20-21 mark a quarter of the way through the season. His confidence remained, even as the Indians wrapped up a sweep of the Tigers on Thursday, as his team left 10 men on base in the finale of that series.
"These are the Detroit Tigers, most of the same Detroit Tigers that won 95 games," Leyland said before Friday's game. "There's no secret to snap your fingers and come up with something else. That's what it is. I like it. Not right now. I don't like it right now for a few games, obviously."
Leyland may not be pleased with what he's seeing, but unlike other struggling teams, the Tigers don't offer many opportunities or reasons for substitutions. These are players with major league pedigrees, who have proven themselves in the past. The everyday players have their roles, and the reserves are reserves for a reason. Leyland has tinkered with his lineups, using 36 in 46 games, but he's been reluctant to make changes to the heart of his order. Cabrera bats third, Fielder fourth, and that's that.
There's no angel he can insert in the middle of the lineup, Leyland said, no reason to keep busting his brain figuring out different ways to juggle the lineup and make substitutions. For now, he'll appeal to common sense. He'll still change the lineup, of course, but only out of necessity, to accommodate for days off and players who haven't quite earned an everyday starting role.
"I like this team a lot, and I'm going to swim with them," Leyland said. "It's just the way it is."
This isn't radical stuff, and the confidence Leyland has in his team might be taking the edge off the pain of losing. Players are already worried enough — about poor defense, about not hitting with runners in scoring position, about not hitting, period — that they shouldn't have to be concerned about job security. It takes the stress out of the day-to-day motions, starting pitcher Drew Smyly said, and Fielder agreed that the skipper's confidence does alter the feeling in the clubhouse.
It breeds a sense that no, it's not yet necessary to abandon the approaches that these players have won with before. These guys are smart. They know that small adjustments and tweaks are necessary, but there's no pressure to make major changes or treat the game any differently.
And so the Tigers are playing a waiting game. They're waiting to break out of their funk, waiting in fear of the point at which they're so deep into the season that this all might be more than an aberration.
"Every team is going to have a stretch like this," Avila said. "Every team is going to go on a run. We're just kind of waiting to get everything going for us to go on a run."
They wait with a confidence that's at odds with their sub-.500 record. They wait with an optimism that's one part inspiring and another part out of touch. They wait with their iPads in their hands and headphones in their ears, in some space beyond, or at least apart from, their problems. And that's just what Leyland wants.
"We play 162 games," he said. "I don't want them to sit there and cry after every one. If that was the case, this year we've got the bucket filled so far."
Before Friday's game in Minneapolis, Valverde reclined in front of his locker, eyes closed and his 250-pound frame stretched taut. He was oblivious to it all, to the subdued clubhouse and worries barraging his manager just feet away. Above his locker, a sports talk show played silently on a flat-screen television.
Question after question flashed across the bottom of the screen, different issues and events in recent baseball news. "Can the Tigers win two games in a row?" was one, and it got its share of airtime.
Who knows what the hosts were saying, whether they thought the Tigers had the wherewithal to do what they did this weekend in Minneapolis. It doesn't matter. What matters is that it's a question at all, that this is something we're asking in the waning days of May.
And through it all, Valverde slept.
It's difficult to criticize the Tigers for their approach to their current struggles. There's really no better solution than to keep playing, to keep doing everything they've done that's always brought wins — until recently. Those habits and skills, the team's prodigious abilities (on paper and in 2011, at least) are the source of Leyland's buoying confidence, but more hauntingly, they're also a mystery.
The talent is there, so why aren't they winning? Verlander has the lowest ERA in the AL. Cabrera, despite his struggles, had 35 RBI through Friday, which tied him for third in the league. Fielder's batting average is hovering around his career average, and no player has truly tanked, save perhaps second baseman Ryan Rayburn. It's like the pieces that have fit so well in the past are suddenly jammed, and the only solution is to keep pushing, pushing, pushing until something clicks.
"It's definitely frustrating … because we know how talented we are, and it's one of those kind of waiting games," Avila said. "It's the game humbling you, whether it's as an individual or as a team.
"When it doesn't work, you're like, ‘Man, what the heck? Why didn't it work?' And when it does work, sometimes you have no idea why it works. It's really hard to put a finger on it."
So maybe the Tigers don't have to understand exactly what's happening. When teams win, they don't try to make sense of it. They just keep playing. That's what these players are trained to do, and that's perhaps the best approach to take. They can't dwell on what's happening — not the losses, and not even the wins, not yet. Before Saturday, the Tigers hadn't won back-to-back games since April 18, and sometimes all it took was one victory for Leyland and his team to falsely think they'd hit their groove. That's happened enough now for the team to embrace a bit of caution, and the players know better now than to ascribe too much meaning to just one win.
Maybe the Tigers got ahead of themselves. Their 9-3 start to the season was a tease, planting the seed that becoming the best team in baseball might be easier than they'd expected. But it's hard to believe that anyone, not even the players on this year's anointed team, might think that. The Tigers might be optimistic, but it's a necessary hope they exude, not a cocky one. Right now, that attitude might be the best thing they've got going. They have the numbers and the past performances. They have the right players and a manager who's won there in four of six seasons. If none of that's working, at least they still believe.
"Everyone knew it was here," Smyly said of his team's offense after it defeated the Twins Friday. "It's just a matter of time until we do this every game. Our hitters, they're the best."
In Minnesota this weekend, they might have been. Not only did they bat a collective .373 — that's 28 hits in two games — they also did the little things right on offense. They ran the bases well and stranded only four men Saturday. These might not be the Tigers everyone expected in the offseason, but they're inching closer.
One win, and they're not getting ahead of themselves.
Two wins, and still, no one is jumping to conclusions.
Three wins, and we'll see. It's going to take more than that to get this team to the record it expects from itself.
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