DETROIT — Hard times lead to hard truths. Sunday at Comerica Park, where the Detroit Tigers spent most of the game looking sleepy and sluggish, it became apparent all over again: The Tigers aren’t just playing poorly. Their roster has become a mess.

The day started with the team making a difficult but necessary move. The Tigers designated Charlie Morton for assignment. This is a player they traded for at the deadline in hopes of bolstering a starting rotation that had lost Reese Olson and Jackson Jobe to injuries. Morton’s brief time in Detroit was an unfortunate failure. The 41-year-old right-hander had a 7.09 ERA in nine starts.

Club officials spent much of Saturday debating how to handle the situation. Perhaps they could have moved Morton to a bullpen role and hoped his curveball could be a useful weapon in shorter bursts. Chris Paddack, another failed deadline acquisition, remains in the bullpen and could have just as easily been DFA’d.

Instead, it was Morton who took the fall. In his place, the Tigers selected the contract of Tanner Rainey, a 32-year-old with a powerful arsenal but a spotty track record of strike-throwing, something the organization supposedly values above all else. Rainey has pitched well in Triple A this year and even cleaned up his command in recent outings. He nonetheless returned to the major leagues with a 5.44 ERA in 209 career MLB appearances. The lowly Pittsburgh Pirates had released him earlier this season.

Rainey’s first outing with the Tigers was a struggle. He entered in the eighth inning Sunday under a gloomy sky. Rainey threw 16 pitches, 11 of them balls. He walked two batters, balked a runner into scoring position, allowed a hit and finished having surrendered three earned runs without recording an out.

He was replaced by Paul Sewald, yet another deadline acquisition. Sewald has had proven success in the major leagues but spent the majority of this season on the injured list. In his rehab starts and two outings since his return from a shoulder strain, his fastball has lacked fire, averaging 90.3 mph Sunday. Known more for his sweeper, Sewald so far has not looked good. His sample this year remains small. Facing Sewald, however, Michael Harris II hit a rocket double at 108.5 mph to bring in a run in what became a 6-2 defeat, the Tigers’ sixth loss in a row.

“It’s hard to break him in in the middle of this,” Tigers manager A.J. Hinch said. “We’re trying to get him in and see where he’s at. He came off a significant injury and we got him a quick rehab assignment and then here. … I know emotionally he can handle it. This guy is a veteran. Getting him regular work, breaking him in, is quite a challenge when the games are what they are.”

Deadline addition Paul Sewald has not looked good for the Tigers so far. (Rick Osentoski / Imagn Images)

The Tigers have tried pitching option after option all season and have not been able to replicate the success they’ve had with other unheralded arms, such as Tyler Holton, over the past couple of years. Familiar faces Chase Lee, Dylan Smith and Alex Lange remain in Triple A. The team’s tryout camp has dragged on to the final week of the season. It’s easy to point to the trade deadline as the source of all this trouble. Truth is, it’s a deeper reflection of decisions big and small dating to this past offseason.

In the rotation, the Tigers now enter the most important portion of their calendar down to only three true starters in Tarik Skubal, Casey Mize and Jack Flaherty. The front end of their bullpen is riddled with pitchers who have not earned trust in meaningful spots.

Earlier this week, against the lefty-heavy Cleveland Guardians — who lost to the Twins on Sunday to hold the Tigers’ AL Central lead at one game — the Tigers chose to carry three left-handed pitchers in the bullpen. However, after optioning Bailey Horn on Friday, it’s unclear whether the Tigers can again bring up a third lefty to help Holton and Brant Hurter. Horn and Drew Sommers are stuck in the 15-day option cycle and ineligible to return. There’s no other left-hander on the 40-man roster.

Right-hander Kyle Finnegan handles lefties well and has since returned from the injured list, and perhaps that will make the Tigers more comfortable against Cleveland, which has seven left-handed hitters and three switch hitters on its roster. However, it’s also interesting to look at all the left-handers the Tigers have let go this season. They DFA’d PJ Poulin — who currently has a 2.78 ERA with the Washington Nationals — to make room for Morton on the 40-man. They let veteran Andrew Chafin walk after stashing him in Triple A to start the year. Chafin, now with the Angels after being dealt by Washington in July, has a 2.41 ERA.

Meanwhile, right-hander Brenan Hanifee, one of the Tigers’ better relievers all year, is also in the 15-day option cycle while other righties such as Sewald, Rainey and Paddack pitch in the heat of a playoff race.

The pitching, obviously, is a problem, but also consider what happened in the late innings of Sunday’s game. In desperate need of runs, Hinch practically emptied the bench in the sixth inning. Long story short: He put Jace Jung in the game to get the Atlanta Braves to bring in a lefty pitcher. Then Hinch swapped Jung for the right-handed Andy Ibáñez. The managerial decision made sense and got the Tigers an ideal matchup, even if the result didn’t work out. The Tigers lost Sunday less because of their roster issues and more because they went 2-for-13 with runners in scoring position, featuring five strikeouts and too much chase in key moments.

However, in the eighth, again with two runners on, the Braves had a right-hander on the mound. Hinch turned to his last lefty on the bench in shortstop Trey Sweeney. Sweeney came up in big moments for the Tigers last season, but is hitting only .197 this year. Since the All-Star break, his wRC+ is a stunning 1, meaning his offensive performance is 99 percent worse than league average. In a big spot Sunday, Sweeney swung at the first pitch and popped out to foul territory.

With Colt Keith on the injured list, Jung and Sweeney are the best left-handed options in the Tigers organization, assuming we’re not counting prized prospect Kevin McGonigle. Neither Sweeney nor Jung make you feel comfortable with the game on the line.

The Tigers now enter their final six games of the season playing for their playoff lives. Players keep saying they control their own destiny. They are staying together. They trust their fortunes will turn.

“I think it can happen in a moment, in a game,” Mize said after Sunday’s loss. “We just need one to go our way and hopefully keep it rolling after that.”

Perhaps they are right. This is a strange sport where teams can overcome 0.2 percent playoff odds one year and threaten to blow 99.9 percent playoff odds the next.

The Tigers still have the key members of a team that made the postseason last year and took the American League by storm in the first half.

But this is also a team that prides itself on depth, matchups and winning on the margins.

As the Tigers hit Cleveland with the season on the line, it’s worth wondering: Does this roster still have what it takes?

“I continue to say we control all this, and we do,” Hinch said. “But obviously we need to find results and solutions, not just identify the issues.”

(Top photo of Tanner Rainey: Junfu Han / USA Today Network via Imagn Images)