{"id":268498,"date":"2026-08-20T00:00:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-20T00:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/268498\/"},"modified":"2026-08-20T00:00:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-20T00:00:09","slug":"a-bullpen-disaster-at-pittsburgh-invites-the-tigers-to-ask-when-will-too-many-thrown-away-games-cease","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/268498\/","title":{"rendered":"A bullpen disaster at Pittsburgh invites the Tigers to ask: When will too many thrown-away games cease?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Kenley Jansen \u2014 and the Tigers \u2014 thought Detroit would be yet another happy stop for a gilded reliever. But this 2026 season has been a mini-disaster.<\/p>\n

One factor pro sports can\u2019t wish away: <\/p>\n

Age.<\/p>\n

The deeper the years for an athlete, or a roster, the more vulnerable a team is to breakdowns.<\/p>\n

Kenley Jansen, 38, has been Exhibit A this season in the risks of trusting in baseball elders. He proved it again Wednesday in a deplorable 4-3 giveaway to the Pirates at PNC Park.<\/p>\n

Jansen threw a pair of home-run pitches in the ninth, the first on an 0-2 count. Two pitches, two homers, another blown save, all as the Tigers prepared to leave Pittsburgh with yet another road-series pelt and ongoing life in the ever-charitable AL wildcard chase.<\/p>\n

An inning earlier, Kyle Finnegan, who is 34, was rapped for a run (and nearly more) that cut Detroit\u2019s hard-crafted 3-1 lead to 3-2 and set up Jansen\u2019s final-frame disaster.<\/p>\n

Over and over in 2026, bad back-end work by the Tigers has undone what a team has spent seven or eight innings building. The Tigers can look at their distinction of having blown the second-most saves anywhere but in Washington and think about where they might be sweetly sitting had the late-innings gang not so often disintegrated.<\/p>\n

These were defensible signings, both Finnegan and Jansen, last offseason \u2014 with an asterisk on Jansen.<\/p>\n

Jansen was an obvious gamble as he turned 38. <\/p>\n

It was believed here the front office had a handle on him. That metrics, and science, and super-analysis, which these days are part of the Tigers\u2019 hyper-detailed evaluations, probably could be trusted.<\/p>\n

And many times this season, that\u2019s been the case.<\/p>\n

But not often enough. Not nearly often enough has Jansen delivered.<\/p>\n

Finnegan was a slightly different case.<\/p>\n

He had pitched well for the Tigers after last summer\u2019s deadline arrival at Detroit and then hit free agency. The Tigers liked him, he liked Detroit, and no one complained about a two-year return for $19 million.<\/p>\n

But, again, mid-30s relievers are closer to their expiration dates and carry that much more potential to be risks in the mercurial realm of relievers.<\/p>\n

These latter-inning blow-ups have been the most crushing of the Tigers\u2019 failures in 2026. Bullpen meltdowns destroy confidence, fundamentally, in a team\u2019s psyche. They ruin all that had been invested by starting pitchers, by a lineup, and by defenders in building leads that shouldn\u2019t be as susceptible to collapse as they\u2019ve been for the Tigers in an exasperating season of baseball in Detroit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kenley Jansen \u2014 and the Tigers \u2014 thought Detroit would be yet another happy stop for a gilded…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":268499,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[73,75,74],"class_list":["post-268498","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh-headlines","tag-pittsburgh-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268498","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=268498"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268498\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/268499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=268498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=268498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=268498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}