CLEVELAND — The Detroit Tigers played a doubleheader Friday against their bitter division rivals. They led the Cleveland Guardians in the first game 6-1 in the fourth inning. They led in the second game 3-1 in the eighth. They ended up losing both in walk-off fashion.A year that started with big dreams is now all but officially over. And the manner in which the Tigers lost Friday again casts a harsh glare on a bullpen that has been this team’s weakness all season.“There’s such a small margin at this level,” Tigers manager A.J. Hinch said after his team fell to 64-77. “It doesn’t always feel like it in the standings when you see the record. But I know any time a game flips on you, it’s frustrating.”Pitching is far from the whole problem. A series of misses in free agency still hardly explains what has gone wrong this season. Objectively speaking, the team entered Friday with a 3.70 ERA, ranking No. 6 in Major League Baseball. Starting pitching has been a strength. But that ERA figure is almost hard to believe given how many games the Tigers have lost at the hands of their haphazard bullpen, one that fares decently in raw ERA but ranks No. 29 in blown saves and No. 27 in Win Probability Added.After Friday’s demoralizing doubleheader, the Tigers’ season slipped further. Whenever the dust settles, the blame will be widespread. Injuries created a cataclysmic May. Experienced position players underperformed. Managerial decisions went awry. Even as pitchers such as Troy Melton and Keider Montero blossomed, the Tigers’ front office also failed to construct a staff deep enough or good enough to carry the Tigers through the more turbulent parts of their schedule.As for hitting acquisitions? We’re not talking about those because there were none.The pitching, meanwhile, has amounted to a pile of wasted money.MLB's unserious revenue split proposalKeith LawJust look at the past two years. In Alex Cobb, John Brebbia, Tommy Kahnle, Jack Flaherty, José Urquidy, Drew Anderson, Framber Valdez, Justin Verlander, Kenley Jansen and Kyle Finnegan, the Tigers will have committed $128.75 million by season’s end. That does not even count Valdez’s $20 million deferred signing bonus.Those deals have netted a total of 4.8 fWAR.That also does not include Kenta Maeda, who was worth an even 0.0 fWAR and had a 6.21 ERA on the $24 million deal he signed with the Tigers before the 2024 season.Player$fWARAlex Cobb$15M0John Brebbia$2.75M-0.1Tommy Kahnle$7.75M-0.2Jack Flaherty$45M3.9Jose Urquidy$1M0Drew Anderson$7M0.6Framber Valdez$17.5M1.5Justin Verlander$13M-0.1Kenley Jansen$11M-0.1Kyle Finnegan$8.75M-0.7Part of the Tigers’ early success under president of baseball operations Scott Harris and general manager Jeff Greenberg — who is reportedly in the running to head the NHL’s Detroit Red Wings — was finding unheralded or fixable arms and turning them into success stories. Michael Lorenzen worked in 2023. The team’s first stint with Flaherty was a success in 2024. Pitchers such as Tyler Holton, Brenan Hanifee and Sean Guenther were crucial in an improbable 2024 playoff run that perhaps set the bar too high, too soon. But there have been few pitching victories of that ilk since.At last season’s trade deadline, coming off a first half in which the Tigers had the best record in baseball, the Tigers added Chris Paddack, Charlie Morton, Rafael Montero, Paul Sewald, Codi Heuer and Finnegan. Those pitchers threw 134 innings with the Tigers. They combined for a 5.24 ERA. Finnegan was the only one who could really be considered a success. This year, bringing back Finnegan has not gone according to script. He has blown nine saves, tied for the most in baseball.Has anything worked? Well, Jacob Waguespack, acquired in a small trade from the Milwaukee Brewers in June, has at times been a bright spot, posting a 3.03 ERA and helping stabilize the team’s bullpen as a reverse-splits righty. But it appears the clock has struck midnight. Waguespack gave up a two-run blast that cost the Tigers the lead in Game 2 of Friday’s doubleheader and has surrendered runs in six of his past nine outings. Drew Sommers, acquired in a swap with the Tampa Bay Rays for right-hander Mason Englert, has become a left-handed force out of the bullpen. But the Tigers are now asking him to pitch in bigger and bigger spots with scant MLB experience. Sommers gave up a walk-off home run in Game 1.Yes, the Tigers still have a knack for helping develop starting arms at the MLB level. Yes, they’ve recently restocked the pitching on the farm, with keeping River Ryan — the powerful right-hander acquired in the Tarik Skubal trade — healthy now one of the club’s most important storylines to come.But other gambles have failed to hit. The Tigers brought a bundle of non-roster invites to this year’s spring training, hoping a couple of them could turn into useful lottery tickets. Enmanuel De Jesus, who has a 3.83 ERA for the Tigers, has proved a solid acquisition. But in September, with the team’s playoff hopes all but dashed, De Jesus is in Triple A. Little more than one week ago, the Tigers were throwing right-hander Tanner Rainey — he of a career 5.46 ERA in the major leagues — in a still-close game against the Los Angeles Dodgers. Tuesday in Minnesota, they were pitching Yilber Diaz, who surrendered four runs over two innings.Friday night, Jansen took the loss for the sixth time this season. His season ERA is 3.82, better than it has sometimes felt. Jansen is a potential Hall of Fame closer who was supposed to work in concert with Finnegan and the now-injured Will Vest to give the Tigers a fierce back end of the bullpen. Instead, Jansen has been among the many faces of the Tigers’ woeful season. He sat at his locker after another difficult loss, feeling the emotions, promising to keep fighting.“I think it’s a weird year for everybody,” Jansen said. “I think individually, for me, it’s a weird year. Just can’t catch a break. I couldn’t catch a break the whole year. The team has not caught a break the whole year. It just sucks.”That’s been the story for the 2026 Tigers. So many things have gone wrong. The pitching is only a small part of a larger puzzle. But when the margins are thin, the offensive reinforcements to supplement a young core are nonexistent, and the pressure is on, every mistake is costly.Literally and figuratively, the Tigers can’t afford to keep missing on pitchers.