The Detroit Tigers' rallying cry during their run to the 2024 MLB postseason is nothing new in the world of sports, but it has resonated and galvanized the entire clubhouse.

Of course, that message is grit. Or resilience. Or toughness. Or whatever word you can think of with a similar meaning, because it has likely been said by Hinch or one of the Tigers' players as they've tried to find the right words to summarize how they flipped their season.

Ultimately, it seems a nickname came to best summarize this team: "The Gritty Tigs."

In early August, the Tigers had a less than 1% chance of making the postseason (which infamously led to the Freep's Evan Petzold booking a ticket abroad for October) and they somehow rallied to clinch an AL wild-card spot in the third-to-last game of the regular season, finishing 31-13 along the way.

Now, they find themselves with a 2-1 lead over the Cleveland Guardians in the ALDS and one win away from a trip to the ALCS.

As the wins started to stack and their playoff odds from Fangraphs slowly ticked up before taking massive jumps in September, a nickname emerged for this Tigers group.

They became known as the "Gritty Tigs" because of the group's ability to find a win in any situation, whether it was a late rally for a key win or navigating through countless bullpen days, the Tigers just found ways to grit their teeth and push past adversity.

So what makes the Gritty Tigs, well, Gritty?

"A mental resilience to just play the game and continue to push and keep your energy level high, keep your mindset in the right place," manager A.J. Hinch said before Game 3. "That toughness of whether it's coming back from an early game deficit or sort of grinding through a close game like we did the other day coming up with a big hit. It is just this practice of resetting ourselves over and over and over. I talk a lot about it between games, I don’t talk a ton about it within the game but there’s so many different emotional pressure points of games, specifically in the playoffs, that you have as a team you have to have the reset button to get yourself back to what you’re trying to accomplish in that particular inning or that particular at-bat."

The Tigers watched and followed the drama along with the fans as their playoff odds started to skyrocket in September. They continued to take the one-day-at-a-time mindset, but have embraced the absurdity of their run from shirts saying "Gritty" with the playoff odds graph to keeping it light with celebrating every milestone that pops up.

"Every day I would send in that group text (with his friends) what percentage we were at," reliever Will Vest said. "And then once we got to like the middle of September it started like getting up there to like 20, 30, whatever, and they were just like, holy crap. And the best message of it all was when we clinched, I immediately went and got my phone and just sent: 100%. And they all three loved it."

Gritty Tigs in action

Game 2 of the ALDS was the perfect example of the Tigers' mindset. Starter Tarik Skubal pitched seven scoreless innings to keep the Guardians at bay, but Detroit's bats were just as quiet, making it a 0-0 game entering the ninth inning. With two outs against the best closer in baseball, Emmanuel Clase, the Tigers strung together three straight hits, capped off by Kerry Carpenter's game-winning three-run home run.

"We’ve talked about it a lot, we’ve demonstrated it a lot, we preach it, the players buy into it," Hinch continued. "They go out and pick each other up and we have a consistent 27-out mentality."

It has not been a one-off occurrence.

These Tigers have come up with nearly every way to win a baseball game since the run started in August with ninth-inning rallies and walk-offs, dominant pitching performances (whether it's a starter, like Keider Montero's complete game shutout on Sept. 10, or a full-on bullpen game), blowouts and tight nail-biters where the score hangs within a run for all nine innings.

In the early days of the playoff run, the Tigers have held onto an early lead with no insurance coming in later innings (wild-card Game 1), pulled off an eighth-inning rally (wild-card Game 2) and had a go-ahead ninth-inning home run (ALDS Game 2) for their wins. Game 3 of the ALDS was about as normal as the Tigers get, and it was still really weird by most teams' standard, with six pitchers taking the mound for Detroit.

"Just resiliency," rookie centerfielder Parker Meadows told the Free Press after that win. "I feel like we've kind of been doing it all year where late in the game, we fight. We fight to the very end no matter what goes on early in the game. We stay in it and it's been our thing the whole year. The fact that fans are embracing it is pretty cool."

How the Gritty Tigs rounded into form

A combination of factors on and off the field helped fuel the drastic turnaround to reach the postseason. The Tigers got key players like Kerry Carpenter and Riley Greene back healthy in the lineup, while the coaching staff pivoted to the reliever-heavy approach with just Skubal as a locked-in starter roughly every five games and pulling the strings with pinch hitters for favorable matchups.

The young Tigers bought into the approach wholeheartedly for the stretch run. No one complained when they were taken off the mound or pinch-hit for. Rather, everyone embraced their roles and how they were used in each game to try to give the team their best chance at winning on that given day.

"It is just knowing that we are never out of a ball game," Tigers starter Reese Olson said. "We can scrap and fight, whatever it is, to get back in the game if we are down and hold the lead if we have it. I think that’s been the big thing, just understanding that we are never out of a game."

Grit is in the eye of the beholder

The Tigers' definition of grit differ slightly from Detroit Lions head coach Dan Campbell's version, but it contains the same core message. The Tigers will be prepared for game situations, ready to audible when the unexpected pops up and able to wipe the slate clean and move on to the next moment.

"You got a lot of young players who have not seen Major League adversity and they, all kind of together, have decided that as a group, they are going to elevate each other," Bally Sports Detroit play-by-play broadcaster Jason Benetti told the Free Press. "So, it's as much of a team concept in usage of players and in bouncing back as you'll see in this sport."

Benetti, who has become one of the faces of the "Gritty Tigs" online movement, has watched the team grow together on and off the field in his first season as the team's TV broadcaster and has seen the buy-in from the fans grow as the team got hot. Now, he sees a fanbase preaching the same message as the players and manager.

"I think the fans and the players are in total lockstep," Benetti said." Like, 'We don't care. We lost once, we're trailing — whatever. We're fine, we got this.'"

Jared Ramsey is a sports reporter for the Detroit Free Press covering the city's professional teams, the state's two flagship universities and more. Follow Jared on X @jared_ramsey22, and email him at jramsey@freepress.com.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: What does Gritty Tigs mean? Detroit Tigers, Jason Benetti explain