Contenders or pretenders? The coming month will tell.
    If the Tigers are going to make any noise in the American League Central this season, now is the time.
    The Tigers are 25-11 at Comerica Park (compared to 16-25 on the road). Sixteen of their next 20 games will be at home. Do the math.
    When the Tigers left town and I left the country on a brief vacation nine days ago, they were in second place, a game and a half behind the Twins.
    They flew home from Minnesota Wednesday night, still a game and a half back -- despite dropping six out of nine in New York, Atlanta and the Twin Cities.
    What could have been a disastrous road trip ended up not being all that bad.
    When the month began, Minnesota enjoyed a 4 1/2-game lead on the Tigers, their biggest advantage of the season. But the Twins went 12-15  in June while the Tigers were 15-12, thanks in no small part to an 11-7 record in inter-league play.
    Rookie Andy Oliver, filling in for Rick Porcello who is at Toledo trying to regain his first-year form, was roughed up by the Twins on Wednesday in his second big league appearance. Although Oliver's record is 0-2, the 22-year-old left hander remains, perhaps, the  Tigers' most promising young pitching prospect.
    Had Oliver,  the Tigers' second pick in last summer's draft, signed immediately instead of holding out before eventually signing for a $1.495 million bonus hours before the Aug. 18 deadline, he might have been in the big leagues before this.
    The Tigers think that much of him.
    However, like Jacob Turner, the Tigers' No. 1 draft pick in 2009, Oliver is represented by high-pressure, high-profile agent Scott Boras who believes taking contract negotiations down to the wire in an effort to garner every penny possible from his clients' potential employers.