The seat under Brad Ausmus already is blazingly hot.
“It was already on broil when it was announced I was coming back last September,” the Tigers’ manager said Thursday at the kickoff of the team’s winter caravan.
Ausmus said he grew an extra layer of thick skin last season amid the endless speculation — and one specific television report with two weeks remaining in the regular season — that he wouldn’t return for a third year. Last year’s last-place finish hardened him. But he also gained a better perspective regarding the constantly bubbling cauldron of public opinion as well the obsessive urgency in dissecting every ounce of in-game minutiae.