CLEVELAND — The tipping point came a couple of hours into Game 3 of the Detroit Tigers’ AL wild-card series.
Seventh inning. Bases loaded. One out. 2-1, Tigers.
Here came Wenceel Pérez and his 5-for-57 skid at the plate.
Here we go again.
That’s what you were thinking, right? How were the Tigers going to get one more run across? Just build a little on their 2-1 lead?
And then hold off the Cleveland Guardians for the final few innings of the three-game series that had been uncommonly torturous?
You’d seen it before. The day before, in fact. And so many days before that. The Tigers built a slim lead, put runners in scoring position and … just … couldn’t … get … the … big … hit.
Then Pérez singled to right field and drove home two runs. Spencer Torkelson followed with an RBI single. Riley Greene followed with another. For weeks – for what felt like months, actually – the team that had done almost everything right for four months couldn’t do much right.
Already, they’d lost the American League Central in an all-time collapse. Already, they’d booted a chance to sweep the wild-card series, leaving 15 runners on base, a team record for futility, in Game 2. Already, they’d turned the most antsy part of their fan base against them.
I’m out! And: I hope they lose and get this over with!
It wasn’t hard to find that sentiment in the hours leading up to Game 3. Then the seventh inning happened on Thursday, Oct. 2, a pin to an expanding balloon, and the Tigers will ride the release all the way to Seattle.
Former Tigers manager Jim Leyland used to say momentum in baseball was the next day’s starting pitcher. And it’s true when that pitcher is Tarik Skubal. Yet there is momentum and there is momentum, and momentum isn’t so easily scuttled.
The Tigers finally got some, just not from the most obvious inning. Yes, the seventh inning won them the game – and therefore the series. And it felt indescribably giddy to the Tigers hitters and to all those who love the team.
But the multiplying force of a four-run inning is the kind of fickle momentum Leyland was referring to when he said it’s all about the next day’s pitcher.
Or pitchers.
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No more flailing at the plate
Momentum is what happened in the first inning Thursday, despite the Tigers not scoring a run.
It’s the kind of intangible thing that carries over, that travels, that straightens a person’s back and squares their shoulders, the kind of thing that has every chance to fly to Seattle. Whatever else we say about the Tigers’ matchup with the Mariners, or about the talent difference between the rosters, the Tigers were going to have no chance if they kept walking to the batter’s box with little more than hope.
This is what changed Thursday afternoon at Progressive Field. The Tigers started swinging instead of flailing – like they had so often in September.
Why?
A couple of reasons. For one, A.J. Hinch shuffled his lineup. This gave the players a psychological boost. They trust Hinch’s strategical acumen. So they understood why he portioned his “hitters,” as he emphasized, more evenly throughout the lineup.
They also understood that spacing out the righties and lefties would make it harder for Cleveland to manage its bullpen and could lead to advantageous matchups as the game progressed – and it did.
Still, while there was confidence in Hinch’s lineup switches, this doesn’t completely explain the noticeably different approach at the plate in the first inning: the grinding at-bats, the fouling off of two-strike pitches, the increased exit velocity from Gleyber Torres (moved into the leadoff role) and Riley Greene (who’d been struggling to make contact).
Both of those hitters made outs in the first inning, but they made the kind of contact that was rare the previous two games … heck, the previous few weeks. At long last, the Tigers didn’t begin a game chasing pitches way out of the strike zone.
That was a message in and of itself. Not to the Guardians, but to themselves:
We are professional hitters, too. And we can do this.
The Tigers showed this for much of Game 3, and while it didn’t fully manifest until the seventh inning, when the team hung a four-spot on the scoreboard, the seeds of that inning were planted in the first.
Actually, it began a little further back, on late Wednesday afternoon, after the team stranded 15 baserunners and blew a chance to win the series. All that lunging had taken a toll.
‘Every hit does not mean the game is over’
For weeks, Hinch and his staff tried to find ways to help settle their hitters. Turns out the winner-take-all tension of Game 3 provided the salve, and it came in the form of a specific kind of urgency.
“I think when you get to these playoff games in general, but then you get to elimination games,” Hinch said, “like, you’re on the edge of your seat or on the edge of the bench or you’re standing a little bit taller … there’s a little extra urgency in the playoffs, and there should be. And you have to embrace it. You can’t run from it. You can’t be scared of it. You can’t deny it. You’ve got to overcome it a little bit.”
Hinch noted that Dillon Dingler, who’d had a breakout season at the plate but had struggled recently, stood next to him in the dugout every inning. Dingler wanted that extra bit of wisdom and focus. He hit the go-ahead home run in the sixth inning.
Hinch felt it throughout the dugout and his revamped lineup. He sensed a difference, and that his team understood not just the moment, but was learning how to navigate it.
A critical facet of elimination games is understanding “they’re going to make good defensive plays,” the manager continued. “They’re going to put the ball in play. Every hit does not mean the game is over. Every run doesn’t mean the game is over. So, we’re learning that.”
And?
“It only gets better from here,” he said. “And I’m proud of our group for continuing to learn and grow and mature and fight off some of the negative thoughts that come along the way when people doubt you or you start struggling a little bit.”
The Tigers were certainly struggling. More than a little bit. As for doubt, it hadn’t crept in – it had roared in. Until Thursday afternoon in Cleveland, when somehow this group of relative neophytes rediscovered the quiet space that’s so essential at the plate.
Like Pérez, who “didn’t have a hit this series until (he had) the biggest hit of the series. (And) Dillon not necessarily executing all of his at-bats until we really needed it. (And) Javy Báez, toward the tail end of the season, you know, scuffling to find his way. Gets a pull-side homer in Fenway and all of a sudden takes off in the playoffs. We’re one good swing away from impacting games that matter the most,” Hinch said. “We need to embrace that.”
They did, and because they did, they get to play on, buoyed by the sort of momentum that has little to do with the next day’s pitcher.
Contact Shawn Windsor: swindsor@freepress.com. Follow him @shawnwindsor.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Detroit Tigers triumph in Cleveland should boost chances in ALDS in Seattle
Reporting by Shawn Windsor, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
