I'll be honest, I don't really know what to do with my hands. After an 11-day nightmare that saw the Tigers squander endless opportunities to put this division away, Detroit finally comes away from a ball game on the winning end. It felt like Detroit fans tonight were bracing themselves for the other shoe to fall, but to the credit of this ball club, it never did. Does this undo anything that's happened over the last few weeks? Absolutely not. Could we hopefully look back at it as the moment this team got off the mat? We can only hope. For the love of god, PLEASE let this be a turning point.
This team has gone so off the rails that it's hard for me even to bring myself to criticize them on a night they earned a win. Don't get me wrong, the inability to put teams away and drive guys in with runners on base is absolutely maddening. The middle of the order in high leverage situations has been abominable over the last few weeks, and it's a big reason why this team finds itself where they're right now. At the same time, the pitching made it work tonight on a day where you essentially had a bullpen day, and started a guy who's only several starts into his big league career. Troy Melton, along with the pieces that followed him, all delivered this evening. They deserve a lot of credit, as does A.J. Hinch, whose decision to pull a not entirely stretched-out Troy Melton early could have easily backfired. You can thank the rest of the bullpen for making their manager look smart.
I've been pretty adamant that there's no correlation between how a team plays down the stretch and how they will play in October, so I obviously can't predict what version of this group we're going to get, assuming they get to the postseason. But this team has become so bipolar that I don't even know what version of them we're going to get in between innings. The Tigers won one game in the series, but keep in mind, they had a lead in all three games. The opportunities were consistently there. The execution was not. It's not as if they find themselves completely overwhelmed against quality opponents. We can be frustrated with the makeup of the roster, but this was a group that was among the best in baseball for months. That group still exists; they just haven't shown up in a while.
Detroit now turns its attention to Boston, where it will finish out its regular-season campaign with a three-game set against the Red Sox starting tomorrow. Boston's magic number to clinch a playoff spot currently sits at one, so the best-case scenario is that they call off the dogs and Detroit can earn a few victories to close out the campaign. If necessary, Tarik Skubal will be available to start the final game of the season on full rest. Let's hope that it doesn't get to this point. The final month of this season has included an ugly chapter, but that doesn't mean this is how the story will end.