I don’t even know if 'devastating' is a strong enough adjective. 'Excruciating' would probably be a more fitting word. Cleveland lives to fight another day, and Detroit will have a winner-take-all ball game tomorrow against the Guardians at Progressive Field, much like they did a year ago in the ALDS. The 6-1 final does not tell the full story. Detroit, until the final inning of the ball game, pitched brilliantly. A.J. Hinch was able to manage it exactly how he wanted. He got Casey Mize almost twice through the order before turning it over to Tyler Holton, who was phenomenal. Kyle Finnegan came in in high leverage and was great. The rookie Troy Melton got bombed in the eighth inning, but Detroit should’ve never been in that position.
It’s tough for me to get on the pitching staff right now. They wear their flaws on their sleeves, and generally speaking, over the last few weeks, they’ve been able to address some of their issues. This offense has reached a new level of pathetic. So far in the series, Detroit is 2 for 21 with runners in scoring position. Today they were 1 for 15. The only run they scored came off a Javy Baez single, which should’ve been a two-RBI single, but because Detroit can’t go nine innings without having a runner thrown out on the base paths, Zach McKinstry was thrown out at third base before the second run was able to come around and score.
Detroit baseball fans are generally smarter than most. They can point out the flaws in their baseball team pretty easily. Coming into this series, what everyone pointed to was the fact that the lineup as a whole, especially the heart of the order, needed to be more productive. Let me rephrase that. They needed to be present. They just needed to be competent. No one‘s expecting a 10-run inning in the postseason. But today was another story of wasted opportunities, with the worst of them coming in the seventh inning, when Detroit had runners on first and third with nobody out, and their 4, 5, and 6 hitters were unable to drive in anybody. I can’t yet come on here and trash this entire team. I don’t know how this ends. The one thing that is true regardless of whether Detroit wins tomorrow is the fact that you have at best an inconsistent offense. At worst, you have a young core full of frauds who are one loss away from being talked about as losers.
Tomorrow is absolutely one of the most critical games in the history of the Detroit Tigers. How an entire fan base, and arguably the entire front office, feels about their organization is largely dependent on the outcome of this game. If you lose, and you do it leaving 1 million more guys on base, not only do I think trading Tarik Skubal is likely, I would argue that it’s almost for the best, considering that you’re unable to get your pitching staff any runs. You aren’t making contact in situations that require contact. Yes, your Cy Young winner was able to carry you to victory yesterday. He deserves all the credit in the world for that; nobody else does. As a fan base, we'd better pray they figure something out tomorrow.