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Maybe I jinxed the Detroit Tigers, but I still believe they win series

Posted on by Kennedy
Maybe I jinxed the Detroit Tigers, but I still believe they win series

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Okay, let's get him out of the way.

I put a hex on the Detroit Tigers. There is absolutely no other reason why they lost Game 4 of the ALDS to the Cleveland Guardians 5-4 on Thursday night at Comerica Park to tie the series at two games apiece.

Absolutely. No. Miscellaneous. Reason.

Not because they left eight runners stranded on base.

READ THE JINX HERE: The Detroit Tigers lured the Guardians into their “Chaos” baseball game. This series is over

Not because the Guardians' powerful bats finally came to life.

Not because AJ Hinch should have walked reliever Will Vest to start the ninth inning.

No. My fault. All my fault that this series was declared over after Hinch thoroughly checkmated fellow Clevelander Stephen Vogt in Game 3.

So, like any responsible sports columnist, I'm going to eat some crow. But like any responsible sports columnist, I will double down on my convictions and stand behind my assertion that this series is still over because I truly believe Tarik Skubal will take the mound in Game 5 the same way George Washington took Yorktown has.

As Hinch said Thursday night with a little smile, as if he were wrapped in his favorite warm blanket, “It's always reassuring to have Tarik Skubal on the mound.”

Even José Ramírez, who went 0-3 with two strikeouts against Skubal in Game 2 but hit a game-winning home run in Game 4, was a bit defensive and, frankly, underwhelming in terms of his confidence.

“I mean, we’re going to compete,” he said. “I feel like I'm asking him the same question: 'What will it feel like going against our lineup?' We have faced him countless times in the past. We achieved good results. They have good results.”

Perhaps. But if you just go by this season, the guy who happens to be the best pitcher in the world pitched twice against Cleveland and gave up one run in 14 innings with 14 strikeouts. Still so confident, José?

OK, why did the Tigers lose this game? Was it just to annoy me and prove my prediction wrong?

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I can't completely rule out this theory. But here's something else: Hinch deviated from his “pitching chaos” strategy, perhaps trying to play 3D chess with Vogt, and opted for a typical game plan uncharacteristic of the Tigers, which resulted in that starter Reece Olson actually, you know, start a game and pitch for a while.

Four innings, actually. After a shaky start that resulted in the first two batters hitting hard-hit singles, resulting in an early one-run deficit, Olson settled down and the Tigers answered back, tying the score at 1-1 in the second inning.

What really happened in this game, and what cost the Tigers, was that the Guardians finally showed their claws when their backs were against the wall. And even then, the AL Central champions barely eked out a win, rallying from a 3-2 deficit after six innings.

The two biggest mistakes that cost the Tigers were pitching errors. One was just a bad pitch and one was Hinch's fault.

The first was Beau Brieske's fastball error up the middle against David Fry, who launched a two-out, two-run home run in the seventh to give the Guardians a 4-3 lead.

However, it was the right call from Hinch. Fry, a righty pinch-hit to lefty Kyle Manzardo, essentially forced Hinch to relieve lefty Sean Guenther after he faced three batters and gave up a hit to lefty Steven Kwan.

The second pitching error could have been avoided if Hinch hadn't tried his luck in the ninth inning with right-hander Jackson Jobe, who had made his MLB debut just 15 days earlier. It looked like Hinch wanted Jobe, who started the eighth inning, to get two innings of relief.

But Will Brennan hit a hard double off the wall in right field in the eighth. Jobe escaped by getting Andrés Giménez to groundout, and that should have been the close call Hinch needed to let Will Vest start the ninth inning with the Tigers trailing 4-3.

Instead, Jobe came out for the ninth and gave up back-to-back singles to Brayan Rocchio and Kwan. Then Hinch finally went to Vest, who faced Fry, a power hitter with runners on the corners.

And Vogt finally got his chance to stop the Hinch defeat in chess, switching to judo and turning it on its head as he got Fry to execute a perfect safety squeeze that gave Rocchio a 5-3 lead.

I asked Hinch if he had considered bringing Vest in to start the ninth or at least playing good hitters like Rocchio and Kwan.

“Yes, there is always a thought,” he said. “I had him earmarked for Fry because Jackson is more than equipped to get those guys and we need to get some other guys to shoulder some of the load and you got ahead of Rocchio and gave up the base hit at the end .”

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“They had a runner on the move and Kwan, who has been incredible in this series, gets the base hit and goes to first and third. So now we need a ground ball or a punch out, and what we get is a safety squeeze.”

I understand that pitchers have to eat some innings. But a newbie? In this situation, if the Tigers had ended up scoring their own run in the ninth inning, would the score have been tied if their relievers had stopped the Guardians from scoring in the ninth inning? Hinch was probably just thinking a little too much in this case.

“I didn’t really want to use Vest in a down game,” Hinch said. “I know you’re going up against (closer Emmanuel) Clase, which is really hard. In the end we went to (Vest) to give ourselves the best chance possible and they played a fundamentally solid game.

“So I had no problem with Jackson in that inning. At that point in the order we got into some fastball counts and gave them some fastballs to hit, which we'll probably look at, but we've got to find our outs.”

Clase is a good example. Vogt walked him in the eighth inning with one out and Riley Greene on first base. He asked his best pitcher to go into the highest leverage situation near the end of the game and asked him to get five outs, which he delivered.

Now the Tigers must ask their best pitcher to do the same on Saturday. The baseball gods are listening, they know they have to reward a team that really had no business getting this far. The story is too good, and maybe a certain sports columnist needs those same baseball gods to give him a little absolution and let him off the hook.

Contact Carlos Monarrez: [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @cmonarrez.

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