Reflections on Game 3 and the Detroit Tigers relentless run

Everything is coming up Tigers, and yet they’re still improving even this late in the season.

Playoff baseball made its glorious return to Comerica Park in downtown Detroit on Wednesday. The scrappy, youthful Detroit Tigers squad made it another day to remember as they bullpenned their way to a 3-0 victory, and a 2-1 lead in the American League Divisional Series. They continue to get it done with a rotating cast taking turns in starring roles, as they have throughout their miraculous stretch run and the first five games of the postseason.

On this day, it was Keider Montero as the opener, a role that he hasn’t filled before, and he was extremely efficient in collecting three outs on just six pitches. One would think for all the world that an inning like that would earn one of the few actual rotation members on this staff another inning, but manager A.J. Hinch has his plans, and he’s sticking with them. Instead, rookie left-hander Brant Hurter was called on to shut down a fairly dangerous Cleveland Guardians lineup.

Hurter was staked to a 1-0 lead on an RBI single from Riley Greene in the bottom of the first, but the big lefty had some issues right out of the chute. He quickly surrendered back-to-back singles to Josh Naylor and Lane Thomas, and with no outs, the Guardians seemed likely to take an early lead as they did in Game 1. Instead, he collected three routine outs in the air and with them, the air started to go out of the Guardians balloon again.

AJ Hinch pulls the strings

Even better, Hinch’s willingness to run five or six pitchers out there even in games where things are going well paid immediate dividends. Guardians manager Stephen Vogt had left-handed hitting Will Brennan in the lineup initially with the right-handed Montero starting. Yet with a golden scoring opportunity in front of him and one out after Andres Giméñez flew out, Brennan was lifted before his first AB of the game in favor of right-handed hitting slugger Jhonkensy Noel. Big Christmas, as he’s known, lifted a fly ball out to Parker Meadows in center field, allowing Naylor to take third, but Hurter got catcher Bo Naylor on a shallow fly ball to get out of a tight spot.

They were two innings into the game, and Vogt had already burned a bat from a bench that isn’t looking too deep at this point, and came away with nothing.

Things went about as well for the Guardians in the third. Steven Kwan’s ground ball to shortstop was thrown away by Trey Sweeney on a tricky play, allowing Kwan to reach second with one out. Vogt again lifted a left-handed hitter, this time Kyle Manzardo, in favor of right-handed hitting David Fry, who then struck out. Hinch ordered an intentional walk to Jose Ramirez, and Josh Naylor bounced out to end the inning.

Now Vogt had two left-handed bats out of the game, and the Tigers were about to go to their best right-handers out of the bullpen. Everything Hinch did, combined with those decent scoring opportunities in what was expected to be another tight, well-pitched game, put Vogt on the horns of a dilemma. In both cases he made a reasonable decision to try and get an early lead and silence the ever-growing roar of Tigers fans. In both cases, the Tigers won out, and so the Guardians lost a good amount of their ability to mix-and-match against the creative bullpen planning of Hinch and ace pitching coach, Chris Fetter.

Of course, much of the reason this is working, is because the Tigers keep coming through. We saw what can happen when someone really stumbles back in Game 1. Nothing is assured yet, but they keep executing and picking each other up when someone struggles. On this day it was Jake Rogers, he of the excellent defense and leadership but saddled with a Mendozan batting average, ripping a double to left to open the bottom of the third. Parker Meadows flew out, moving Rogers to third, but rather than go to a lefty to replace starter Alex Cobb, Vogt wisely opted to walk Kerry Carpenter. Matt Vierling lifted a sacrifice fly off the right-hander, and the Tigers led 2-0.

The use of Hurter continued to work, despite a few dicey spots. The Guardians had the fifth lowest strikeout rate of any team in the league this year. They don’t strikeout much, and Hurter isn’t necessarily that much of a strikeout artist anyway. Instead, he kept the ball down, changed speeds, and got a lot of weak contact. By the time, Hurter turned things over to Beau Brieske in the fifth inning, he was in trouble again with runners on base and David Fry at the dish with Jose Ramirez looming in the on deck circle. However, Vogt couldn’t pinch-hit Manzardo for the right-handed hitting Fry as he was already out of the game.

Brieske got a strikeout of Fry, and then Ramirez smoked a drive that was nothing more than a deep but routine catch for Parker Meadows to turn them away again. The pitching usage, the specific pitching plans for each pitcher against each Guardians hitters, and the Tigers tough outfield defense, produced another smothering performance all game long.

And it’s not as though everything Hinch touched turned to gold. In the bottom of the fifth with lefty Erik Sabrowski on the mound and one out, the Tigers’ manager pinch-hit rookie Justyn-Henry Malloy for Kerry Carpenter. That decision sent Vogt back to the pen to get a better lefty in Tim Ferrin on the mound.

Now, imagine pinch-hitting for a hitter with the ninth best wRC+ in the game among hitters with 250 plate appearances or more this season. If Carpenter was a well paid veteran, how well would he take that? On this team, it just isn’t an issue, and while Malloy didn’t get a hit, he drew a walk. It didn’t lead anywhere, but the fact that Hinch is willing and able to do that without issue, despite it driving some of the fanbase crazy, is just a testament to the togetherness and team first attitude this team has, as well as Hinch’s communication skills.

New methods, old school results

One of the more interesting dichotomies of the way the Tigers have done business over the past few months, is that they’re using very modern methods and strategies, and yet so often the results look decidedly old school. In a season where the recent barrage of home runs has abated and run scoring is at a premium again, the Tigers have been perfectly placed to take advantage by inducing soft contact, keeping the ball in the park, and letting their defense do much of the work.

AJ Hinch’s joke about Pitching Chaos has become a rallying cry. And it can look chaotic. The actual matchups, however, and derived from a lot of thinking that goes way beyond simple left-right matchups. It’s fourseam fastball specialists against sinkerball hitters. It’s changeups against good fastball hitters, and pure gas against hitters who like to sit waiting for a hanger. However wild it may look, the process is undeniably methodical and analyzed in great detail beforehand.

It’s also working constantly to pit strengths against the opponent’s weaknessess. The Tigers are young and athletic, they play tough defense and they run the bases well. They flash their power here and there, but most of the time they’re also able to play small ball when required on offense. Rarely in the past two months have they really blown teams away with their bats. Rarely do their pitchers get blown up either. In most games they’re scratching out early leads in old fashioned ways, or simply keeping games close with their pitching long enough for Hinch to find a key pinch-hitting matchup that brings the Tigers a clutch knock when they need it. They drag opponents into close games late and drown them in the deep waters under pressure.

This mix of old and new holds true on the pitching side as well. Heavy bullpen usage in the postseason is not at all unfamiliar, but the fact that the Tigers have been doing this out of necessity for months seems to have them battle tested for unfamiliar spots in pressure situations in ways other teams can’t really replicate. The Tigers had the best ERA in baseball over the final two months of the season, despite having only one proven starting pitcher on hand in Tarik Skubal and no obvious “ace” reliever you’ll find on national top ten lists of baseball’s top closers. Playoff style baseball is just what this team is used to at this point. They’ve been in must-win mode for 10 weeks straight.

For all the high speed cameras, force plates, data analysis, and seam-shifted wake being employed, the Tigers are also just doing the little things right and playing a very fundamentally sound style of baseball. They take the extra base better than anyone. They generally play very clean defense. Carpenter and All-Star Riley Greene notwithstanding, they don’t really have those big threats throughout the order.

What they do have is a pass-the-baton attitude that feels very different than how things often go on a team with a couple of big stars in the lineup. Young players often look to those guys to lead the way. The Tigers have very little hierarchy at all, and so there’s no looking to someone else to do most of the heavy lifting, other than Tarik Skubal every fifth day. Instead, it’s a different cast of contributors every day, each believing that if they don’t get it done, the next guy will. That takes a lot of pressure off any one individual.

This played out in the sixth inning, when two hitters who hadn’t really done much in October came through for them. Colt Keith singled with one out, took second on a wild pitch, and Spencer Torkelson ripped an RBI double to left. The Tigers had scratched out a 3-0 lead that they wouldn’t relinquish.

Ongoing development

Beau Brieske was excellent in relief, as he has been for months. Lefty Sean Guenther has been great in his brief time in the major leagues, but he finally got into a jam in the seventh. Hinch called on Will Vest, and while Vogt didn’t have a pinch-hit option available, this time David Fry smoked a rocket down the third base line only to see Matt Vierling, who had barely played the position with any regularity until late last season, leap and snare it to end the inning. Vierling let out a roar, the capacity crowd went nuts, and you could see the light leaving the eyes of the Guardians after that one.

Those four names; Brieske, Guenther, Vest, and Vierling, all speak to the other big part of the Tigers success. The ongoing and relentless player development program that Hinch brought to the organization and which VP of player development Ryan Garko has run with and built on in the farm system, just continues to pay dividends. There’s no static on this Detroit Tigers’ team. Instead, there’s a culture of improvement and development, and a willingness to try things and be flexible, that has seen them develop a very different bullpen than one might have expected in the first half of the season.

Alex Lange, Jason Foley, Shelby Miller, and Andrew Chafin, were supposed to be the Tigers’ late innings relief crew this season. Instead, after a long season, it’s Vest, Brieske, Guenther, and Tyler Holton, with Foley looking to get dialed back in after a rough outing in Houston. None of these guys were really high drafts picks. Holton was ninth rounder, but he and Guenther were acquired for nothing off the scrap heap and developed by the Tigers. Vest was a 12th rounder, while Brieske was selected in the 27th round, which doesn’t even exist anymore. Foley himself was an undrafted free agent. The Tigers built them up from scratch.

Matt Vierling had all of 42 innings at third base when Scott Harris acquired him from the Phillies for lefty flamethrower Gregory Soto. The Tigers asked him to be flexible, and Vierling has put in the work both in the outfield and at the hot corner. And so there he was, making the defensive play of the game at the hot corner.

When top prospect, right-hander Jackson Jobe, was drafted with the third overall pick out of high school in 2021, the key takeaways revolved around his easy velocity, and his super high spin slider. However, over the past two seasons, his new split-change has arguably become his best pitch. His high 90’s fastball has improved in its movement, and he’s refined a low-90’s cutter that has become a big weapon for him. The slider? Still spins like crazy, but at a slow enough velocity that it still pops out of his hand in ways good major league hitters can pick up. We’ve talked all summer about the fact that his original calling card offering is now his fourth best pitch despite its huge potential.

In a brief but very telling moment in a MLB playoff promo clip yesterday, there was a flash of Tigers’ assistant pitching coach Dr. Robin Lund talking to Jobe on the field. And in that brief few seconds, Lund is telling Jobe that there’s no reason he can’t throw the slider another 2-3 ticks harder and take that obvious “pop” out of his hand out of the equation. Just another reminder, that behind the scenes, even the guys who aren’t playing much yet this postseason are still grinding away and getting better. If this run keeps going, Jobe may yet have a bigger role to play.

These Tigers are still learning and still getting better. They aren’t close to a finished product yet. There are serious needs to address this offseason. Many of their players are just in the earliest stages of what could be long and productive careers. But they keep getting better, and the longer they stick around in the postseason, the better they’re going to get. You shouldn’t have let the Tigers get hot, because they just keep getting hotter.

Can they clinch at home?

The Guardians will put up a heck of a fight in Game 4, no doubt. Anything can happen in the postseason. They’ll send their best starting pitcher to the mound in right-hander Tanner Bibee. He had little trouble at all with the Tigers in Game 1. The Tigers will counter with Reese Olson and another batch of relief matchups.

So the question will be whether they can adapt and handle Bibee better than they did last time out. Once again, they have lessons to learn. How to specifically adjust to get some runs off the right-hander. How to handle the pressure in front of a home crowd hungry to see the Tigers celebrate on their home field. How to close out another tough, desperate opponent.

They’ll have to be creative once again to get it done in Game 4 and save Tarik Skubal for the start of a potential ALCS matchup. You will probably see Jason Foley in this one. You will probably see Jackson Jobe at some point as well. With a right-hander on the mound for Cleveland and likely to pitch deeper into the game than most, the Tigers will be able to roll out their everyday lineup, to the degree that such a thing exists. That also means that in what will likely be another close game, the right-handed bats will again be called on in crucial pinch-hitting spots with Andy Ibáñez, Justyn-Henry Malloy, and Wenceel Pérez all available off the bench. You can expect this one to be another nail-biter.

Next man up is the order of the day, but after months of playing loose and hungry in a desperate spot, the Tigers are built for this now, and they’re still doing everything possible to get better.