CLEVELAND — It has taken an extraordinary and unlikely sequence of occasions over a number of months for the Detroit Tigers and Cleveland Guardians to be tied for the AL Central lead with five games left to play. It’s solely becoming, then, that the sport that secured the deadlock atop the division — Cleveland’s dramatic, 5-2 victory over Detroit on Tuesday at Progressive Field — featured one of the extra preposterous half-innings possible, the final show of baseball randomness and absurdity.
Entering the backside of the sixth inning, Tarik Skubal, as common, was in management. The reigning AL Cy Young Award winner was tasked with reversing the misfortunes of a Tigers crew that had seen its once-sturdy lead atop the AL Central utterly evaporate over the previous month. And for 5 innings in opposition to the rival Guardians — whose spectacularly sizzling stretch in September mixed with Detroit’s skid to culminate in an surprising division race — Skubal exhibited his trademark ace habits.
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The four-seam fastball was buzzing, climbing as excessive as 101 mph. The sinker was exploding into the strike zone at unhittable angles. The slider and knuckle-curve have been breaking sharply. And, of course, the changeup was giving hitters suits. When Skubal struck out David Fry with a 99.6 mph heater to finish the fourth, he confidently skipped off the mound again towards the dugout, sure one other masterpiece was in progress. Cleveland mustered two baserunners in the fifth, however Skubal squashed the risk, ending the body along with his pitch rely at simply 74.
The Tigers had afforded Skubal a two-run lead due to a Wenceel Perez RBI double in the third and a Riley Greene solo residence run in the sixth. Given how Skubal was throwing, these two runs seemed to be a quite comfy cushion on which Detroit may rely en path to a victory that might snap its six-game dropping streak.
But the Guardians had different plans.
With Skubal dialed in, combating fireplace with fireplace was a idiot’s errand, particularly given Cleveland’s dearth of offensive thump; the Guardians rank 28th in MLB in slugging proportion, thirtieth in barrel charge, thirtieth in hard-hit charge and thirtieth in common exit velocity. Instead, Steven Kwan led off the sixth with a picturesque bunt on the first pitch from Skubal, racing to first with hopes of sparking a rally.
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Before the packed Progressive Field crowd of almost 30,000 may settle down after Kwan’s profitable gambit, No. 2 hitter Angel Martinez adopted with one other bunt on the first pitch of his showdown with Skubal. The ball trickled down the first-base line with delicate precision, forcing Skubal to cost and both try and make a tough play or pocket the ball and yield one other baserunner with no outs and Jose Ramirez developing.
Skubal opted for the former, however in unthinkable style: Facing residence plate, he reached down, grabbed the ball and flipped it by means of his personal legs towards first, as if he have been mountain climbing a soccer. The ball sailed over first baseman Spencer Torkelson’s head and into foul territory, permitting Kwan to succeed in third base and Martinez to coast into second.
“He was in a tough position as a left-handed pitcher to make that play in general and didn’t want to wheel and throw it down the line,” supervisor AJ Hinch defined postgame. “So instead, he chose to do the emergency flip, which is not something that is easy to do, and it obviously didn’t produce a good play.”
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Skubal echoed that sentiment, referring to the Martinez ball as an “impossible play” whereas reiterating his intention to forestall a second consecutive bunt hit in any respect prices. He additionally revealed that the between-the-legs toss was one thing he’d tried earlier than: “Yeah, in Miami, actually,” he stated. “Same result.”
Indeed, Skubal tried a close to carbon-copy of the play two years in the past in opposition to the Marlins, when Jon Berti chopped a ball down the first-base line. The outcome was almost equivalent, however the circumstances couldn’t have been extra totally different. That was in the second inning of a July contest on a Sunday afternoon in Miami. Skubal wasn’t Skubal but, and the Tigers have been 47-59. Trying one thing like that then? Fine.
But on Tuesday, in the greatest sport of the season up to now, with Guardians gamers and their followers determined for any ounce of momentum? That was a poor selection.
“That is an example of an uncharacteristic mistake piling up on us at the worst time,” Hinch stated.
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Of course, this was an exceptionally difficult play for Skubal; anticipating him to have recorded an out with out bother feels unfair. That stated, his determination to uncork a low-probability toss quite than maintain on to the ball and maintain Kwan and Martinez at first and second proved extraordinarily pricey.
With the bunts having spiked the quantity in the venue, up got here Ramirez to attempt to money in. As Cleveland’s most blatant slugging risk, Ramirez was the one Guardian Skubal didn’t want to fret about making an attempt a bunt. But baseball has a humorous manner of shocking you. When Ramirez swung laborious at a 99.9-mph fastball with two strikes, the outcome was roughly the identical as the two bunts that preceded it: a weak curler up the third-base line, poorly struck with a innocent exit velocity of 65.5 mph, and too gradual for third baseman Zach McKinstry to corral and make a play. Kwan scampered residence for Cleveland’s first run. Martinez superior to 3rd.
The surprising rally was removed from over. But the sport took a scary flip earlier than issues continued. With nonetheless no outs and runners on the corners, Fry got here as much as the plate. Sticking with the theme of the inning, he squared round to aim to bunt in hopes of garnering one other defensive gaffe. But Skubal’s 99.1-mph fastball ran up and in, hitting Fry squarely in the nostril and sending him to the floor.
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Although it was dominated a foul ball, replay pretty clearly confirmed that the pitch didn’t graze Fry’s bat in any respect, as a substitute making flush contact along with his face — a terrifying sequence contemplating the velocity. The crowd was silent whereas gamers on each groups, together with Skubal, have been visibly shaken. Thankfully, Fry was capable of rise to his ft and get on the cart to be transported to a close by hospital, the place he’s anticipated to stay in a single day as he undergoes testing.
“I’ve already reached out to him,” Skubal stated afterward. “I look forward to, hopefully at some point tonight or tomorrow morning, getting a text from him and making sure he’s all good. The health of him is more important than a baseball game.”
Manager Stephen Vogt said postgame that Fry stayed conscious the whole time and that the team would provide an update as soon as possible on Wednesday.
Such a harrowing injury scare is difficult to move past, but the high-stakes timing forced the two teams to reengage immediately — and it took just one pitch for the chaos to resume. Rookie George Valera replaced Fry in the batter’s box with a 2-2 count, and Skubal’s first pitch to the new batter was a wayward changeup that got past catcher Dillon Dingler and allowed Martinez to score the tying run, with Ramirez advancing to second.
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Valera eventually struck out, but then, while facing Gabriel Arias, Skubal balked for just the second time in his career, enabling Ramirez to move to third, still with one out. That allowed Ramirez to score easily when Arias tapped one softly to first base, marking Cleveland’s third run of the inning and a lead it wouldn’t relinquish.
Before Tuesday’s sixth inning, Skubal had allowed just one run in 27 innings against the Guardians this season, with 37 strikeouts and just five walks. Then, over the span of five plate appearances — with an average exit velocity of 52.8 mph and without a single ball leaving the infield, except for the one Skubal sailed himself — the Guardians conjured three runs. Because of course they did.
“They showed that the team that made the most contact got rewarded for it, even if it wasn’t great contact,” Hinch stated. “They did a good job with that.”
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To his point, Detroit’s disastrous inning wouldn’t have loomed quite as large had the Tigers been more productive offensively. But Cleveland starter Gavin Williams had a heck of a night himself, matching a career high with 12 strikeouts over six solid innings of work. Detroit struck out 19 times in total Tuesday, the franchise’s most in a nine-inning game since the 2019 club — a team that would go on to lose 114 games — matched the ignominious feat on two occasions.
This Tigers team will not lose 114 games. In fact, this Tigers team might still win the AL Central, despite an unfathomably bad run of play that has them at risk of making history for all the wrong reasons. With the victory Tuesday, Cleveland clinched the season series over Detroit, giving the Guards a critical tiebreaker should the two teams finish with the same record after 162. But there’s still ample opportunity for the Tigers to avoid that fate and fight their way back into enviable playoff position.
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“We got to flush today’s game and then get ready to play again tomorrow. The team across the way doesn’t feel bad for us, so there’s no reason we should feel bad for ourselves,” Skubal stated. “That opportunity to come out there and win tomorrow and win a series — I think that’s what really matters.”
“We should get to tomorrow and get to a higher outcome,” Hinch stated. “Everybody knows. There’s no hiding behind anything other than showing up ready to play.”