CLEVELAND — For two games and five innings, the Detroit Tigers’ offense was constantly knocking but when it mattered most, no one seemed to answer. Finally, Dillon Dingler opened the door to a clinching win.
Dingler’s sixth-inning homer off Cleveland lefty Erik Sabrowski broke a 1-1 deadlock, igniting a late Tigers rally that put the them into the ALDS with a 6-3 win at Progressive Field on Thursday.
The victory not only gave the Tigers a 2-1 AL wild-card series win over the rival Guardians, but it also avenged last year’s loss to Cleveland in the ALDS.
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“We were able to flip it right there, and we had a huge [seventh] inning, able to score some runs and be in the driver’s seat a little bit,” said Dingler, a northeast Ohio native playing in a ballpark he visited as a youth. “It was a big one.”
Before Dingler’s homer, the Tigers had managed just four runs in the series — through two games and five innings — and were 3-for-28 with runners in scoring position, putting their season in peril despite outplaying Cleveland for the most part. Two of the runs they scored were unearned.
Enter Dingler, a second-year catcher playing in his first postseason. He had started his playoff career 0-for-9 at the plate until he connected against Sabrowski, sending a changeup up in the zone into the seats in left-field, putting Detroit ahead.
“I was scratching and crawling a little bit,” Dingler said. “I was able to get a pitch to hit and do a little damage. Momentum, I feel like the momentum in the series was the biggest thing.”
And how. The aftermath of Dingler’s homer had the aspect of a boiler’s release valve being turned on, allowing bursts of steam to escape into the air.
In the seventh, with the Guardians rolling out a parade of relievers from one of baseball’s best bullpens, the Tigers finally started spinning the merry-go-round, racking up one clutch hit after another.
The rally started when Parker Meadows beat out what was meant to be a sacrifice bunt after Javier Baez led off with a double. Gleyber Torres was retired on a comebacker to a pirouetting Hunter Gaddis, then Kerry Carpenter was intentionally walked, his fourth time reaching base in the game, to load the bases.
This was exactly the kind of the spot the Tigers had faced, and failed, throughout the series. Not this time.
Wenceel Perez, Spencer Torkelson and Riley Greene followed with RBI singles, plating four runs in all, and giving the Tigers a commanding lead. Up to that point, the trio had gone 1-for-13 combined with runners in scoring position during the series.
That’s what momentum looks like.
“I don’t know why in baseball it seems like one good thing happens and then two, three, four, five at-bats in a row were exceptional,” Tigers manager A.J. Hinch said. “We wanted to get even more greedy and do more, but it was nice to separate and breathe a little bit, knowing they weren’t going to give in.”
The loss brought a sudden halt to Cleveland’s building Cinderella story, one that saw the Guardians overcome a 15½-game deficit to Detroit to win the AL Central, then force Thursday’s Game 3 after dropping the series opener. While coming back from the brink again and again, the Guardians forged an identity of a never-say-die team. As glorious as the run might have been, losing to the Tigers doesn’t hurt any less.
“There’s no ending of the season,” Guardians manager Stephen Vogt said. “It doesn’t end gradually, it just halts. We’ve been with each other every day for eight months. More time with each other than our family. Working together, laughing together, crying together, yelling together, you name it. Now it stops, and I had so much fun with this group.”
With the series win, the Tigers are building a budding comeback story of their own. For much of the season, Detroit was poised to land the AL’s top overall seed, but a second-half slump capped by a 7-17 September landed it in Cleveland, as the road team in a wild-card series.
Now the Tigers are on their way to play the Seattle Mariners in the ALDS, beginning Saturday, and if you had any doubts about it entering the wild-card round, you can safely assume that the Tigers have turned the page on their lackluster finish.
“It only gets better from here,” Hinch said. “And I’m proud of our group for continuing to learn and grow and mature and fight off some of the negative thoughts that come along the way when people doubt you or you start struggling a little bit. You’ve got to stay in there.”
