Tigers Claw Out Nail-Biting Win Over Mariners in ALDS Game 1

SEATTLE — “We didn’t steal one. We earned it.” Those were the first words spoken by Tigers manager A.J. Hinch following Game 1 of the ALDS at T-Mobile Park on Saturday night. Hinch took umbrage with a reporter’s characterization of a 3-2 victory that spanned 11 innings in a road ballpark as “stealing one.” Managers should bring that type of bravado to the press conference. Especially Hinch, who is tasked with imbuing confidence in a squad that has been dogged by tales of its epic collapse for over a month.

But with all due respect to Hinch, to describe any one-run, extra-inning game as one where either team definitively earned the win, or on the flip side deserved to lose, places all the emphasis on the final result and glosses over exactly how that result came to be. The Tigers got the win, and now they enjoy a 1-0 series lead with Tarik Skubal, the reigning (and presumptive) AL Cy Young award winner, taking the mound for them in Game 2. They get to bask in the glow of that advantage, and they absolutely should. But if Hinch gets to quibble with verbiage, so do I.

During the regular season, the Mariners were 31-21 in one-run games and 10-11 in extra innings. The Tigers were 21-12 in one-run games and went 5-8 in extras. Based on those numbers, Seattle performed better in games that couldn’t be decided in regulation, while Detroit put together a stronger winning percentage in one-run games. But as research has shown, none of those numbers really matter because the tighter the score and the more innings played, the more random the outcome. Winning tight games that stretch beyond nine innings is less about skill than the winners want to believe. When reviewing Russell Carleton’s Baseball Prospectus research on the topic, the following passage felt particularly germane:

For a moment, I want to focus on the 25 percent of one-run games that go into the ninth tied. In some sense, from this point onward, the fundamental characteristic of the game has changed. From this point onward, the game is a series of one-inning sudden-death games. Prior to this, if the opponents scored in the fifth inning, you could make it up in the seventh. But no more. From a sampling perspective, we’ve gone from a nine-inning sample of team quality on that day to a one-inning sample. Smaller sample sizes mean more variance: anything can happen in extra innings.

None of this is to say that skill doesn’t factor into the outcome at all, but it’s less of a factor than in games decided by multiple runs. But we’re not actually here to discuss overarching theories and analytical truths that tell us what typically happens. We have an actual baseball game with real outcomes to discuss. In this game, both teams caught some fortunate bounces, both teams got away with mistakes, and both teams took advantage of mistakes made by their opponent. And both teams did all of this in largely equal measure.

Before we wade into the waters of mistakes and misfortune, let’s first acknowledge the purely skill-based victories.

Tigers outfielder Kerry Carpenter earns full credit for taking Mariners starter George Kirby deep with two outs in the fifth inning. With the Tigers trailing 1-0 and a runner on first, Carpenter attacked a sinker several inches above the top of the zone and drove it over 400 feet.

In a game awash in 50/50 managerial decisions, the one most likely to have calculus equations floating through Mariners skipper Dan Wilson’s field of vision before Game 2 is the choice to leave Kirby in the game to face Carpenter a third time. It’s generally safe to assume more noise than signal when considering a hitter’s history with a specific pitcher. But Carpenter’s four home runs in 10 plate appearances against Kirby entering that third matchup of the night were staggering enough to give pause. And though when addressing specific matchups players usually opt to keep their comments vague to the point of meaningless while doling out the utmost respect to their opponents, when speaking to the media postgame, Carpenter bluntly admitted to seeing Kirby well and feeling like he had him timed as he stepped in to face him in the fifth.

Kirby’s wOBA allowed this season was .286 the first time through the order and .264 the second time through, but it spiked to .390 when facing opposing hitters for a third time. Additionally, Carpenter has a known kryptonite in left-handing pitching. Seattle had southpaw Gabe Speier ready and waiting for the bullpen phone to ring as Carpenter was announced, but the call didn’t come. After the game, Wilson said he thought Kirby still had the stuff to handle Carpenter; instead Carpenter’s handiwork gave the Tigers a 2-1 lead. It feels very obvious in retrospect that Wilson should have gone to Speier, but just as four of the previous 10 meetings between Kirby and Carpenter resulted in a home run, four of them also ended with a strikeout, including one in the first inning Saturday. It’s not absurd to think he could pull it off again. Nevertheless, Carpenter bested Kirby, earning every inch of that home run.

Likewise, Seattle center fielder Julio Rodríguez gets all the flowers for going deep against Detroit starter Troy Melton one frame prior. Like Carpenter, Rodríguez launched a high fastball (though this one was a four-seamer, rather than a sinker), and 413 feet later, he was circling the bases.

The Mariners defense also earned two crucial outs on back-to-back batted balls to end the ninth inning. First, a line drive moving 101 mph off the bat of Javier Báez sent Eugenio Suárez into full “I’m a Little Teapot” mode. He tipped to his left and pulled the ball out of the air just as his knees brushed the infield dirt.

Next, with his throwing motion flinging his body to the first base side of the mound, Andrés Muñoz managed to redirect his momentum to reach back and snag a liner off the bat of Parker Meadows.

Not to be outdone, the Tigers defense turned a tricky double play at one of the highest-leverage points in the game. After Rodríguez tied the score with a single in the sixth, first baseman Josh Naylor stepped to the plate with no outs and runners on first and second. He pulled a groundball toward second base. The shortstop Báez fielded it, then tagged Rodríguez, who was on his way to second, before firing to first to complete the double play. The play required tremendous balance and accuracy from Báez, but even with what Hinch termed “acrobatics,” the play was still close enough to challenge the outs at both first and second. So close, in fact, that if Rodríguez had stopped running to second — either by retreating to first, halting in place, or dropping to the dirt — he probably would’ve prolonged the tag play by enough split-seconds for Naylor reach first safely. This was not the type of lazy grounder that big league infielders can easily convert into a routine double play; those outs were hard won.

But now the time has come. We must grapple with the parts of the game with murkier relationships to player skill. First up, the Took Advantage of an Opponent’s Mistake category: Pitching in relief for the Tigers, Rafael Montero opened the sixth with a walk to Mariners left fielder Randy Arozarena and a single to catcher Cal Raleigh, who scooped a splitter on the outer half and served it into right field. At that point, Montero was probably hoping he could take a pitch to gather himself, that Rodríguez would be one of those hitters that takes the first pitch of a plate appearance without any real thought given to swinging. But much like the whole mouse-cookie-milk situation, if you throw Rodríguez a cookie, he’s going to want to swing. And in this case, that swing led to a single that drove in a run and tied the game.

Punishing mistake pitches still requires skill, but because it’s dependent on the existence of a mistake, it’s a skill that relies on a positive twist of fate. Perhaps the Naylor double play could be considered taking advantage of an opponent’s mistake too, because Rodríguez didn’t hit the deck when Báez tried to tag him, but that particular play feels like less of a mistake on Rodríguez’s part. Instead, we should consider the flip side; if Rodríguez had delayed the relay throw to first long enough for Naylor to beat it, the play would’ve gone into the Heads Up Baseball category, where a player makes an instantaneous decision that another player ordinarily wouldn’t have made. Because of how fast Rodríguez was running and where Báez fielded the ball, it would’ve taken extraordinary awareness and athleticism to recognize what was happening and then stop, drop, and roll before getting tagged.

This next play featured two mistakes, but only one of them was taken advantage of. With Detroit’s switch-hitting utilityman, and certified lefty killer, Jahmai Jones on first, catcher Dillon Dingler hit a popup to shallow right field. Seattle second baseman Jorge Polanco couldn’t quite make the catch, but because right fielder Victor Robles hustled in while the ball was in the air, and because Jones didn’t make the proper initial read on the situation, Robles was able to recover the ball and get Jones on the fielder’s choice at second.

In the (Mis)Fortune category, much of what we deem luck or unlucky in baseball distills down to batted ball outcomes. There’s no room for moral victories this time of year, so I doubt Mariners fans will take much comfort in tallying up half a dozen well-struck batted balls from the likes of Arozarena, Polanco, Naylor, and J.P. Crawford. Of course, the Tigers had a couple of these as well: notably, a Carpenter groundout with an expected batting average of .630 and a Gleyber Torres lineout to left field (.900 xBA) in the 10th. To understand how infuriating these can be, I give you this loud out from Naylor. Hit one pitch after Rodríguez homered off Melton in the fourth inning, Melton’s reaction to the way the ball left the bat makes it very clear he was convinced he’d just given up back-to-back jacks.

Finally, we have the Got Away With a Mistake category. The early example of this is Kirby working his way out of a jam in the second inning. In both the first and second, he threw several mistake pitches, sinkers that missed the shadow region of the zone completely, finishing too far outside to be considered competitive. But the Tigers failed to meaningfully capitalize. Designated hitter Colt Keith opened the second with a single and then Dingler followed with a walk, but after Kirby threw ball one to third baseman Zach McKinstry, Raleigh made a mound visit. On the next pitch, Kirby pulled his sinker down into the zone, and from that point forward, he was able to find that location regularly enough to coax swings out of the Detroit lineup.

The other prime example came very late in the game. In the top of the 11th, McKinstry sent a groundball up the middle, scoring first baseman Spencer Torkelson from second. McKinstry, who went hitless for the final three months of the regular season (that’s not literally true, but it probably felt that way for both Tigers fans and McKinstry), tapped a ball back to the pitcher with an exit velocity of 73 mph and an xBA of .220. It was nearly fielded by both pitcher Carlos Vargas and shortstop Crawford, who was shading the left-handed McKinstry to pull and had to sprint back toward second to attempt a diving play. Neither fielder could snag it, so it went for a hit that drove in the game-winning run. However, at this point in his career, Crawford is not a good fielder, specifically when it comes to his range (or lack thereof). With -12 OAA, he was the second-worst defensive shortstop in the majors. That the single was just out of Crawford’s reach indicates that a better fielder with better range probably would’ve at least kept the ball from getting past him and forced Torkelson to hold up at third. McKinstry got away with one there.

Because of the narrow margins in this game, roughly one billion things happened that, had they gone even a little bit differently, the outcome of the game may have swung the other way. Hinch and the Tigers got the win, and now they get to reap the rewards of being up 1-0 in a best-of-five series. But if the Tigers are now considered favorites to win this ALDS showdown, it’s not because they put on some dominant showing in Game 1 that changed the complexion of the series. It’s because you’re only as good as your next day’s starter, and they’ve got Skubal going in Game 2. And that’s even more true considering these teams just ran through a combined 13 relievers in one night.