Tigers Eliminate Guardians on Road, Advance to American League Division Series Against Seattle Mariners
The Tigers' catcher sent one over the fence in the sixth frame, Wenceel Pérez brought home a pair of runs during a four-run seventh inning, and the Detroit Tigers defeated the Cleveland Guardians by a score of 6-3 on Thursday’s game to progress to the American League Division Series.
It is the second straight season, the Detroit squad have won a Wild Card Series on the road. The Tigers head to Seattle for the AL Division Series with Game 1 scheduled for Saturday.
The AL West champion Mariners, the No. 2 seed, won four out of six regular-season meetings from the Detroit, who were the third wild card.
Ramírez scored the Guardians' initial run. The AL Central champion Guardians were 15 and a half games back in the start of July before pulling off the largest rally in division or league play in MLB history.
However, they ran out of steam in the best-of-three series as Detroit moved on after recording the second-worst record in the majors in last month (seven wins and seventeen losses).
The game was tied 1-all with two away in the sixth inning when the catcher got an elevated changeup from Joey Cantillo on a 1-1 pitch and sent it 401 feet into the seats in left-center field to put the Tigers on top.
It was also the first postseason hit and run batted in for the Detroit backstop.
The Tigers then pulled away in the seventh inning by bringing up ten hitters to the plate and scoring four times.
With an out and the bases full, Pérez lined a base hit to right off Erik Sabrowski to score Báez and Meadows. Gaddis entered and allowed RBI base hits to Spencer Torkelson and Riley Greene, which plated Kerry Carpenter and Pérez.
Finnegan earned the victory, retiring all four batters he faced. Joey Cantillo was charged with the loss.
The Tigers opened the scoring in the third. With one out and runners at first and third, Carpenter grounded a ball down the first-base line that deflected off CJ Kayfus’ glove when he tried to back hand it. The ball skidded into foul ground near the stands as Parker Meadows crossed the plate, Carpenter advanced to second and Gleyber Torres advanced to third on what the scorekeeper called a two-base hit.
The Guardians evened the score in the fourth. Valera led off with a two-bagger to the right-field corner and scored on José Ramírez’s base hit to right-center field on a knuckle curve by Flaherty on a 3-2 count.
The base hit was the 40th hit of Ramírez’s playoff career, making him the fifth player in team history to reach that milestone.
In the eighth frame, José Ramírez reached on a missed catch error by Detroit reliever Will Vest to score Brayan Rocchio and Kwan. But he was thrown out at second base.
