DETROIT — Tigers players were making plans for October as summer came to a close. They didn’t necessarily involve the playoffs.
After trading veterans at the deadline and staying below .500, it was human nature to look to the future. This is what the Tigers have been doing for years since they last made the playoffs in 2014.
“I have a wedding to go to, one of my friends’ weddings,” reliever Beau Brieske said. “He’s already reached out and said, ‘Hey, I understand.'”
He was not alone. Rookie Justyn-Henry Malloy and his girlfriend planned to travel to the Dominican Republic.
“When we started talking about possible playoffs, I told my girlfriend, ‘I’m just warning you early that I hope we cancel our vacation,'” Malloy said Friday afternoon before the match. 4-1 victory against the White Sox who clinched their place for the Wild Card in the American League.
“I bet most of the guys had plans.”
Kerry Carpenter and his wife, expecting their first child, had doctor’s appointments scheduled and were preparing to start a family. Some of this, obviously, is still happening. Many players had family plans.
Even those who didn’t have big plans looked toward the future.
“I bet a good group of guys were planning to go to this Monday Night Football game with the Lions here,” Tarik Skubal said, highlighting the Lions-Seahawks game at Ford Field the night after the season finale regular for the Tigers. “I bet a lot of guys were planning on doing that.
“Things have changed. And it’s great. That’s what we wanted anyway.
This is what they all wanted, even if they didn’t imagine it would happen like this.
In early August, when Riley Greene was on his way back from a hamstring injury that forced him onto the injured list, he talked about returning in time to help the Tigers qualify for the playoffs. The Tigers were eight games under .500 at the time and had a 0.2 percent chance of making the playoffs according to Fangraphs.
“What if we win,” Greene said, poker-faced.
They didn’t win, but they’re 31-11 since then. It seemed like clairvoyance, but he later said he was simply reading a sign he saw from a fan.
The seven-week streak that took the Tigers to their first playoff berth in 10 years was so sudden that even the most optimistic players would have had a hard time making predictions. They always believed in each other, they thought they were good enough. They didn’t necessarily think they had enough games left.
Instead of worrying about that, they focused on every game, every day. That’s the point manager AJ Hinch has made.
They then had a two-man rotation in Skubal and Keider Montero. The other games were a bevy of openers and loose pitchers, from rejects Bryan Sammons and Brenan Hanifee to prospects Brant Hurter and Ty Madden.
“I’m handling it like it’s the seventh game in two months,” Hinch said Friday afternoon.
While rookies Dillon Dingler, Jace Jung and Trey Sweeney were just acquired, Greene, Carpenter, Spencer Torkelson and Parker Meadows returned. The Tigers split a West Coast trip to Seattle and San Francisco, then swept the NL West Mariners at Comerica Park.
“I think winning the Little League Classic was a big moment,” Hinch said. “We won a series against one of the best teams in the league.”
The wins continued – a 5-2 road trip to Chicago, a 4-2 homestand against the Angels and Red Sox to get back above .500.
They were one strike away from being swept in San Diego when Meadows hit a grand slam. They won two of three in Oakland, beat the Rockies, beat the Orioles at Comerica Park, swept the Royals, then beat the O’s in Baltimore.
“I didn’t even imagine we would be in this situation as a team,” Brieske said. “We really started playing well, and then we started playing really well, and then it continued.”
What started as a good streak — Hinch refuses to call it a streak because streaks end — became 31-11.
Now here they are. And as Meadows and right fielder Wenceel Pérez converged and collided on Andrew Vaughn’s ball for Friday’s final out, it seemed like a fitting climax to the run. Pérez held the ball on the ground while Meadows raised his arms in celebration. And a team that has focused on what was immediately in front of them for nearly two months might finally look up and appreciate what they’ve done.
“It’s a perfect picture of how to punch our ticket to October, with an imperfect game,” Hinch said, “with guys literally trying to do everything they can to grab it. One of They do it.
“We’ll watch the movie again and it’ll give us something to laugh about, but that feeling of accomplishment is second to none.”
