The Detroit Tigers lost their closer and the game Friday night in the ninth inning in St. Petersburg, Florida. Well, technically, they didn’t lose the game until the bottom of the 10th, when the Tampa Bay Rays’ Brett Phillips hit a walk-off, three-run homer.
But in the ninth?
That’s when closer Gregory Soto took a ball to the hand after he’d loaded the bases trying to preserve a 4-1 lead. He couldn’t. Neither could Michael Fulmer, who relieved the injured Soto and gave up a two-run single and a sacrifice fly.
It happens, I suppose, blown leads and injuries. That doesn’t make it easy either — a gut punch is a gut punch.
And yet there were the Tigers on Sunday, back in the bottom of the ninth against Tampa Bay, nursing a two-run lead, asking a reliever without a save to his name to close out the game.
Kyle Funkhouser did. The Tigers won, 2-0, less than 24 hours after they’d beaten the Rays Saturday, 4-3.
The wins earned AJ Hinch’s club a split against the best team in the American League, at least by record, after losing a crusher Friday night.
“We almost won,” Hinch said late Friday night, “but we’re not going to hang our head or we’re not going to pout or we’re not going to linger. That’s not who this team is.”
So maybe you’re thinking: What else was he supposed to say?
You’d have a point, I guess. But it’s September, and this team keeps shaking off tough losses and tough breaks and injuries, and in the last week-plus, the Tigers secured the season series from the likely playoff-bound Rays, knocking off Milwaukee — which clinched a playoff spot Saturday night — a couple of times in between for good measure.
Let me put it another way: The Tigers are balling; they are also mentally tough.
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Are they balling because they are tough? Or are they tough because they’ve been balling?
I suspect the first, though the latter obviously helps. Talent always helps, and Al Avila and the front office deserve credit for finding more of it this season.
Yet it starts with Hinch, who built that toughness from Day 1 of spring training. Pitcher Derek Holland, a veteran and example of that mental fortitude, and who picked up two outs in Sunday’s win, was talking about this the other day when he told the Free Press:
“I think AJ has done a good job of putting the pressure on the guys. He’s gotten rid of some guys. He’s made it known that not everybody is safe. Just because you got paid doesn’t mean you’re safe.”
Hinch also showed the team a photo of a championship trophy, then told his players if they weren’t there for that, then leave.
So, when he says, as he did Friday night after a blown lead, that his team wasn’t going to pout and the loss wouldn’t linger, I, for one, believed him. More important, so did his players.
They’ve lived it. And have now shown it for the better part of three months.
Because this latest mini-surge and toppling of more top teams isn’t a fluke. It’s part of a pattern we’ve seen since early May.
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The Tigers are 63-54 since May 8, which is to say they’ve played like a team in the playoff chase. Again, this isn’t a small sample size. It’s more like a dissertation.
It can’t be an accident that guys like Wily Peralta, a 32-year-old veteran looking for a home last winter after having bounced around, is throwing as well as he has in a while, and did again Sunday against the Rays.
He tossed seven shutout innings and tried to dance away from Hinch when he came to get the ball.
“We didn’t even know how we were going to use him when we called him up,” said Hinch. “He’s earned this (opportunity) and he should earn the praise. He’s done a really good job of stabilizing our rotation when we’ve needed it the most.”
I’d argue that it’s not entirely an accident. Just as it wasn’t completely random that Dustin Garneau caught Sunday, because he syncs up well with Peralta, but also because Hinch had a hunch. And while he couldn’t predict Garneau would smack a 405-foot solo shot, giving the Tigers wiggle room in the tricky seventh inning, he banked that Garneau would help the team win.
He did.
Another pro, as Hinch likes to say, and another veteran presence — Garneau is 34 — contributing to this unlikely summer run.
There are others, of course, like Eric Haase, whose homer in the fourth on Sunday gave the Tigers the lead, and whose bat is so valuable that he played left field instead of catching.
Like Cabrera, who had a hit Sunday and whose breezy persona and status gives both veterans and youngsters a kind of tentpole. He may not be what he was at the plate, but he’s a sneakily important part of the budding renaissance.
Where these Tigers go from here is still hard to say. Holland told the Free Press he expects big things from this club next season. Based on the summer, he may be right.
That there are more reinforcements on the way helps, too: Not only a few youngsters but potentially a free agent or two this winter.
It’s taken a while to get to this point, but it’s hard to blame anyone for starting to dream. Hinch and his staff gave the rebuild a jolt.
This weekend’s wins should remind us why.
Contact Shawn Windsor: 313-222-6487 or swindsor@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @shawnwindsor.