Detroit – As the Cleveland Guardians completed a three-game sweep of the Tigers at Comerica Park Thursday, it was hard not to hear Paul Simon’s voice singing, “Slip-sliding away.”
The Guardians, with a 3-1 win in the finale, have won seven straight and are within 3.5 games of Central Division-leading Detroit with nine games left on the Tigers’ schedule.
“You know the nearer your destination the more you’re slip-sliding away,” as the song goes.
BOX SCORE: Guardians 3, Tigers 1
Jose Ramirez, a certified Tiger-killer who had been relatively quiet through the first two games, got loud at exactly the right time for the Guardians.
He clubbed a 1-0 cutter from rookie Troy Melton with one on in the seventh inning, sending it over the wall in right field and breaking a 1-1 tie. It was Ramirez’s 29th homer.
“We do have to pick ourselves up,” manager AJ Hinch said. “We got our ass kicked in pretty much every aspect. They swept us and they’re going to get another shot at us — or we’re going to get another shot at them, whichever way you want to say it — next week. But we’ve got three games in front of us (against Atlanta) that we better deal with to keep chipping away at the win total.
“These are tough times when you go through these stretches at this time of the year.”
The clubhouse was somber postgame, for sure, but there was no sense of anger or panic. Certainly nobody was singing Paul Simon songs.
“It was a bummer of a series,” Kerry Carpenter said. “But it was nothing we need to take into the next one or into the next week at all.”
It’s hard not to notice the Guardians’ presence looming larger in the rearview mirror, but Carpenter and others said there was no sense of tightness. The vibe, he said, was the same as it ever was.
“We are so confident in ourselves and we know this isn’t the team we are,” he said. “We know it’s something we have to get back to. But having that confidence that it is coming back. We just have to start executing at the high level we did earlier in the season and when we are at our best.
“I don’t look in the rearview mirror. It’s just on to the next.”
The Tigers’ offense picked a bad week to stop hitting. They mustered two runs against the three Guardians’ starting pitchers. It was right-hander Tanner Bibee’s turn Thursday. He had one spot of bother through six mostly breezy innings.
Colt Keith ripped an RBI double in the second inning and the Tigers still had runners at second and third with no outs. But that’s all the damage Bibee would abide.
Wenceel Perez was thrown out at the plate, running on contact on a grounder by Dillon Dingler. Zach McKinstry struck out and Parker Meadows popped out.
Bibee allowed just one other hit through the sixth.
And for the second straight game, the Tigers had just one hit against the Cleveland bullpen.
“In the big picture, it’s very disappointing,” Hinch said. “We come every day to win and to win series. We know how important these games are. We’ve got some work ahead of us to do this right.”
It was a double-whammy for the Tigers. Keith left the game after that second inning with what the team initially diagnosed as low-back stiffness.
“He was grabbing at his side, back, rib area,” Hinch said. “And as he was coming off, all he was saying was, ‘I’ve got to come out of the game. I’ve got to come out of the game.’ That in itself is pretty alarming.”
Keith was sent for imaging.
“It’s very concerning this time of year,” Hinch said. “Especially when he was so passionate about something going on in his back, side or rib area.”
Jace Jung would be one option to come up if Keith is going to need an IL stint.
“We’ve just got to move on to the next series,” said ace Tarik Skubal, who held up his end of the bargain Thursday, emphatically. “We’ve got to move on and start playing a better brand of baseball. We can’t take back anything that’s already happened. We can’t go back in time. Just focus on tomorrow.”
Skubal powered through six innings, the only smudge a solo home run by Jhonkensy Noel in the fourth inning. Skubal put an 0-2 changeup on the outer edge of the plate, but Noel was able reach out and line it over the bullpen in left-center.
It was just the third 0-2 home run hit against Skubal in his career.
“Tarik really had to battle,” Hinch said. “They did a good job of working him through a lot of tough innings. But he finished about as strong as you can finish and he left everything he could in the competition.”
The Guardians, as they do, created a couple of long innings against him. They slapped a couple of singles in the second and again in the fourth after Noel’s homer.
Skubal worked his way out of both and followed each with a clean, eight-pitch inning. And he capped off both of those by striking out David Fry – with a 99.7 mph four-seamer in the third, then a 101.5 mph four-seamer in the fifth.
Skubal rang up triple digits three times and struck out nine. He’s set a new single-season personal best with 237 strikeouts.
“I felt fine,” Skubal said. “But the loss is what I’m more focused on.”
He, too, was asked if he sensed things might be getting tighter in the clubhouse.
“No, we’re just not winning ballgames,” he said. “Winning cures everything, it really does. I don’t have a finger I can point onto any one thing. We just need to collectively play better baseball — hitting, pitching, defense. I don’t think there is any sense of tightness in the group. We’ve got a fun group and we work our ass off.
“That’s what I’m going to trust over the full 162 games.”
@cmccosky
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