Yahoo Sports senior MLB analyst Jake Mintz and senior MLB analyst Jordan Shusterman break down the AL Wildcard matchup between the Cleveland Guardians and Detroit Tigers. Will Cleveland be able to keep their momentum and advance to the next round? Hear the full conversation on the “Baseball Bar-B-Cast” podcast – and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen.
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Video Transcript
This is a rivalry that has blossomed into something truly brilliant.
Truly unpredictable, and now we have a series with two teams heading in very different directions, but as AJ Hinch said during the Tiger celebration, everybody will be 0 and 0 on Tuesday.
And the Tigers will have to take this historic blown lead that they have endured over the past few months and say, you know what, screw it.
We’re here, we’re in, still have Trik Scoble, and we are going to try and turn this around and show that as they were for the first few months, they were not just better than Cleveland, they were better than most teams.
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And so now the Tigers will be trying to recapture, rediscover that form in this short series rematch against the Guardians, who are one of the great stories that we’ve seen in since we’ve been doing this job, frankly, for all the things that they overcame on the field, some self-inflicted, some, of course, very much not in their control, losing two of their most important pitchers to an ongoing gambling investigation.
Uh, and then just, so much, so much about this Guardians team that I’ve seen up close, that is tough to believe, but they are here, they are the AL Central champions against all odds.
I am thinking about Jose Ramirez.
He is everything.
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And when the GuardI’m gonna just rewind to the deadline for a second because they were so close to trading Steven Kwan.
Right?
That was a real thing.
And they decided not to.
And at the time I gave them a lot of credit for that.
Like I was very happy with that decision.
The idea being every year that Jose Ramirez is playing for your professional baseball team, you owe it to yourself, to him, and to the fan base.
To do everything you possibly can to try and win the World Series.
He is singular, generational, the type of player that doesn’t usually stay in a market like Cleveland.
He steps up in every big moment for this team, and so then when they decided to keep Kwan and go for it.
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I was like, yes.
As for picks, I’m gonna say Cleveland, but I don’t know how, but we don’t know how they’ve done any of this.
You said before, how did they get here?
I mean, literally, how?
How?
Emphasis on how, because I’m still trying to figure that out.
I think Scoble dominates in game one with a hot take and wins, and then the Guardians win the next two, and it doesn’t matter.