Is Alex Bregman an option for Detroit Tigers at trade deadline?
Mike Ferrin, co-host of Power Alley on MLB Network Radio, explores the possibility of the Tigers trading for Alex Bregman this season.
The Tigers bullpen, after struggling recently, held off a late Guardians rally to secure the win.Will Vest earned the save, getting Kyle Manzardo to ground out with a runner on second and Jose Ramirez on deck.This was the Tigers’ first one-run victory since June 4.
CLEVELAND — Except for the heat, humidity and fireworks, it felt like October. Sounded like it, too.
Two outs. Ninth inning. Man on second. The Tigers-killer — Jose Ramirez — waiting on deck. The bullies from the other side of Lake Erie — comfortable at home — about to do it again.
Of course the house was packed. It was the Fourth of July. And a rivalry is brewing. Toss in all that recent history: the ALDS series last year, the Guardians’ four-game series win back in late May?
Yeah, this wasn’t just another regular-season game Friday night at Progressive Field. The math says all wins are the same in a 162-game season — human nature says otherwise.
The Detroit Tigers needed this. The bullpen needed this.
And so, Tigers right-hander Will Vest reached back, as his team held a 2-1 lead, and fired a 96.5 mph fastball for ball one. He’d just missed. If Kyle Manzardo was gonna beat him, he’d have to beat his best stuff.
It’d been like this for close to two hours — stretching back to the fourth inning, when the Tigers took the lead on a Zach McKinstry solo home run. The Guardians would threaten, the Tigers would make a pitch.
First returning right-hander Reese Olson, then left-hander Tyler Holton — in his best outing of the year — then right-hander Tommy Kahnle and then, finally, Vest.
He took the mound in the eighth with two outs and runners at the corners, then walked David Fry to load the bases.
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A hit and the game was likely over, Cleveland beats Detroit — again. A hit and the Tigers almost certainly lose three in a row, and four of five to the Guardians — and six of their last seven going back to the divisional series last October.
Before the game, Tigers manager A.J. Hinch talked about putting all that in the past, and about looking toward the future. He didn’t want to feed the rivalry, or Cleveland’s recent command of it. But there is manager-speak, and there is reality, and when the Guardians threatened in the late innings, the past was turning into the present … again.
Daniel Schneemann stepped to the plate and Vest threw an 89-mph slider down and in. The Guardians infielder couldn’t resist. He swung and hit a grounder to second. The Tigers escaped. Now they just needed three more outs.
Vest returned for the ninth. He struck out Bo Naylor and induced a soft fly to left from Angel Martinez. Finally, it looked like a relatively breezy inning — one out away.
Then Steven Kwan — a more recent Tigers-killer, going 11-for-21 in last year’s ALDS, then 5-for-14 in the first series this year — walked into the batter’s box and ripped a two-out double. That put Ramírez on deck.
“It (would’ve been) easy,” Hinch said, “to have it affect (us). But our guys fought the whole way.”
It came down to Manzardo. Vest started him off with that heater for ball one.
He followed with a slider. That just missed, too. Ball two.
Behind in the count, he unleashed another fastball. It scraped the top of the zone. Strike one.
The crowd, sensing another moment from its reigning AL Central champions, stood and roared. Vest countered with a changeup, down and away, a nasty change of pace in a nastier location. Manzardo reached … and hit a slow bouncer back to the mound. Vest gloved it and tossed it to first base for the out.
The Tigers had held on.
The defense — Wenceel Pérez cut down a run at the plate in the second inning with a laser from right field. The bats — Pérez tied the game with a solo shot in the third, setting up McKinstry for the go-ahead homer in the fourth. The pitching — after Olson’s start, the Tigers’ bullpen turned in 4⅔ scoreless innings with no margin for error.
It had been a while. The Tigers hadn’t won a one-run game this season since June 4, when they beat the Chicago White Sox in a rain-delayed affair in which they went ahead in the top of the eighth and held off the Sox for six outs.
“We worked hard for it,” Hinch said of Friday’s win. “We fall behind … this building … José Ramírez. There’s …”
Well, you get where he was going. For a moment, it felt inevitable. But then, these Tigers continue to surprise. Lose a couple to struggling Washington, follow it with a win in a jam-packed stadium on a night made for fireworks (both planned and spontaneous), holding onto a one-run lead for 18 long outs.
“Our guys fought the whole way,” Hinch said. “And we came out with a really big win.”
Contact Shawn Windsor: swindsor@freepress.com. Follow him @shawnwindsor.
This story was updated to add a gallery.