Detroit – Things just keep getting tighter and tighter. There’s no denying that.
For the second night in a row, the Guardians made the biggest plays defensively and got the biggest hits and they blanked the Tigers, 4-0, in front of 34,415 at Comerica Park Wednesday night.
The lead in the Central Division is down to 4.5 games, the closest anybody has been to the Tigers since May 20. They hold a 2.5-game lead over the Astros for the second seed in the American League.
There is some dispute, though, whether this is cause for stress or for added adrenaline and excitement.
“This is an incredible stretch of games we have in front of us to play our way into the playoffs,” manager AJ Hinch said. “This is what we play the whole season for. Is it excitable? Of course, it’s pressure-packed. This is playoff baseball.”
Last year the Tigers were hitting this stretch in the midst of a 33-13 run. This year, they are 26-29 since the All-Star break and have lost 14 of the last 21. From the outside, it feels fraught.
“I don’t think you have to concede to that,” Hinch said. “The way you talk about it, it’s as if it’s this mountain that we can’t climb or that we haven’t climbed before and it’s not true. For us to understand where we are and have a lot of fun doing it doesn’t mean there isn’t a lot at stake. This is Major League baseball.”
The Guardians, winners of six straight, are playing with the same verve, the same freedom the Tigers showed last September, and through the first five months of this season.
BOX SCORE: Guardians 4, Tigers 0
Their four runs came on three two-out hits, by George Valera in the third, pinch-hitter Angel Martinez in the sixth and, on a two-strike pitch with two outs in the top of the night, by Bo Naylor.
“Tonight we walked eight guys,” Hinch said. “We gave up extra bases. And on the flip side, we had six or seven three-ball counts where we chased outside the strike zone.”
Three of the eight hitters the Tigers’ walked scored.
The Tigers, meanwhile, were 0-for-8 with runners in scoring position. They only managed to get three runners into scoring position.
“I thought we swung the bats better than the shutout indicates,” Hinch said. “But it doesn’t matter because the shutout is the result.”
Hinch was asked if the over-aggressive swings and chasing outside the zone were a by-product of the hitters trying to do too much.
“First off, Gavin Williams (Guardians starter) is nasty,” Hinch said. “Those breaking balls are real, legit chase pitches and he’s throwing them off 100 (mph fastballs). But that’s the essence of the competition. There’s a reason we preach controlling the strike zone. That’s where the competition is.
“And they won a lot of at-bats, including two-strike hits, and they capitalize on the walks.”
For the second straight night, the Tigers hit a lot of loud outs.
Guardians left fielder Steven Kwan saved two runs with long running catches in deep left-center. He took extra bases away from Zach McKinstry with a runner on in the second inning and did the same to Dillon Dingler in the fourth.
“Steven Kwan, god, that guy,” Hinch said. “I don’t know how many votes he’s going to get but he’s going to get a lot of them in terms of putting some gold (glove) in his hand.”
Williams continued his mastery over the Tigers, blanking them on three hits over five innings with nine strikeouts. He hasn’t allowed the Tigers to score in 20 straight innings dating to July 25, 2024.
They did make him work, though. Riley Greene saw 22 pitches in his first two at-bats, striking out in 12 pitches and walking in 10. Williams needed 49 pitches to complete two innings.
Thus, the short outing.
“It’s the game of baseball,” said Greene, who had a potential RBI single stolen by a diving catch by Nolan Jones in the sixth. “You can’t really control if they catch the baseball or not. We can only control if we have good at-bats or not and swing at good pitches. I don’t think we had bad at-bats. I thought we swung it good.
“We just hit the ball at people and they made plays.”
The Tigers produced just one hit against a quintet of Guardians relievers.
“Those guys are never going to roll over,” Tigers’ starter Jack Flaherty said of the Guardians. “That team is going to fight to the end and they are showing that in this series. They’ve come out and made every big play and every big swing.”
Before the game, Hinch was asked about what unlocks the good version of Flaherty.
“He needs a certain amount of emotion to pitch and a certain among of edge,” he said. “When he finds that perfect blend, the compete button is really good.”
Flaherty wore that compete button out Wednesday.
He started the game with six straight outs, including getting a called third strike on Jose Ramirez with a 95-mph heater. But the next three innings were a grind and as his command grew less precise.
“They put together some good at-bats,” Flaherty said. “The walks hurt me. They hurt me throughout the rest of the game. I put myself in harm’s way.”
A pair of walks in the third set up a two-out RBI single by Valera. And that was the only run on the board for five innings.
“But he made the biggest pitches at the biggest moment,” Hinch said of Flaherty.
That happened in the fifth when he struck out Kyle Manzardo with the bases loaded, after he fell behind in the count 3-1.
“When he was able to get Manzardo out with the bases loaded, that was just as pivotal to the game in terms of setting us up and you could get. It felt like that was going to be the push to get us in a better position.”
Flaherty beat Manzardo with a pair of challenge fastballs, 94 mph.
“He’d seen a lot of breaking balls at that point in the game,” he said. “I really wanted the 2-1 curveball. I felt like that was a pitch he wasn’t going to pull the trigger on, but I left it arm-side. It’s just a point in the game when you have to make pitches.”
Flaherty ended up throwing 95 pitches in five innings, 53 strikes and 42 balls. He threw first-pitch strikes to just 10 of 21 hitters. Labor-intensive, for sure, but the Guardians mustered only three hits off him.
“We’ve got to continue to fight back,” Flaherty said. “They’ve brough a lot of fight into these first two games. With where we are at, they’ve shown a lot of fight. We have to show a little fight back.”
The Tigers will send ace Tarik Skubal to the mound Thursday afternoon to try to salvage the finale.
@cmccosky
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