As the ball jumped off Spencer Torkelson’s bat and raced down the right-field line, it looked like a special night — and season — in Seattle might be about to slip away.
The Tigers’ first baseman laced a double to score two runs and tie the game in the top of the eighth inning of ALDS Game 2, a dramatic counter to the Mariners’ efforts to record the final few outs required to even the series after they dropped Game 1 in frustrating fashion in 11 innings. With Torkelson’s swing, a 2-0 lead earned against the mighty Tarik Skubal and secured through seven innings vanished, and the prospect of losing both home games to open the ALDS started to creep into the minds of Mariners fans long conditioned to expect the worst.
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But the postseason is all about how teams respond after absorbing a devastating blow. So once reliever Matt Brash was able to keep the game tied at two heading to the bottom of the eighth, the stage was set for Seattle’s two biggest stars to deliver a rebuttal.
For the second night in a row, Tigers reliever Kyle Finnegan entered for the bottom of the eighth in a 2-2 game with the top of the Mariners’ lineup scheduled to hit. In Game 1, Finnegan surrendered a two-out single to Cal Raleigh but struck out Julio Rodriguez with a nasty splitter to end the frame and keep the game deadlocked. In Game 2, Raleigh and Rodriguez found the upper hand.
Following a Randy Arozarena strikeout leading off the inning, Raleigh smoked a first-pitch splitter from Finnegan into the right-field corner for a double. The ball came off Raleigh’s bat at 110.9 mph — the hardest-hit ball of the evening for either team — and restored optimism in the stadium that, unlike the night before, this close contest might fall in the home team’s favor.
Two pitches later, amid a chorus of “JULIO” chants, Rodriguez did his part to ensure that would be the case. He ripped a double to left field to drive in Raleigh and nab a 3-2 lead that would hold for an enormous victory — the franchise’s first home postseason win since Game 5 of the 2001 ALDS.
“That’s kind of the nature of playoff baseball,” manager Dan Wilson said afterward. “There’s back-and-forth. There’s momentum shifts. I gave our guys a ton of credit. This was a bounce-back game for us, and they did just that. And to lose the lead late like that and to come right back and score a run was huge. I thought those at-bats by Julio and Cal were tremendous and just a huge momentum shift back to our dugout.”
Raleigh and Rodriguez collaborating on the crucial go-ahead run represented a brilliant encore to what the top-tier duo accomplished in Game 1, when they notched three hits apiece and Rodriguez drove in both Mariners runs, including a solo homer.
But the problem for Seattle in the opener was that those contributions accounted for almost the entirety of the offense — batters not named Rodriguez or Raleigh combined to go 0-for-28 with two walks — and that proved woefully insufficient in the extra-innings defeat. If the Mariners were going to bounce back from that difficult Game 1 loss, other bats needed to step up in Game 2, particularly against a pitcher of Skubal’s caliber.
To say Jorge Polanco merely “stepped up” would be quite the understatement.
It didn’t happen right away. Facing Skubal in the first inning, Polanco swung at a first-pitch fastball up-and-in and popped out harmlessly to third base to end the inning. But in the bottom of the fourth, Polanco found himself in a favorable 2-0 count after Skubal sailed a first-pitch fastball outside and couldn’t quite land a changeup at the bottom of the zone. Skubal’s next pitch was a slider over the heart of the plate, and Polanco didn’t miss it, scalding a line drive to left field that snuck over the wall and into the Mariners’ bullpen for a 1-0 lead.
That swing alone felt monumental, considering the guy on the mound, but Polanco wasn’t finished. Skubal continued to carve through the rest of the Seattle lineup until a third encounter with Polanco in the seventh inning. After falling into a 1-2 hole, Polanco carefully watched two enticing changeups fall below the zone to work a full count. Rather than try a third changeup or the slider Polanco crushed in the previous at-bat, Skubal came with the heat — and Polanco was ready. Skubal unleashed a sinker at 99.1 mph, but it was right down the middle, and Polanco pulverized it, sending another ball soaring beyond the left-field fence for his second home run of the game and a 2-0 Mariners lead.
“He’s such a good baseball player,” Rodriguez said postgame of Polanco. “He’s a grinder. All year long, he’s been having great at-bats, coming up clutch in so many situations. And today, to have hit two homers against the best pitcher in the game right now, it’s awesome. There are not enough words to describe what he means to the team.”
Skubal recalibrated after Polanco’s second blast to record four more outs and complete seven frames. Against the rest of Seattle’s lineup, he looked like his dominant self, racking up nine strikeouts. And for Skubal’s two missteps to come against the same hitter marked an ultra-rare sequence for the spectacular left-hander: It was the first time in more than four years that he had allowed two home runs to one batter in the same game. In other words, since Skubal became this version of Tarik Skubal, no batter had done what Polanco did Sunday.
“You know, you don’t see the same guy get good swings against Tarik very often,” Tigers manager A.J. Hinch conceded afterward.
With some breathing room afforded by Polanco’s solo shots off Skubal, a trio of Mariners pitchers combined to blank Detroit’s bats through the first seven frames. Veteran right-hander Luis Castillo got the start and overcame a few lapses in command to keep Detroit off the board in the early going. Castillo did not allow a hit until there were two outs in the fifth inning, at which point he made way for left-hander Gabe Speier, who struck out the dangerous Kerry Carpenter with runners on the corners to end the threat.
Speier returned to the mound to retire the side in order in the sixth before handing the ball to another unheralded yet vital bullpen arm, Eduard Bazardo, who tossed a scoreless seventh. After Detroit tied the game vs. Brash in the eighth, closer Andres Muñoz slammed the door with a perfect ninth just 24 hours after he recorded six high-stress outs in Game 1.
Between the Tigers’ extra-innings triumph in the series opener and the daunting challenge of facing Skubal in Game 2, Detroit seemed to deal a swift, seismic blow to Seattle’s morale. But thanks to Polanco’s stunning performance and Raleigh and Rodriguez’s late rally, suddenly, this series has become a best-of-three.
The action now shifts to Detroit for Game 3 on Tuesday, marking a return home for the Tigers after more than two weeks on the road. It’s safe to say the vibes will be drastically different than the last time the Tigers played at Comerica Park, when Detroit finished its regular-season home slate with seven consecutive losses, an ugly skid that contributed to its ceding the AL Central title to Cleveland.
While that historic collapse remains part of this Tigers team’s story, they can make it a footnote with a memorable run deep into October. Game 2 marked a disappointing outcome for Detroit but also a hard-fought defeat against a quality opponent looking to write its own postseason story.
If the nature of these first two games is any indication, whichever club emerges victorious from this series is going to remember it for a long time.
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