After leaving 15 runners on base, Tigers facing winner-take-all Game 3

CLEVELAND -- For most of his Tigers tenure, Javier Báez has taken a free-swinging, hard-hitting approach to run production. In recent weeks, the All-Star has been more pragmatic, staying back on pitches, sending ground balls through the infield and taking the RBIs.

As Báez stepped to the plate with the bases loaded in the fourth inning on Wednesday afternoon, getting an opportunity thanks to back-to-back two-out walks that Dillon Dingler and Zach McKinstry took against Guardians starter Tanner Bibee, he wasn’t looking for a highlight. He was looking for the run, whatever it took to get it.

“Honestly, seeing the situation, me with the bases loaded, I got closer to the plate,” he said. “If I get hit, we score, and I pretty much made him throw me a fastball. We’ve got to compete; that’s my thing.”

Báez saw the 0-1 fastball on the outer half of the plate and crushed it, sending a ground ball through the middle with a 103.1 mph exit velocity. Riley Greene trotted home with what would be the Tigers’ lone run.

That Báez turned out to be the calmest bat at the plate in run-scoring situations says a lot about his shift in approach. It also says a lot about the Tigers, and why they now face a winner-take-all Game 3 in their American League Wild Card Series against the Guardians.

Not only did Báez produce Detroit’s lone run in Game 2, he had the team’s lone hit with an RBI opportunity. Once Dingler lined out to first baseman C.J. Kayfus with the bases loaded to close the Tigers’ 6-1 loss, they finished 1-for-15 with runners in scoring position. Their 15 runners left on base fell only one shy of the Major League record for a nine-inning postseason game, set by the 2009 Dodgers in Game 1 of their National League Division Series against the Cardinals.

The Dodgers won that game because they supplemented their two RBI hits with a sacrifice fly and a bases-loaded hit-by-pitch. The Tigers, who bunted home the go-ahead run in Game 1, had none of that.

“We have to take care of our situations when we’re on offense,” said Báez, whose team is 2-for-23 with runners in scoring position this series.

It spoke to the urgency of the Tigers’ search for offense when manager A.J. Hinch brought Jahmai Jones, who has found a longstanding Major League role for the first time in his career by crushing left-handed pitching this season, to the plate with runners at the corners and one out in the seventh inning of what was then a tie game. He pinch-hit for Greene, the everyday presence in the middle of the Tigers’ order.

It marked the sixth time this season that Greene had been pinch-hit for but the first in a game that was decided by five runs or fewer.

“If you look at what Jahmai has done against lefties, we had to take the shot,” said Hinch, noting Jones’ .970 OPS against lefties in the regular season. “You saw the same game I did. Up to that point, I think we were at double-digit guys on base and almost all of them in scoring position. So I didn't think that [Guardians manager Stephen Vogt] thought I was going to hit for Greeney. They'd brought the lefty in for him in that spot. We needed the ball in play.”

Jones is nicknamed the Lefty Killer, according to Greene, for a reason. He also hit .407 with runners in scoring position in the regular season, with more walks (seven) than strikeouts (six). He nearly drew the walk, but lefty Tim Herrin’s big, looping breaking ball coaxed a called strike at the bottom of the zone from plate umpire Adam Beck, drawing a reaction from Jones as he took a few steps to first base. Herrin put another curveball in nearly the same spot, and Jones chased it for strike three.

It was the theme of the day, and it could be the Tigers’ undoing if they can’t produce more in Game 3.

“We were one swing away from it being a different baseball game,” Greene said. “It is what it is.”

Even when they got the swing from Báez in the fourth inning, the results were mixed. Dingler was right behind Greene heading home, but center fielder Chase DeLauter threw out Zach McKinstry going first to third. Not only did José Ramírez tag McKinstry before he could touch third, he did so before Dingler crossed the plate, denying Detroit a go-ahead run.

“We hustle,” Báez said. “We’ve been doing this the past few years. I think we’re one of the best teams in baseball going first to third, and I hit the ball pretty good to center.”

Don’t expect the baserunning to change. But the at-bats with runners on base have to.

“We’ve got to come back tomorrow and fight,” Báez said. “If we get our situation done on offense, the game’s going to be different.”