Hinch's aggressive 'pen usage works, but defensive decision looms large for Detroit

DETROIT – The chill in the air at Comerica Park on Wednesday night brought an October feel to a May divisional clash between the Tigers and Guardians. So did the way manager A.J. Hinch played it out for most of the night, which says a lot about Detroit's predicament even this early in the season, now amplified with Wednesday’s 3-2 loss.

It wasn’t “pitching chaos,” but Hinch used his bullpen with playoff-like urgency, from Kyle Finnegan’s fifth-inning entrance for the top of the Guardians' lineup to closer Kenley Jansen’s scoreless eighth inning against the same part of the order, ceding the ninth to Will Vest with a 1-0 lead.

Once the Guardians got back-to-back singles from Daniel Schneemann and Travis Bazzana, putting the tying run in scoring position with nobody out, the plot seemed clear for a team that thrives on putting the ball in play. Steven Kwan bunted the runners over, then Patrick Bailey focused on getting Schneemann home.

“Obviously with where we were, with them having used a lot of their bullpen and us not using very much of ours, we wanted to tie the game,” Guardians manager Stephen Vogt said. “Obviously, you want to score two runs if you can, but we wanted to get one to keep playing baseball.”

While the Guardians’ strategy was predictable, the Tigers’ strategy was not. Hinch played his infield back, willing to yield the tying run in order to keep the go-ahead run from coming home. It was an uncharacteristic move from a team that will play its infield in early, but a microcosm of the Tigers’ struggles over the last couple weeks.

“The hard part is, [the possibility of] going down 2-1 felt pretty defeating,” Hinch said. “At the end of the day, we had another at-bat, and we're going to get two rounds of at-bats for their one. And so, we're not going to lose the game there, not the way this season has gone, not the way this week has gone.

“What this team needed was to continue to play. That's the risk/reward.”

The Guardians took advantage, with Bailey grinding out a seven-pitch at-bat for a game-tying groundout to second. Yet the Tigers actually got the at-bats they wanted, virtually duplicating the situation in the bottom of the ninth after Erik Sabrowski walked Kevin McGonigle and Dillon Dingler to lead off the inning. But they couldn’t put a ball in play from there. Sabrowski struck out Riley Greene, then Colin Holderman fanned Matt Vierling and pinch-hitter Wenceel Pérez.

With a better functioning offense, the Tigers’ play-to-extend strategy might have worked. But their recent struggles to convert run-scoring opportunities was the flip side of the risk/reward strategy. When Zach McKinstry singled home Pérez to begin the bottom of the 10th, it marked the Tigers’ first hit with runners in scoring position since Spencer Torkelson’s walk-off hit last Friday against the Blue Jays, ending an 0-for-21 slump.

By that point, though, the Tigers needed two runs to tie. By sending the game to extras, the Guardians got the top of the order back up for the 10th. The group of hitters the Tigers had planned around all evening finally got them, with Angel Martínez and José Ramírez churning out RBI hits off Tyler Holton.

The Tigers couldn’t advance McKinstry after his 10th-inning hit. And when Guardians closer Cade Smith induced Colt Keith to pop out, he not only dropped Detroit (20-30) 8 1/2 games behind Cleveland (29-22) in the AL Central, he dropped the Tigers 10 games under .500 for the first time since Sept. 24, 2023, when Miguel Cabrera was entering the final week of his playing career.

“It’s tough,” catcher Jake Rogers said. “It’s not good baseball right now, and I think we all know that. I feel like we’re just kind of playing tight, not playing loose like we normally do, forcing things when we don’t need to force them.”

For everyone the Tigers are missing with a lengthy injured list, their struggles go beyond who’s not around. They’ve lost 13 of 15 since Tarik Skubal went on the injured list, but their pitching has stabilized in recent days, including 4 2/3 scoreless innings from Drew Anderson in a spot start Wednesday. But Detroit has scored 37 runs in that 15-game stretch, with just three games scoring four runs or more. The Tigers have scored nine runs over their current five-game losing streak.

“I love Tarik. I love what he brings to this team,” Hinch said. “I can’t really look back and pinpoint that time, because there’s some things that I think we can do better that precede that. It’s a convenient excuse if we want to use it, but it’s not a necessary excuse.”