CLEVELAND -- José Ramírez had a premonition that was also a lesson.
“With two strikes,” he told Brayan Rocchio before the bottom of the eighth, “look for the fastball in.”
Rocchio got it. A middle-in, 99.9 mph heater from reliever Troy Melton. And he got all of it.
With one swing from the man known now and perhaps forever as “Playoff Rocchio,” the man who brings us “Rocchtober,” the man who “Rocchs” the Tigers’ world, we have ourselves an American League Wild Card Series Game 3 -- and a fitting finale to the brutal battle the Guardians and Tigers have been waging against each other in recent weeks.
If Rocchio’s tie-breaking solo shot in the eighth inning of what turned out to be a 6-1 win for the Guards in Game 2 on Wednesday afternoon felt big in the moment, it was actually even bigger than you think.
This building -- Progressive née Jacobs Field -- has seen an extensive amount of crazy comebacks by the host club in postseason baseball through the years, and the Cleveland franchise dates back to 1901. But this was the first time in team history that a player hit a go-ahead homer in the eighth inning or later when facing elimination.
“We just play, and we realize we're going to play until the last out,” Rocchio said through interpreter Agustin Rivero of this Guardians team that pulled itself off the midseason mat and keeps living to fight another day. “Even if we're down by 10, we'll know we'll continue to try to play that type of ball.”
Rocchio seems to be taking on the role of brand ambassador for a Guardians team that punches up and somehow keeps outplaying its dismal offensive profile.
To look at the statistical track record of Rocchio, a 24-year-old native of Venezuela, and call him a light-hitting middle infielder is both accurate and insulting.
Because when he does hit, it’s pretty heavy.
In last year’s ALDS against these Tigers, Rocchio went off, slashing .375/.444/.500 with two doubles across the five games -- quite a cry from a .614 OPS in the season proper that was the worst in MLB for any primary shortstop with at least 400 plate appearances.
Then, this year, Rocchio hit himself out of the starting shortstop position entirely, was sent down to Triple-A Columbus in May and emerged as the regular at second base in the second half, just to torment the Tigers again.
How do we explain this?
“Too many [expletive] balls down the middle,” one Tigers member put it.
Fair enough. But it’s one thing for a career .222 hitter with an OPS+ 25 percent below league average to get those balls down the middle and another for him to actually do something with them.
That Rocchio did something with the pitch he got in Game 2 was a credit, in part, to Ramírez’s coaching.
“When these young guys really focus and pay attention to the game,” Ramírez said, “we score a lot of runs.”
And it was a credit to Rocchio’s improved mindset after his time in the Triple-A wilderness. The Guardians had watched him eat himself alive when struggles mounted. They wanted him to stop the mental spiral.
Something must have clicked. Rocchio had a completely overmatched .165/.235/.198 slash line in 35 games prior to getting sent down. After his return, he slashed .257/.310/.391 in 80 games, capping his and the Guardians’ regular season by poking one off the foul pole in his walk-off winner on the day Cleveland clinched the AL Central.
If the Guardians clinch this round, it will have happened in part because Rocchio smoked the fifth-fastest pitch any Cleveland player has homered off in the pitch tracking era (regular or postseason), dating back to 2008.
On a day in which a fierce wind was blowing in from right, that jolt was no joke.
“Funny enough,” said Rocchio, “when the game started, I was thinking, with this wind, we have to put the ball on the ground, try to get ground balls. When I get that mindset to get the ball on the ground is when I get better and better results.”
Rocchio seems to leave the ground when October arrives. It makes him an odd X-factor in this contact-oriented, power-deprived lineup.
“This is competing time,” he said. “There's no self-awareness. It's being [as] competitive as you can.”
“Playoff Rocchio” seems to be morphing from a fun internet meme to a real thing. And thanks to his big swing, the playoffs continue in Cleveland.