DETROIT -- For a split second, as Cole Young seemingly hung in the air and stretched his glove at Kevin McGonigle's line drive, the Tigers seemed poised for another heartbreaker against the Mariners.
Even McGonigle, who wasn’t part of last year’s AL Division Series, feared it.
“I did think [about it],” McGonigle admitted. “I saw it right at him, so I was, 'Aw, is that going to be caught?' So I slowed down a little bit, which I shouldn't have.”
Maybe it was the McGonigoggles. Maybe it was the 12-degree launch angle or the 100.6 mph exit velocity McGonigle got from sending the 99.2 mph fastball from Mariners closer Andrés Muñoz back out. But while Young, the Mariners’ second baseman, got a piece of McGonigle’s line drive, he couldn’t catch it. All he could do was slow it down as it carried into right field, leaving no play at the plate as Zach McKinstry and Wenceel Pérez came home with the tying and winning runs.
“Just happy it got over him,” McGonigle said.
Eight months after the Tigers’ 2025 season ended in a 15-inning heartbreaker in Seattle, the regular-season rematch was that close. And the Tigers found the late-inning magic they needed to keep their 2026 season hopes alive.
No, Sunday’s 5-4 comeback win wasn’t win-or-go-home. They wouldn’t even have gone into sell mode had they suffered another series loss to a Mariners club with which they’ve developed a healthy rivalry, complete with hearty boos for M’s first baseman Josh Naylor all afternoon.
But in rallying from a three-run deficit at the seventh-inning stretch to take the game and the series, the Tigers not only clinched their first home series win since the start of May. They continued the momentum from their sweep of Tampa Bay in St. Petersburg from Monday-Wednesday to finish a 5-1 week for a Detroit club that a week ago had lost four in a row and had fallen 16 games under .500.
“Yeah, it’s huge,” McKinstry said. “So happy for Kevin there. It’s a huge win. We need every one we can get right now. It’s a huge series win. If we continue to do that, we’ll be in a good spot.”
The Tigers dominated the Rays, never trailing against the AL East leaders and coming alive at the plate. This weekend series was far more close, but it turned on the kind of plays that shaped Detroit’s 2024 late-season rally.
“We’ve played back-to-back series against really good teams, and you can see how small the margin is,” manager A.J. Hinch said. “I mean, it’s right there for us. We’re trying not to talk about what we’re not doing, or what we didn’t do, or how May went. We’re trying to focus on what we’re doing now and bringing this energy.”
While McGonigle’s first walk-off hit was the highlight, the plays that set it up were just about as close. If Pérez doesn’t keep his bat in the zone and connect with Cooper Criswell’s 0-2 changeup below the zone, sending a seventh-inning line drive over Naylor at first base and into the right-field corner for a two-run triple, the Tigers don’t have a one-run game.
At 1.13 feet, it was Pérez's lowest pitch for a base hit since his first month in the big leagues in 2024, according to Statcast.
“The difference in the game can be like a foot,” Hinch said. “Naylor doesn’t catch that ball because it’s just out past his glove. If the ball is hit a little bit lower, that turns into a double play, and we’re having a completely different press conference.”
Gabe Speier retired the side to keep the Mariners in front. But with a 4-3 game, the Tigers were in position to capitalize once Muñoz threw eight balls in a 10-pitch span, walking McKinstry and Pérez with one out in the ninth.
If Matt Vierling, who couldn’t drive in Pérez off Speier in the seventh, didn’t get enough of Muñoz’s 100 mph high fastball for a groundout to third, then the Tigers wouldn’t have had a chance to win it with a single. By avoiding a strikeout and moving both runners, he provided the kind of productive out the Tigers missed early in the season.
“That first [pitch], I felt the wind of the ball going by me,” Vierling said. “I was really trying to get a good pitch to hit. It got a point where it was just, ‘Alright, put the ball in play.’”
It put the Tigers’ star rookie in position. And he delivered.
“From the at-bats before me in that inning, I saw a lot of fastballs that were sprayed,” said McGonigle, whose fourth-inning home run was the Tigers’ lone tally before the rally. “With my approach, I was going in thinking fastball the whole at-bat.”