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Nobody likes a quick exit from the playoffs, but a brief October cameo would have been an especial humiliation for the 2025 Detroit Tigers. After spending much of the season fighting for the league’s best record, and collecting a 14-game divisional lead at one point, the Tigers went nine games under .500 in the second half. Not only was that bad enough to throw away the division title, Detroit nearly missed the playoffs altogether, only squeezing in thanks to a tiebreak advantage over the Houston Astros. So Thursday’s 6-3 win in Game 3 of the Wild Card series must come as a relief, especially given the measure of revenge that comes with beating Cleveland.
Jack Flaherty got the call in Game 3, his first playoff appearance for the Tigers. There had to be some trepidation about Flaherty, given that his last quality start came back in mid-August. While his 4 2/3 innings of work were short on highlight moments, and he allowed three 100 mph liners that fortunately found leather instead of grass or dirt, Flaherty confined the hits to two-out rallies, leaving Cleveland little room for any bunting or other little-ball shenanigans until the fourth inning. A George Valera double and a José Ramírez single got the Guardians on the board in the fourth, but the danger ended when J-Ram was caught stealing and Chase DeLauter hit into a double play. Flaherty did at least avoid angering the cruel deity that governs predictions; last offseason, he famously said that the Tigers would have defeated the Guardians in last year’s playoffs if he hadn’t been traded to the Dodgers at the deadline.
With Tarik Skubal pitching into the eighth on Tuesday, manager A.J. Hinch was quick to utilize his bullpen thereafter, first with Casey Mize in Game 2 and now Flaherty after 74 pitches in Game 3. While it didn’t surprise me that Flaherty was lifted in the fifth, I was a bit more surprised by who replaced him, with Kyle Finnegan coming in and facing all lefties, rather than Tyler Holton (though the latter did come in later for a scoreless bottom of the seventh).
Slade Cecconi’s outing was a short one, and while he was hardly a disaster on the mound, consecutive third-inning singles from Gleyber Torres and Parker Meadows caused Cleveland manager Stephen Vogt to make an early call to the pen. In came Tim Herrin against the lefty Kerry Carpenter, whom Cecconi had tried to pitch around in the first inning, ultimately walking him. Herrin did allow an RBI double to Carpenter to open the scoring, but he retired Wenceel Pérez and Spencer Torkelson to limit the damage to a single run.
The 1-1 game held until a sixth-inning homer from Dillon Dingler, who was born just an hour’s drive from Cleveland and played baseball for The Ohio State.
The seventh turned out to be Cleveland’s annus horribilis. (I’m not sure what the Latin word for “inning” could possibly be.) Javier Báez started things off with a double for Detroit. Meadows got him to third on a bunt single that Erik Sabrowski didn’t get a play on quite fast enough.
After Gleyber Torres grounded out and Meadows advanced to second, Hunter Gaddis intentionally walked Carpenter to set up the force play. Three singles drove in the runners, leaving Cleveland facing a daunting 6-1 deficit going into their half of the seventh.
Cleveland’s last, best opportunity to make up the now-five-run deficit came in the eighth. Brayan Rocchio singled with one out, and a double from Steven Kwan drove him to third. Ramírez hit a fairly routine 3-1 grounder to first base, but Will Vest deflected the toss from Torkelson rather than catching it, allowing both runners to score. While everyone remembers the times that greed is good on the bases, few remember the times that the run-avarice is severely punished. Ramírez provided an example of the latter, as Vest’s redemption throw to second nailed him. It was J-Ram’s second out on the bases in this pivotal game.
Vest stayed in the game for the ninth, and after three groundouts, Cleveland’s season was over.
The ending for the Guardians may not feel great, but just getting here was an impressive feat for a team that didn’t get above .500 permanently until September. Exactly one month ago, the FanGraphs playoff probability for the Guardians had them at 2.5%, or about one in 40, just to make the playoffs.
By winning the ALDS, the Tigers have effectively “reset” their second half of the season, and are right back where they would have been if not for the late-season struggles. While the Mariners will be favored, no team that starts Skubal twice in five games can fairly be called a long shot.
