When you really get down to it, every single baseball game is a composite of discrete events. The team that makes the most of the 27 outs allotted to them wins, the other team loses. Often, the final result hinges on just one or two of those individual matchups, with less than a handful of at-bats deciding a game that’s otherwise indistinguishable.
In April, losing to a team that has an 11th inning rally isn’t a big deal. If you have the winning run thrown out at home plate in the eighth inning in May, you go home and you go to sleep and you wake up and play again the next day. These things happen in baseball over and over again and if you can’t accept them, you can’t be a baseball player or fan.
In October, though? It’s all different. Through four games in the ALCS, the Tigers and Rangers have mostly been even. The Rangers won Game 1 by a run and they won Game 2 in 11 innings. The Tigers took home Game 3 by a three runs, but the game was close until the seventh inning. Not much separated these two teams through three games.
Accordingly, not much separted the Tigers and Rangers in Game 4, either. The Tigers took a 2-0 lead on a Miguel Cabrera double. The Rangers took their own lead with a string of hits in the sixth inning. The Tigers tied it up again with a Brandon Inge homer. Both teams left runners on base and squandered opportunites to seize the lead (or, if you like, both teams escaped jams to keep the game tied). Like the first part of the series, it was the sort of back and forth baseball that you expect from the ALCS.
With one out in the eighth inning, though, Ron Washington made a decision that most managers wouldn’t make. He elected to walk the red-hot Cabrera with the bases loaded and only one out. When Washington ordered the walk, Cabrera was the go-ahead run. The run that would likely even the series for the Tigers with Justin Verlander on the mound in Game 5. Washington put him on anyway, taking his chances with Victor Martinez and the rest of the Tigers’ lineup. Martinez stepped up to the plate and lined a single into right field that moved Cabrera to third. The go-ahead run was on third with one out in the bottom of the eighth inning, all because Ron Washington didn’t trust Mike Adams to hold Miguel Cabrera to less than a single.
It seemed like a slam dunk for the Tigers at that point. Get Cabrera home, bring Valverde in, and even the series up. Delmond Young, the ALDS hero, stepped up to the plate and hit a pop-up to right field that seemed awfully shallow, especially with Nelson Cruz in right. Gene Lamont sent Cabrera home anyway. Cruz’s throw beat him by ten feet, Mike Napoli held onto the ball through a violent collision with Cabrera, and the Rangers ended the eight inning tied.
What happens if Napoli drops the ball? If Cruz double-clutches? If Cabrera slides around the tag? If Lamont holds Cabrera and Alex Avila follows Young’s flyout with a single? All of those things could’ve happened, but they didn’t. Cruz followed up his laser throw with a three-run homer in the 11th, and the Rangers won what had been an impossibly close game by a big magin, 7-3.
That’s this ALCS in a nutshell. Every single game has been close, hinging on just one or two moments, and in those moments it’s been the Rangers that have come up with the big hits, the big throws, the big catches. This series could be even, it could be 3-1 in favor of the Tigers. It’s not, though. The Rangers have a 3-1 lead, and that’s because they’ve come up with the big plays. The plays that are big in June, but huge in October.
No matter what, the Tigers are paddling upstream now, and the Rangers are just one win away from getting a chance to avenge their 2010 World Series loss.
