The Detroit Tigers earned some respect, even if they lost to the Seattle Mariners and fell short of the American League Championship Series.
The Tigers of 2025 will be remembered for blowing a record 15 1/2-game lead to the Cleveland Guardians in the AL Central, but they also didn’t let that unfortunate truth end their season. Staving off elimination multiple times, the Tigers came back to beat the Guardians in the AL Wild Card round, and they kept pushing the Mariners to the brink in Game 5 of the AL Division Series.
They just couldn’t get the one more hit they needed to extend their season, falling 3-2 to the Mariners in 15 innings Friday night.
In the grand scheme of baseball postseason history, Tigers-Mariners was perhaps as frustrating as it was exhilarating. A little less suffering and a little more clutch hitting at T-Mobile Park should have been in order. But maybe the pitchers just wouldn’t allow it.
Left-hander Tarik Skubal pitched as well as anyone could, and he pitched as much as he could, mowing down the Mariners with 13 strikeouts over six innings. Tigers manager A.J. Hinch told reporters Skubal “emptied the tank” after the sixth. Throwing 99 total pitches isn’t sexy closure, historically speaking, and it’s irritating to old heads who demand pitching lines like that of Jack Morris in Game 7 the 1991 World Series, but it’s what Skubal had to give at maximum effort.
What he couldn’t do: Get himself an RBI.
Mariners pitchers had something to say about the Tigers going 1-for-9 with runners in scoring position, along with Detroit’s general inability to get another big hit no matter where any potential baserunners stood.
No single Mariners pitcher was Skubal’s equal, but manager Dan Wilson also used three different pitchers from the starting rotation to get his team through Game 5. Right-hander George Kirby allowed a run and three hits over the first five innings, and Logan Gilbert tossed two scoreless innings after Mariners closer Andres Muñoz had finished the ninth.
The last Mariners starting pitcher standing: right-hander Luis Castillo, who had been penciled in to start Game 1 of the ALCS against the Toronto Blue Jays on Sunday night. Castillo, the M’s seventh pitcher, retired Detroit’s final four batters.
Another starting pitcher, Bryce Miller, was said to be in the bullpen and standing by. Bryan Woo would have been too, probably, but he’s still recovering from a pectoral muscle strain and wasn’t ready. It was literally all hands on deck for the Mariners.
Hinch resorted to using Jack Flaherty, who like Skubal made 31 starts in the regular season. Flaherty battled command issues to get through two scoreless relief innings. Keider Montero and Troy Melton, who made a combined 16 starts in the regular season, put together three scoreless relief innings.
Tigers pitchers issued a combined seven walks, but allowed only eight hits (six of which were singles) over 14 1/3 innings. Each of the bases on balls came after Skubal left the game.
And to all the pundits, professional and otherwise, calling for more sacrifice bunt attempts — do you really want both lineups to make more outs? On purpose?
The Tigers might have seemed like Skubal and 25 other guys, but you don’t go through an entire MLB regular season having the best record in the league at some point during every month if you have only one player.
The Tigers weren’t good enough to get where they wanted to go. The World Series should be the standard, Skubal pointed out in his postgame comments. But the Tigers also were a heck of a lot more than the team that blew a 15 1/2 game lead.
Now, if replicating Skubal in a lab won’t do the trick, how about cloning Kerry Carpenter?
