Weekend of excitement, celebration for Tigers

This story was excerpted from Jason Beck’s Tigers Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

The Tigers enter play Friday within five games of the Twins for the third and final American League Wild Card spot. Two teams stand between Detroit: Mariners and Red Sox. The Mariners moved a half-game ahead of the Tigers by being idle on Thursday, while the Tigers saw their winning streak end at six games with a 3-0 loss to the Angels. The Red Sox, 3 1/2 games back of the Twins and 1 1/2 in front of the Tigers, are the visitors for this weekend’s three-game series surrounding the ’84 festivities.

It’s not an elimination series — the Twins host the Blue Jays this weekend — but it’s at least a chance for the Tigers to close in on and perhaps surpass the closest Wild Card challenger. It’s also a chance for the Tigers to prove their recent form can stand the test of contending intensity.

“It’s a big series,” catcher Jake Rogers said before Thursday’s game. “I heard someone say it [Wednesday], how close we are, and I had no idea. Some guys look at it, some guys don’t, I guess. We’re just having fun right now. We’re winning.”

The Tigers have quietly climbed back into the race in part by playing like they have nothing to lose, beating the Angels, White Sox, Cubs, Yankees and Mariners in the process. The one opponent in that group that could be considered a direct competitor to contention would be the Mariners. Now that they have another, the Tigers are trying to keep that same loose outlook.

“It’s obviously fun,” said Tarik Skubal, scheduled to start Saturday night. “It’ll give us energy and a spark to play the games later in the season when everyone’s probably not feeling as good as they were in the spring. It’s why you play the game. But I think when you get caught up in that, it can take away from what you need to do. We need to win today’s game. The standings don’t matter if you don’t win.”

They’re doing so with a club that has very little experience in a race like this, at least at the Major League level. When the Tigers traded Mark Canha, Andrew Chafin, Jack Flaherty and Carson Kelly at last month’s Trade Deadline, they shed much of the postseason experience in the clubhouse. The season-ending hip injury that Javier Baez suffered furthered that green factor.

In their place have been a handful of young players, some of them getting their first taste of the Majors. The only players on Detroit’s active roster in their thirties are pitchers Kenta Maeda and Shelby Miller. The only other player with postseason experience is Matt Vierling with the 2022 Phillies. Some players have postseason experience in the Minors; Jace Jung and Brant Hurter were part of an Eastern League championship run at Double-A Erie last year.

“We might be young, but I think that a lot of these guys have played together,” Skubal said. “I think that gives us a little bit of experience, just knowing each other. None of us have been in a playoff game, but we all know each other and we’re all pretty close, so I think that’s in our favor.”

The Red Sox and Tigers split a four-game series at Fenway Park back in May. Flaherty took a no-hit bid into the seventh inning of the series opener, finishing with 6 2/3 scoreless innings of one-hit ball and nine strikeouts in a 5-0 win on May 30, before Tanner Houck and Cooper Criswell outpitched Maeda and Reese Olson the next couple days. The Tigers won the series finale, 8-4, with a four-run 10th inning.

Casey Mize, who got a no-decision in that finale, is poised to return from the injured list after a strained left hamstring and start Friday’s series opener. Meanwhile, the Tigers get rematches against Houck (who starts for Boston on Friday) and Nick Pivetta (who starts Saturday) with a different lineup than they took to Boston.

Kerry Carpenter, who missed that series with a stress fracture in his back, is healthy and producing. So is Spencer Torkelson, who played sparingly in Boston before being sent to Triple-A Toledo. Parker Meadows, who was in Triple-A Toledo at the time, has become a force atop the Tigers lineup, while Colt Keith has matured beyond the three months between the series.