DETROIT — Kerry Carpenter walked toward the shower Thursday night with a slight limp. He wore dark blue shorts with a black sleeve covering his left leg.
One moment, the Detroit Tigers designated hitter was wheeling around third, headed toward the go-ahead run in a spirited October affair.
The next, Carpenter grimaced and came up limping toward the plate. He hopped off the field after scoring. He injured his left hamstring and his status is unclear.
“Anytime a player like him has to leave the game, it’s concerning,” manager A.J. Hinch said after the game, “but I’m going to hold off any thoughts until the doctors give me an update and he gets imaging and all the things that we need to do prior to Saturday.”
A half-inning after Carpenter’s worrisome injury, the Tigers still held a one-run lead and seemed headed to victory in Game 4 of their American League Division Series. Then everything changed in the top of the seventh, when David Fry blasted a two-out, two-strike, two-run pinch hit home run to put the Cleveland Guardians ahead. The Tigers went on to lose 5-4, sending this series to a decisive Game 5 on Saturday in Cleveland.
Carpenter, the hero of Game 2 and the team’s most fearsome left-handed bat, dressed at his locker but was unavailable to reporters after the game.
Across the room, Beau Brieske relitigated the pitch that swung the momentum and put the Tigers’ backs against the wall once again. The right-handed reliever who has come through in so many big spots, the 27th-round pick who amped his fastball to triple digits, who revamped his slider and used his lethal changeup to help will the Tigers this far, got ahead on Fry 0-2. One strike away from the Tigers taking a lead into the eighth, Fry fouled off a fastball, then took two pitches to run the count to 2-2.
“Just trying to find the putaway pitch,” Brieske said.
The putaway pitch was supposed to go up and away. Brieske yanked the ball down and over the middle.
“I missed in a spot that is his honey hole,” Brieske said.
Thursday? Fry Day.#ForTheLand | #GuardsBall pic.twitter.com/FuK5rqZi7S
— Cleveland Guardians (@CleGuardians) October 11, 2024
There were 303 pitches thrown in Thursday’s game, but that singular one was the biggest moment in a topsy-turvy game where the Tigers went from knocking on the door of the ALCS to one more loss away from vacation. In the clubhouse after the game, first baseman Spencer Torkelson rejected the notion of shock as this one slipped away. The Tigers and Guardians know each other well. They fought each other hard all year. The Tigers speak of their opponents with competitive respect rather than bad-blood resentment.
“You know they’re not gonna just fold,” Torkelson said. “That would have been their last game. They’re not gonna give up, and they’re gonna keep swinging.”
Such is the nature of baseball this time of year. The Tigers had their usual big swings from random places: An opposite-field homer from Zach McKinstry, the pinch hit blooper from Wenceel Pérez that scored Carpenter. Hinch managed another masterclass and held the edge over Cleveland counterpart Stephen Vogt for much of the night.
But when you lose in October, the game’s inflection points still sting. Should the Tigers have pitched to José Ramírez in the third? Probably. Was Jackson Jobe the right guy to pitch the eighth, when the Guardians tacked on another run via a safety squeeze? Hard to say. Would it all be different if Brieske had located that fastball up and away?
“That’s the beauty and the beast of this game, for sure,” Brieske said. “It’s sweet when it’s going right for you, but it’s a tough one to swallow when you’re on the losing end of things.”
Now the Tigers turn their attention toward Game 5. They could be down one of their best players in Carpenter. Catcher Jake Rogers was pinch hit for before his last at-bat and walked through the clubhouse with a wrap on his hand afterward. The good news is the Tigers have ace Tarik Skubal on the mound. And player after player mentioned a familiar theme after what could have been a crushing Game 4 loss.
“You could almost say we’ve been playing elimination games for the whole second half of the season,” Brieske said. “If we didn’t play well, we knew we weren’t gonna have a chance to give ourselves any sort of opportunity to get to this point.”
It was these Tigers who rattled off 33 wins in 44 games to battle back from the brink and make the postseason. It’s these Tigers who pulled off so many miraculous victories — robbed home runs and last-minute grand slams, harrowing plays at the plate and mesmerizing pitches at the most momentous times — just to be in this position.
So perhaps it’s fitting their season comes down to this. Win or go home. Adversity in full effect. The best pitcher in baseball on the mound.
“For the past month or two, it’s just been intense game after intense game after intense game,” Matt Vierling said. “Every win counts, and it’s the same situation here.”
(Photo of Kerry Carpenter: Junfu Han / USA Today Network via Imagn Images)
