DETROIT -- It’s one game. One out of 162. You play the full schedule, Tigers manager A.J. Hinch likes to say.
“It sucks,” said Vest, who gave up the tying and go-ahead runs on back-to-back two-out, two-strike singles in the ninth. “I don’t know how else to describe it.”
One game doesn’t leave a clubhouse as eerily quiet as the home clubhouse at Comerica Park was on Saturday. It doesn’t send fans through a cycle of shock, then frustration like the crowd of 38,079, from roaring in support in the top of the ninth to booing as Raisel Iglesias retired Gleyber Torres to wrap up Detroit’s fifth consecutive loss and eighth out of nine, further whittling Detroit’s lead atop the American League Central while Cleveland played a doubleheader in Minnesota.
It’s more than one game, because this was so close to being the game, the one the Tigers believed would get them out of their funk, get them back to the level they’d been playing at for the summer on a path to close out the division.
“We just have to figure out how to win one,” Torres said Friday night, “And after that, we're going to rock and roll.”
They were a pitch away from that game. They’d rallied from a 3-1 deficit. They’d roared with Spencer Torkelson as his go-ahead two-run homer soared towards the left-field seats, a 436-foot drive that had the potential to carry the Tigers a mile. They’d shrugged off Nacho Alvarez Jr.’s eighth-inning solo home run off Kyle Finnegan, his second homer of the day, that brought the Braves within a run. They’d gathered themselves as Vest recovered from back-to-back singles leading off the ninth to strike out Michael Harris II and Sandy León. They’d leaned on the dugout railing as Vest put Alvarez in an 0-2 hole, a situation from which he’d had about three times as many strikeouts (34) as hits (11) entering Saturday.
Alvarez had taken a first-pitch fastball at the top of the zone, then was late on another at the top-outer corner, fouling it off. After an 0-2 slider in the dirt bounced away from catcher Dillon Dingler to move the tying run to third, they saw a chance to get the 22-year-old rookie Alvarez to chase.
“We were going with the away fastball,” Dingler said. “He took a backup slider out earlier in the game, so it was just one of those things where Will's strength is his fastball. Just gotta live and die with it.”
The 97.6 mile-per-hour heater was off the plate, but not too far for Alvarez to reach to do what he was trying to do and go opposite field.
“Sometimes you make good pitches and you get hit,” Vest said. “Sometimes you make bad pitches and get away with it.”
The Tigers have a team of people around analyzing pitches. This wasn’t the game to do it.
“I just saw the ball hit the outfield grass,” Hinch said. “That’s what I saw, at the most critical moment of the game. The result sucks, but I’ll have to go look at it.”
Once Jurickson Profar hit Vest’s 1-2 slider through the right side for a go-ahead single, the flip was complete. Rafael Montero, whom the Tigers acquired from the Braves at the Trade Deadline, stranded the bases loaded to keep the Tigers within a run, but Raisel Iglesias retired the Tigers in order in the bottom half with little trouble.
It’s one game, but it left even the consistently quotable Hinch nearly speechless.
“Difficult to accept, difficult to explain,” said Hinch, who admittedly managed his bullpen like a playoff game after pulling starter Keider Montero after three innings. “It’s hard trying to put into words what is going on. But I know how much we fought today. I know how well we played.
“Some big emotional swings, and an absolute punch right to the face. So, frustrating day.”
They still believe they’re a game away, and they have another one Sunday to find it. But rarely has one game felt tougher for them to find.
“We’re really close,” Torkelson said. “Couple pitches away from winning that game. Not going to let the loss bring us down too much. …
“We’re obviously in a little funk, but we’re not playing bad baseball. It’s really close, and I think we need to stay positive and trust that we’re one click away from getting hot. Keep fighting.”