Fighting Detroit Tigers Are Molding A Never-Say-Die Mentality
By Will Burchfield
@burchie_kid
Three times in the past four games, the Tigers have fallen behind against frontline starting pitchers. And all three times, they've fought back to win.
They came from behind against Chris Sale and Jose Quintana over the weekend, and then rose from the dead against Aaron Sanchez on Tuesday night to steal a 3-2 victory from the Blue Jays, a win that Brad Ausmus called "the most exciting" of the season. For a team whose moxie and late-game punch was questioned early in the season, the Tigers sure look like a dogged bunch now.
"We feel like we can score a few runs with one swing of the bat, so if you can keep us within three runs we feel like we have a shot to make that up pretty quickly," said Ian Kinsler, who delivered a huge double in the Tigers' two run-ninth before knocking in the winning run an inning later. "I think that's really the key, regardless of who's on the mound we feel like we have a chance to win."
It is one thing to erase a deficit. It is quite another to do so against pitchers of the caliber the Tigers have faced recently. Sale, Quintana and Sanchez are closers as much as they are starters, the type of guys who grab the baton from the offense and dash to the finish line. And somehow, someway, these never-say-die Tigers have run them down.
"It was a beautiful team effort overall," said shortstop Jose Iglesias of the Tigers' comeback win on Tuesday night. But he may as well have been speaking of Saturday and Sunday, too.
With the number of fearsome hitters in the middle of Detroit's lineup, it doesn't take much to trigger a rally. When shortstop Jose Iglesias led off the ninth inning with a single, turning over the lineup to Kinsler and the sluggers that follow, the team seized on the adrenaline.
"There wasn't a sense of defeat because the game was still close," said Ausmus of the team's ninth inning mindset. "I will say that Iglesias getting the hit injected some energy into the dugout."
"It was huge for us," Justin Upton said of Iglesias' leadoff single. "Guys were excited. Anytime you can get a leadoff hit that can spark a team."
After Kinsler drew the Tigers within one, Miguel Cabrera drove a booming double to right center field, knotting things at two. Earlier in the bat, Cabrera had been dropped to the seat of his pants by an up-and-in fastball, but he picked himself up and got the last laugh. If this team is resilient and resolute, Cabrera is its unflinching leader.
"I think we have a lot of confidence in what we do late in games. It doesn't matter if we're 0 for 3 or 0 for 4, with one good swing we can change the whole game," Cabrera said.
But the praise can't be heaped entirely on the offense. In each of these three comeback wins, the pitchers have been as critical to the script as the hitters, from Jordan Zimmermann on Saturday afternoon to Bobby Parnell on Tuesday night.
"We were waiting for our offense to get going tonight, and [Sanchez] was tough to solve, but the key is our pitchers kept us right there and allowed us to continue to work hard and get something off him," Kinsler said.
The lesson on Tuesday night was one that's been brewing for a few games now. It was a mere idea at first, a vision that all teams like to create for themselves. But now, after another tenacious come-from-behind victory, it's the real truth: the Tigers are never out of it.
