When the Mariners last found themselves in the Motor City, there was a fire that needed to be extinguished.
Really. In the early hours of the day on the final morning of their three-game series in Detroit in July, a fire at the team hotel led to officials going through the building and knocking on doors trying to get everyone evacuated in the middle of the night.
Some walked out barefoot. Some forgot their keys and had to go back to the front desk to get a new one. Andrés Muñoz and his wife, Wendy, had their cat, Matilda, wrapped up in a blanket and held her outside until the OK was given for everyone to return to their rooms.
“My daughter, she was nine months at the time and like, didn’t cry at all, but was just completely delirious,” injured reliever Trent Thornton recalled recently. “We were standing out in the street, no shoes, like anything and she’s in her little sleep sack still, and everyone’s wanting to hold her and stuff.”
That series in Detroit, even with the middle-of-the-night fire alarm, was one of the major tipping points of the Mariners’ season. They were on the brink when they arrived in town after getting swept in New York and sat a season-high seven games behind in the AL West race at that time. And then they went out and took all three games from what was then the best team in baseball.
So perhaps there is some serendipity that the Mariners are headed back to Detroit with their postseason fate at a crossroads after pulling even in the American League Division Series with a 3-2 win over the Tigers on Sunday night.
Win two games in Detroit, and they’ll play in the American League Championship Series for the first time in 24 years. Split, and they’ll at least come back to Seattle for a decisive Game 5 on Friday.
Lose both, and the promise of what this season could have been and a path to the first World Series in franchise history will come to an abrupt and painful conclusion.
“We got the split. … We feel pretty good about it. It was a great game,” said M’s second baseman Jorge Polanco, who homered twice in the Game 2 win. “We’re just going to go out there trying to stay focused and trying to compete over there and trying to win.”
Back in July, the stakes weren’t quite as serious. There were still 68 games to play when they rolled into Detroit around 3 a.m. local time after getting swept at Yankee Stadium to fall seven games back of Houston in the AL West race. The last of those losses in New York was the most painful, when Bryan Woo took a no-hitter into the eighth inning with a 5-0 lead, only for the M’s to give up five runs in the final two innings and lose 6-5 in extras.
“That was an ugly sweep we had in New York, games we should have won, didn’t win, and just weird things happened,” catcher Mitch Garver said last week. “We got bit in the butt by some tips [pitch-tipping by the Mariners] in the late innings. We gave those games away.
“And then we responded.”
At the time, Detroit had the best record in baseball and sat 23 games over .500. The Tigers were a machine rolling toward what seemed to be a division title and home-field advantage throughout the playoffs.
That didn’t happen, as the Tigers collapsed in the second half and watched a 15-game lead disappear. But the meaning of sweeping the Tigers in that series was immense. It gave the M’s momentum going into the All-Star break. It also provided belief.
“That series, in my mind, is one of the bigger series that we’ve had this year,” Thornton said. “Like, ‘Hey, we belong. Like, we’re just as good as anybody else in this league.’ So, I mean, looking back at it now, it’s like, ‘OK, yeah, we showed what we’re capable of.’ ”
The M’s clubbed the Tigers for 35 runs over those three games at Comerica Park, including 12 runs in the opener and 15 runs in the Saturday win. Seattle hit 11 home runs in the three games — highlighted by the start of Julio Rodríguez’s summer surge — and found a little bit of success against the two starters the M’s are likely to face in Games 3 and 4.
Jack Flaherty, the announced starter for Game 3, threw five innings, allowed four hits and two runs — both via the home run — in the finale of that series. Casey Mize, who seems likely to be Detroit’s Game 4 starter, was knocked around for six runs in three innings in the middle game of that July series.
July and October are far different levels of baseball importance. But thanks to the Game 2 victory, the M’s have created an opportunity for a couple more memorable days in Detroit.
“I know they’re not going to like us over there. They’re going to root for their team. They’re going to root for the Tigers, just like the Mariners here, our fans were rooting for us,” Rodríguez said. “And just go out there and play baseball. That’s a mindset, go out there and play baseball. Just try to score runs and limit them to not score runs and win the ballgame. I feel like that’s the mindset.”