SEATTLE — The Mariners took George Kirby out. Kerry Carpenter didn’t care.
Carpenter, whose two-run homer off Kirby in Game 1 of the ALDS swung that game in Detroit’s favor, did it again in the sixth inning of the decisive Game 5, turning on a 1-0 fastball from Gabe Speier and drilling it a Statcast-projected 411 feet out to dead center to give the Tigers a 2-1 lead on Friday night.
Coming into the night, Carpenter had hit just one home run vs. a left-handed pitcher since April 9. In the regular season, he hit just .217 vs. southpaws.
And Mariners manager Dan Wilson knew that. He also knew that Carpenter has absolutely owned Kirby — the two knocks against him Friday pushed his career line vs. the Seattle right-hander to 7-for-13, with five home runs.
So with the series on the line, Wilson made the move he didn’t make in Game 1 — but did in Game 2 — bringing his lefty specialist in Speier in for Carpenter’s third at-bat of the game, after Kirby surrendered a double to Javier Báez to open the frame.
That knock in itself was dramatic, with Báez sending a slider over the outer half of the plate toward the left-center gap. Julio Rodríguez got to the ball before it could get by him, but Báez tested him anyways and dove into second base safely, just out of the reach of Jorge Polanco’s tag.
So with the tying run on base, Wilson came out for Kirby, hoping to quell the rally.
In Game 2, Speier struck out Carpenter swinging on a fastball over the heart of the plate. This time, Carpenter turned on the exact same pitch and turned the game on its head, flipping a 1-0 hole into a 2-1 lead with three and a half innings to play and Tarik Skubal on the mound making postseason strikeout history on the other side of things.
Carpenter became the seventh player to hit a go-ahead home run in the sixth inning or later while trailing in a winner-take-all playoff game, and just the fourth since 1980.
