CLEVELAND — The Tigers shifted Troy Melton to the bullpen eight weeks ago with the idea of best lining up their relief corps for a postseason run. On Thursday, they moved the rookie right-hander back to a starting role as their best chance to get to the postseason.
Such is the immediacy of their situation. Their singular focus Thursday was to win the game, something they hadn’t done since leaving Miami 11 days earlier.
And yet, as Will Vest pumped his fist after striking out Bo Naylor to end Detroit’s eight-game losing streak with a 4-2 win over the Guardians, they might have found a formula for victory should they complete their task and clinch a playoff spot.
“It hasn’t been going the way we want it to go for a little while now, obviously,” Melton said. “Kinda felt like a weight lifted off our shoulders. We’re back on track.”
The Tigers and Guardians enter the final weekend of the regular season with identical 86-73 records, but Cleveland owns the AL Central divisional tiebreaker by winning the season series. The Guardians clinched it by winning five consecutive matchups over the last week and a half. If the season ended today, the Guardians would have the third seed and host the sixth-seeded Tigers in the AL Wild Card Series at Progressive Field. Any combination of two Tigers wins in Boston or Astros losses to the Angels would clinch a postseason berth for Detroit.
If the Tigers roll into Boston and fare better this weekend against the Red Sox than the Guardians do at home against the Rangers, then the Tigers can claim their first AL Central title since 2014. Even so, they would play a Wild Card Series, albeit as the host, possibly against the then-Wild Card Guardians.
Either way, the Tigers would begin a best-of-three Wild Card Series on Tuesday, with a potential Game 3 on Thursday. Detroit currently has Tarik Skubal lined up to pitch Sunday in Boston, in case they need that game to get to the postseason. If their slot is determined before then, they might be able to push Skubal back for Game 1.
If Skubal pitches Sunday, the Tigers could go into next week with the ultimate challenge: Win a postseason series potentially without their ace and reigning AL Cy Young Award winner. Skubal has never started on three days’ rest; his only outing on short rest in the Majors was a relief appearance in 2021, when he was a 24-year-old rookie in manager A.J. Hinch’s first season in Detroit.
The Tigers have just two other traditional starters in Jack Flaherty and Casey Mize. Charlie Morton and Chris Paddack, their Trade Deadline rotation additions, are now in Atlanta and the Tigers’ bullpen respectively. What Melton did under high-pressure circumstances Thursday not only helped breathe new life into Detroit’s postseason hopes, it presented a compelling option if the Tigers get there.
“Obviously the only goal today was to try to win the game,” Melton said. “However long they needed me for and whatever their plan was, was out of my hands. Just try to make as many pitches as I could. Same goal as it’s been every other game. Obviously it’s a little bit heightened because of the situation.”
Though Melton hadn’t started a game since Aug. 13, the sense of routine came back to him as he warmed up in the bullpen. Pitching with a 2-0 lead thanks to home runs from Jahmai Jones and Wenceel Pérez, Melton threw a first-pitch strike at 97.3 miles per hour, according to Statcast. His last pitch of a 1-2-3 opening inning was a 99 mph fastball to José Ramírez, who hit a line drive that Pérez ran down near the right-field warning track. He threw a 99.4 mph fastball — the hardest pitch of his brief big-league career — to Gabriel Arias the next inning.
“He came out firing hot, so I didn’t know how much stamina he’d have,” Hinch said. “He’s not built up. We thought somewhere in the 40-50 pitch mark.”
The Guardians have grinded at-bats against Tigers starters for a week and a half, but they struggled to figure out Melton, who threw 3 2/3 innings of one-run ball over 49 pitches, 31 of them strikes. He drew just two swinging strikes and one strikeout, but only one ball in play off of him had an exit velocity over 100 mph. He served as the lead-in to pitching chaos, with five relievers covering 16 outs on three hits with a run allowed.
“Melton was outstanding. That fastball is real,” Guardians manager Stephen Vogt said. “He was putting it where he wanted to. We just couldn’t get anything going.”
High praise from a team that could see him again next week.
