Especially with how the Detroit Tigers fared in their series against the rival Cleveland Guardians played out in the final week of the regular season, the vibes weren't all that high going into their Wild Card Series on the road. That even felt true after the Motor City Kitties were able to take Game 1 of the series, and certainly was true after the Guardians forced a winner-take-all Game 3 for Thursday afternoon.
Just when you thought the Guardians magic that pushed them into an AL Central title and home-field advantage in the Wild Card series would never end, though, it did. With a five-run top of the seventh inning to break out of a 1-1 tie, the Tigers took control of the game and, despite an ugly error in the bottom of the eighth inning that allowed two runs to score, Detroit prevailed.
They conquered their Guardians-shaped demons in the biggest way and, frankly, started to look like the team that was a world-beater for much of the regular season.
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Updated MLB Postseason bracket: Tigers advance to ALDS
The Tigers now advance to the ALDS in the MLB postseason bracket for a date with the Seattle Mariners, who earned the No. 2 seed in the American League by winning the AL West and will have home-field advantage in the best-of-five series.
Obviously, with the Tigers-Guardians winner-take-all matchup being the first of three on Thursday, we don't yet know who will be going on to face the Toronto Blue Jays, the No. 1 seed in the AL and the other team to receive a bye on this side of the bracket, but all Tigers fans should care about is surviving.
Things were unraveling for Detroit down the stretch of the regular season, both by their own doing and with the Guardians being as hot as we've seen a team in recent memory to close the year. So for A.J. Hinch to have this team ready, beyond just Tarik Skubal being a monster, to overcome that on the road in a best-of-three series is remarkable.
It's the type of series that can gather momentum for a team, especially one as talent-laden as the Tigers are. Of course, the Mariners are no small task by any stretch of the imagination. They'll have their full arsenal of stud starting pitching along with MVP candidate Cal Raleigh, Josh Naylor, and so on, ready to rock.
But momentum is as dangerous as it gets when it comes to the postseason — especially in a season such as this one. You can call the Dodgers a superteam, you can look at someone like Aaron Judge as a superstar, but what there has definitively proven to be this year is no team that has actually separated itself from the rest of baseball, and that's on either side of the bracket.
With the Tigers pushing into the ALDS and this matchup with the Mariners, they're still dancing in October. That gives them as good of a chance as any other club still alive in the postseason, and perhaps exorcizing their demons in Cleveland is enough to push them even further into the playoffs.