It was a particularly tough assignment for 22-year-old Jackson Jobe.
Sure, he is the top pitching prospect in baseball, with an electric arsenal that warranted a spot on Detroit’s wild-card roster. And sure, he was scheduled to face the bottom of Houston’s lineup, seemingly lessening the ask for a rookie to record late-inning outs as the gritty Tigers pursued a massive upset at Minute Maid Park in the American League’s playoff wild-card round.
But with just two major-league appearances to his name — closing out the Rays with a six-run lead in his debut and covering the middle innings of a contest against a historically bad White Sox team — Jobe had yet to encounter what it means to pitch in high leverage at the highest level.
For five innings of Wednesday’s 5-2 victory, four of Jobe’s Detroit bullpen mates had gone blow-for-blow with Astros right-hander Hunter Brown in an unconventional pitchers’ duel between a traditional, dynamite starter and a cavalcade of relief weapons. But after Parker Meadows gave Detroit the lead with a solo home run to lead off the sixth inning, the tone shifted. Suddenly, the countdown to 27 outs was on; it was just a matter of whom manager AJ Hinch would call upon next.
With a one-run lead and nine outs to go, it was Jobe’s turn, summoned from the bullpen to become the latest and greatest Tigers hurler to give Hinch exactly what he was looking for. It wasn’t the rookie righty’s game to finish, but he was entrusted to keep the outs coming. Compared to his outings in September, the stakes had been raised exponentially.
Again: tough assignment.
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Jobe plunked Victor Caratini with his first offering. Jeremy Peña followed with a single. Mauricio Dubón laid down a picture-perfect bunt.
In a blink, the bases were loaded — with nobody out. Welcome to October, kid.
Then hulking pinch-hitter Jonathan Singleton stepped up to the plate. Singleton ripped a ground ball to the right side that was smothered by Detroit first baseman Spencer Torkelson, but Torkelson’s throw home was mishandled by catcher Jake Rogers.
Tie game. Bags still packed. Still nobody out. Jose Altuve coming up. Yikes.
On the first pitch, Altuve lofted a shallow fly ball down the right-field line, just deep enough to allow the speedy Peña to sprint home in time to snag the lead on a sac fly — 2-1 Astros. With Altuve retired, southpaw Sean Guenther replaced Jobe and promptly got Kyle Tucker to ground into a double play to end the frame. Still, the lead had vanished.
Outside of the hit-by-pitch, Jobe made his pitches, but the results simply didn’t follow — such is the cruel nature of this sport at this time of year. For the first time in a long time, the Tigers’ self-described “pitching chaos” had faltered. It was now on Detroit’s offense to respond.
With Bryan Abreu having already pitched, Houston turned to veteran Ryan Pressly for the top of the eighth — hardly a bad decision on paper, considering his outstanding postseason résumé that included a streak of 20 consecutive October appearances without allowing an earned run entering Wednesday. That said, Pressly’s dominance has started to wane, as the 35-year-old was merely good this season, rather than one of the best relievers in the sport. As such, Pressly’s appearance was less of a daunting task for this scrappy Tigers offense that has seized seemingly every opportunity over the past month.
Righty-killer Kerry Carpenter lined a ball into center for a one-out single to inject life into the ever-eager Tigers dugout. Matt Vierling followed suit with a hard grounder through the right side that enabled Carpenter to advance to third. With Riley Greene batting, Pressly uncorked a wild pitch that allowed Carpenter to scamper home and tie the game. Just like that, Detroit made it a brand-new ballgame — and still had something cooking.
A Greene strikeout and a walk to Colt Keith ended Pressly’s day prematurely. It was then on Josh Hader to escape this escalating mess — that’s why Houston paid him the big bucks.
But Hader made things only worse. A four-pitch walk to Spencer Torkelson set up Houston’s own bases-loaded crisis. With left-handed-hitting third baseman Zach McKinstry due up, Hinch called on the right-handed Andy Ibañez to pinch-hit. For all the bullpen buttons Hinch has pressed correctly this year, his lineup configurations and bench deployment have been similarly masterful, and Ibañez — ultra-capable against southpaws — has been a key cog in such strategies.
“I think our players understand it’s not about the player I’m taking off the field,” Hinch offered postgame. “If you can switch the psyche and maybe take a tick of the pride and ego out of it, anything’s possible. You can make decisions that put guys in a position to be successful. Who knows what we’re going to do. One of our things that we pride ourselves in is that we’re unpredictable, and our players buy into that leading to success.”
And Ibañez delivered. After fouling off three hellacious heaters from Hader, Ibañez connected on a 98 mph offering right down the middle, scorching the ball toward the left-field corner for a bases-clearing double that gave Detroit a three-run lead.
As it turns out, fumbling late-inning leads in October isn’t an activity exclusively reserved for rookies.
With that, the countdown to victory for Detroit was back on, and Minute Maid Park was sufficiently stunned. Not another Astros hitter reached base over the final two innings, as Guenther and Will Vest slammed the door on Houston’s season and ensured that Detroit’s magical ride will last at least one round longer.
The Tigers had lost 21 consecutive postseason games when trailing entering the eighth inning. The Astros had won 47 consecutive postseason games when leading entering the eighth inning. Both of those streaks ended Wednesday.
It’s fitting that such an improbable outcome was required to put an end to one of the more remarkable streaks in sports: Houston’s run of seven consecutive trips to the American League Championship Series. With an additional round to tackle this October — as opposed to the vast majority of the Astros’ recent playoff runs, which began in the ALDS — this postseason represented a unique challenge for an Astros team that had already beaten the odds by qualifying for the playoffs after a 7-19 start.
Perhaps more importantly, though, that unique challenge featured a unique opponent — a Tigers team playing with overflowing amounts of confidence and an intense belief that their way of doing things flat-out works. Houston’s ALCS streak had to end eventually, and Detroit was more than happy to do the honors.
“We have this connection, this togetherness that makes us like a band of brothers, all together supporting one another, and we push for each other and keep working and working and working all the time, just to get the results,” Ibañez said afterward. “Regardless that nobody was rooting for us, regardless that nobody was putting us in the playoffs in a good spot, we didn’t care.”
And so the Tigers advance to face the Guardians in the ALDS, with Game 1 slated for 1 p.m. ET Saturday at Cleveland’s Progressive Field. The narratives will shift toward the remarkable collective achievements of the AL Central, with another divisional foe in Kansas City also advancing to the ALDS against New York. The Astros now must regroup as they enter a crucial offseason far earlier than expected, with Alex Bregman’s free agency looming and a whole winter to wonder why this was this season in which they fell short.
