The Detroit Tigers and Seattle Mariners offered up pure baseball theatre on Friday night during Game 5 of the American League Division Series. However, as the action was unfolding, the Toronto Blue Jays chose to refer to a different sport while describing the club’s likely thoughts in a post on its official X account.
The GIF, which showed two boxers trading blows while the referee stood back and enjoyed the show, aptly described what was happening.
The Tigers and Mariners played for 4 hours, 58 minutes at T-Mobile Park in Seattle before Jorge Polanco’s single to right field off Tommy Kahnle decided the contest, 3-2, and sent the crowd of 47,025 into a frenzy. The 15-inning contest set a record for the longest winner-take-all game in MLB history.
“We’ve talked about the fight all year long,” Seattle manager Dan Wilson told reporters afterward. “To go 15 innings tonight, 15 rounds, so to speak, and to come out on top, that sure feels good.”
Up next for the M’s, following a champagne celebration in their home clubhouse, is a flight in the early hours on Saturday to Toronto, where they’ll meet the Blue Jays in an AL Championship Series matchup that begins with Game 1 on Sunday at 8:03 p.m. ET (Sportsnet and Sportsnet+).
After such a hard-fought win over the Tigers, it’s hard to ignore the immediate ramifications for the Mariners, who used seven starting pitchers to navigate 45 outs. The collection of arms was incredibly successful, allowing just two runs on eight hits over 15 innings, with four walks and 17 strikeouts. Yet, five of the six relievers logged more than one inning, and, in total, the staff tossed 209 pitches while Seattle’s superstar catcher Cal Raleigh squatted down behind the plate for each one, illustrating just how demanding the position is.
Right-hander George Kirby started the game and was dominant before being removed by Wilson in the sixth inning at just 66 pitches. Kirby had allowed a leadoff double to Javy Baez before the manager elected to bring in southpaw Gabe Speier to face the left-handed hitting Kerry Carpenter, who already had two hits off Kirby in the contest and five career homers against him, including a two-run shot in Game 1.
Carpenter went deep off Speier to give the Tigers a 2-1 lead with their ace Tarik Skubal on the mound in what was his own spellbinding performance. The left-hander, who’s potentially in line for his second Cy Young Award, struck out 13 batters — the most by any pitcher in a winner-take-all game in MLB post-season history.
However, Tigers’ manager A.J. Hinch removed Skubal following the sixth inning and the Mariners promptly scored in the seventh on Leo Rivas’s RBI single that knotted the game until its dramatic conclusion.
“Easy decision,” Hinch said when asked about taking Skubal out after 99 pitches. “After the fifth, I checked in on him, how he was doing physically and emotionally, and we both knew that he had one left. You know, he emptied his tank and obviously was emotional coming off the mound, and I think that signals exactly where we were in the game. He gave us everything he could.”
Wilson asked for everything he could out of his pitchers, too, and they delivered. Most notably, Logan Gilbert tossed two scoreless innings while Luis Castillo added 1.1 frames. Along with Kirby, that meant three Mariners’ starting pitchers appeared in Game 5 alone, a fact that will impact how the club lines up its rotation against a well-rested Blue Jays’ staff.
We’ll know more about the Mariners’ plans on Saturday during the ALCS workout day at Rogers Centre, but one wrinkle is the status of right-hander Bryan Woo, who was left off the ALDS roster due to pectoral inflammation. Woo threw a bullpen on Friday and his return could offer a boost to the Seattle staff — he was the club’s best starter during the regular season, leading the rotation with 4.3 wins above replacement and a 2.94 ERA over 186.2 innings.
Woo’s presence is something worth keeping an eye on during what figures to be a compelling ALCS rife with storylines. It’s a rematch of the 2022 AL Wild Card Series that saw the Mariners complete a two-game sweep by overcoming an 8-1 deficit in Game 2.
That’s an ugly memory the Blue Jays would like to expunge, and they’ll get the chance beginning this weekend. Before the Mariners shift their focus to that, though, they’ve earned the right to savour the moment.
“It makes me a little emotional because these guys are unbelievable, just how much they fought tonight,” said Wilson. “We talked about it before the game, and we said that part of what makes them great is they don’t want to leave the ballpark until they win.
“And tonight was that. They didn’t want to leave the ballpark until they won, and they made it happen.”
