15-inning, season-ending 3-2 heartbreaker to the Seattle Mariners<\/a> in Game 5 of the AL Division Series on Friday night.<\/p>\nTigers ace Tarik Skubal was pulled after six \u201cdominant\u201d innings in Game 5 of the ALDS against the Seattle Mariners AP<\/p>\n
The Mariners immediately tied things at 2-2 in the seventh after Skubal\u2019s exit and prevailed on a walk-off single from Jorge Polanco in the bottom of the 15th inning in a near-five-hour thriller.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Still, Hinch had no regrets pulling Skubal, saying \u201che gave us everything he could.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter the fifth, I checked in on him how he was doing physically and emotionally, and we both knew that he had one (inning) left,\u201d Hinch told reporters after the game.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Mariners had no answer for the flamethrowing southpaw, who surrendered just one run on two hits while rattling off 13 strikeouts \u2014 the most ever from a starter in a winner-take-all postseason game.<\/p>\n
At one point, he punched out seven straight hitters, setting another October record.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cHe gave us everything he could,\u201d manager AJ Hinch said of Tarik Skubal after the Game 5 loss. Getty Images<\/p>\n
While they weren\u2019t hitting, Seattle did a solid job working deep counts and ultimately stretched Skubal\u2019s pitch count to 99 by the end of the sixth inning.<\/p>\n
But that pitch? A 101-mph four-seamer pumped right by superstar catcher Cal Raleigh for a swinging strike three.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Hinch took that as a sign of him slowing down.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe 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,\u201d Hinch said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s pitched on regular rest now three or four starts in a row. He empties his tank from pitch one. You know, it was an easy decision.\u201d<\/p>\n
Seattle Mariners players celebrate on the field after defeating the Detroit Tigers in Game 5 of baseball\u2019s American League Division Series on Friday, Oct. 10. AP<\/p>\n
Hinch had no way of predicting what would follow Skubal\u2019s masterpiece \u2014 having to call on seven different pitchers to endure nine more innings \u2014 but it\u2019s difficult not to question what could have happened if the most dominant pitcher in the game wasn\u2019t pulled prematurely, especially after eclipsing seven innings in each of his previous postseasons starts.<\/p>\n
But after nine additional innings, during which the bullpen only surrendered two earned runs, Hinch isn\u2019t going to lose any more sleep over it.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
A devastating loss? Absolutely. But one that he can live with.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was an incredible win for them,\u201d Hinch said, \u201cwhich means it was an incredible loss for us. But I wish them well in the next round. They earned it, and that was an epic game.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Seattle Mariners advance to the ALCS for the first time since 2001, meeting the Toronto Blue Jays for Game 1 on Sunday Night at Rogers Centre.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A sleepless night in Seattle will be followed by many more in the Motor City,\u00a0as the Detroit Tigers…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":295168,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[121585,1885,1266,61637,1288,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-295167","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-a-j-hinch","9":"tag-detroit-tigers","10":"tag-mlb","11":"tag-mlb-playoffs","12":"tag-seattle-mariners","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115356654295115530","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=295167"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295167\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/295168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=295167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=295167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=295167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}