Tigers AJ Hinch Drops Blunt Quote After Impressive Comeback Win Over Blue Jays
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Going into their three-game series against the Toronto Blue Jays at Rogers Centre on Monday night, the writing was on the wall for the Detroit Tigers in terms of the playoffs. It's a very long shot, at best, with just 12 games remaining in the regular season.
Detroit entered the game 5.5 games behind the Cleveland Guardians for the third and final American League wild-card spot. The Blue Jays entered the game just one game behind the Guardians, who are hosting the Chicago White Sox this week for a series that could go a long way into determining who wins the AL Central.
What Detroit and manager A.J. Hinch knew was this: keep winning games and things will fall into place. On Monday night, they were no-hit by Toronto starter Jose Soriano through six innings and trailed 2-0. It would have been easy, with nine outs to play with, to go down without a fight. Instead, the Tigers did the opposite; they rallied not once, but twice to pick up an improbable win to keep their faint postseason hopes alive after sweeping the Colorado Rockies over the weekend.
Tigers Manager A.J. Hinch Drops Honest Quote After Win Over Blue Jays
After six hitless innings, Soriano allowed five hits and four runs in the seventh inning, giving the Tigers a 4-2 lead. Toronto rallied with three runs in the bottom of the seventh for a 5-4 lead, but Detroit showed resilience with a run in the eighth inning offJoe Mantiply and one in the ninth off Blue Jays closer Louie Varland for a 6-5 victory. Hinch didn't mince words after the game about what type of win it was for the club at this point in the season.
"It's a good character win,'' Hinch said per MLB.com. "We have to go through a lot, that game took a lot of twists and turns. We were fortunate to be in the game by how we navigated through some messy innings; then the pen went to work and held us until we were able to scratch out a base runner, then a hit and then multiple hits. We were in it against one of the better closers in baseball and found a way to scratch a run across and a fun win, one that I feel we earned.''
It might be too little, too late for the Tigers in 2026 in terms of the playoffs. Given all the injuries and trades that were made, the fact that they are even in this position is rather surprising. All they can do is take it one game at a time and let the chips fall where they may by the end of the season. If anything, Hinch and Detroit will make things interesting as long as they can, beginning on Tuesday night in the second game against the Blue Jays.
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Scott Roche has covered both college and professional sports for nearly three decades for various outlets. Scott has covered the MLB, NHL, and college sports and he is someone always looking for a good rumor, no matter which sport it is.