Tigers, Guardians making presence felt in 2024 playoffs

What we get now with an American League Division Series between the Guardians and Tigers that absolutely no one saw coming at the start of the season is really this: two exciting young teams — both with batting orders averaging around 26 years in age — from two great old baseball cities. You can never go wrong with a sweet baseball story like that.

The Guardians weren’t supposed to get anywhere near the best record in the American League, yet they ended up just one game worse in the loss column. The Tigers? They weren’t supposed to get anywhere near October when they were eight games under .500 in August and what felt like a hundred games out of the tournament.

But now here they are in the New Kids on the Block bracket of the tournament, getting ready to play Game 1 at new-old Progressive Field on Saturday. There has been an endless list of very cool surprises across the regular season, and now into the postseason. There is no bigger surprise than Guardians vs. Tigers.

By now you’ve seen the wonderful video of A.J. Hinch, a former World Series-winning manager doing the best work of his career, saying this on Wednesday afternoon after his Tigers had swept the Astros, about to spray a whole lot of champagne:

“I don’t know who, but somebody let the Tigers get hot.”

Somebody sure did, starting in August, when they began this crazy ride from nowhere when it looked as if they were about to finish out of the money again in the American League. Hinch’s kids finished 31-13 and now they have knocked out the Astros, who were trying to make it to an ALCS that would merely have been their eighth in a row. The Tigers did this in Houston, where Hinch once managed. They did it by coming back as big in Game 2 the way they did after the Astros had just come back on them to take the lead, and maybe take back the series.

“One step closer,” Hinch told me Thursday morning.

It’s been different with the Guardians who, even after losing their ace Shane Bieber, ran pretty hot all year long. There were times when it looked as if the Twins and Royals might take first place in the AL Central, when the Tigers were still stuck in fourth place. But the Guardians ended up winning their division by 6 1/2 games, and only the Brewers in the NL Central had a bigger margin over a second-place team (10 games). They’re managed by Stephen Vogt, who was asked to follow the great Terry Francona in Cleveland and has done that like a champ.

The Guardians have the biggest offensive star in this series, which means José Ramírez who, if form holds for both managers, will be the oldest player on the field Saturday at the age of 32. Ramirez was tremendous again this season because he always seems to be tremendous, with 39 homers, 118 RBIs, 114 runs scored and a .279 batting average. But Josh Naylor, the first baseman, was right there with Ramirez, hitting 31 homers of his own and knocking in 108.

And the Guardians can pitch, even having lost Bieber early. Tanner Bibee, who came on the way he did the second half of the season, became Vogt’s ace, and will get the ball for Game 1. Then if things go the way they so often have this season for the Guardians when they have been at their best, the ball will end up in the right hand of Emmanuel Clase, a closer as elite as the game has right now after he finished the regular season with 47 saves.

It is a little different with Detroit, since with Hinch doing all manner of Hinch stuff — now more than ever — you never know who might be the Tigers starter when it’s not Tarik Skubal, more of an ace of baseball than anybody this October and one who just absolutely stuffed the Astros. And no matter what the batting order and the rest of the lineup is at the start of the game for Hinch, you know that’s just going to be like some first draft of history on any given day.

Here is something he said the other day before his team’s unlikely postseason began:

“One of our characteristics that I love about us is how unpredictable we are. And we’re about to play in the most unpredictable month of the season.”

So it should have been totally predictable that the only player over 30 on Hinch’s kids-on-the-block playoff roster, Andy Ibáñez, is the guy who got the biggest hit of their season off Josh Hader, clearing the bases in the eighth inning on Wednesday to give the Tigers a 5-2 lead that ended the Astros’ season a few minutes later in a Minute Maid Park that turned into a library.

So here the Tigers are. Here the Guardians are. The Dodgers were supposed to be here when the season started, the Yankees were, the Phillies were. One last time: Nobody saw a series like this coming for October ‘24. Young teams, old cities. Somebody let them both get hot.