The Detroit Tigers dropped six of seven games to the Cleveland Guardians during the final month of the regular season and watched an 11-game lead evaporate in September. AJ Hinch's ballclub had to accept going to Progressive Field for a best-of-three American League Wild Card Series after losing the division, a previously unfathomable outcome that could have easily grated on the cats. They had a short memory, however, and pulled off a terrific turnaround.

The Tigers looked like their old selves in the decisive Game 3, earning a 6-3 victory in the face of a lively Cleveland crowd. Kerry Carpenter set the tone with an RBI double in the third inning, Jack Flaherty provided 4 2/3 innings of one-run ball, Ohio native Dillon Dingler broke a 1-1 tie with a 401-foot solo home run in the sixth, Detroit tacked on four more runs in the next inning, and Will Vest was spectacular in the final frames. This was a 2024 type of Tigers win, and it fittingly came against their fiercest rival (in the present).

Spencer Torkelson, who recorded an RBI single in Detroit's seventh-inning rally, explained how it feels to outlast what had been the biggest thorn in the club's side.

“What a battle with these guys [the Guardians],” the slugging first baseman told MLB Network after the Tigers earned an AL Division Series meeting with the Seattle Mariners. “They're a really good baseball team. They do little things right, and they kind of had our number this year, but really proud of the way we fought back and stayed in the fight.”

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The Guardians were responsible for plenty of Detroit-based nausea over the last two years, sending the Gritty Tigs home in a hard-fought ALDS last year and stomping on the team's divisional title hopes at the end of this season. The tables turned in 2025, however. Cleveland enjoyed the heart-stopping finish to the campaign, only to fall to the Tigers in the playoffs.

Spencer Torkelson and company do not have much time to reflect on it now, as a dangerous Mariners squad awaits, but this has morphed into a captivating rivalry. Despite all the mockery, the AL Central is packing plenty of intrigue. And these two franchises are a big reason why. Detroit will head to Seattle, while Cleveland stays put at home.