The end of the line.

Red Sox 5, Tigers 2 (Sox win the series 4-2)

Most of the time, I love endings. I like getting to the end of books, movies, TV shows, parts of life, etc, but the end of a baseball season never come easy. The Tigers played their final game tonight, on the road at Fenway Park. They trailed 1-0 after 5, but grabbed a pair of runs in the 6th to back Max Scherzer, but faltered in their attempt to pile on thanks to a baserunning miscue by Fielder. They led 2-1 entering the 7th inning – nine defensive outs away from forcing Game 7. The gates opened in a variety of ways in that inning in part thanks to a call. In part thanks to a bobble by the best defender we’ve got. In part thanks to a terrible 0-2 pitch from the reliever we acquired to settle our pen. There wasn’t one thing that did the Tigers in on Saturday night. It was a lot of things. There’s no shame in the overall result – losing to the Sox in the ALCS – given that the Tigers best player was a shell of himself for the entire postseason, but this particular one stings. It’s always going to sting. That’s how this works. We pour our hearts into the season and baseball crushes us. It’s designed to crush us. It’s impossible to know how things would have been different if any one of the mistakes had gone differently and you shouldn’t bother trying. The Sox and the Tigers were the two best teams in the AL and the Tigers lost in 6 games with their best player held together with duct tape and superglue. The result doesn’t bother me, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t suck. They’ll go back to the drawing board this winter and fine tune the roster that’s come 6 or fewer wins from the World Series in each of the last three seasons and will likely send Justin Verlander to the mound against the Royals on the final day of March, five long months from now.

The Moment: Martinez drives in a pair to take the lead in the 6th.