Rocchio picks the perfect night for the best game of his life
A grand slam in the fourth. A solo shot in the ninth. Brayan Rocchio had never done anything close to this.
The Cleveland infielder dragged the Guardians past Detroit 7-6 in the opener of a Friday doubleheader, and he did it from five runs down. Rocchio’s slam off Keider Montero flipped the whole night. Montero lasted four innings and gave up six runs on eight hits. Then, with the game tied in the bottom of the ninth, Rocchio caught hold of a Drew Sommers (1-4) pitch and ended it.
Cade Smith (4-1) got the win after working the ninth. Craig Yoho and Erik Sabrowski handled the rest, and Cleveland’s bullpen went four innings without giving up a run. Detroit had chances. Max Clark collected three hits and two RBIs, Spencer Torkelson went deep, and none of it mattered by the end.
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Same deficit, same ending, four hours later
Travis Bazzana singled with two outs in the 10th. Rocchio scored. Cleveland won 4-3 and took the doubleheader.
Detroit had led 3-0 in that one. Bazzana’s two-run homer in the eighth pulled the Guardians level, and Hunter Gaddis (3-3) followed with two perfect innings to close the door. Kevin McGonigle had two hits and an RBI for the Tigers. Kenley Jansen (4-6) wore the loss.
Cleveland had lost four of six coming into the day. One long Friday changed the shape of the week.
Sixteen losses in twenty games, and the pattern keeps repeating
Detroit is not just losing. The Tigers are losing the same way, over and over: build a lead, hand it back after the seventh. Doing it twice in the space of a single afternoon, in a division race, is the kind of day a team carries into October.
The Guardians bullpen threw six scoreless innings across both games. Cleveland came back from five down, then from three down. Whether that holds up through September is a different question, and nobody in that clubhouse was asking it Friday night.
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