A.J. Hinch entered his office after the Tigers' playoff position had been solidified on Sunday and "saw the Houston packet on my desk," he said. He smiled and added, "Baseball, I tell you, it's gonna take you places, and sometimes it's gonna take you places where you've been. I look forward to the challenge."
Hinch is headed back to Houston and the Tigers are headed back to the playoffs to take on the team that has ruled the American League for most of the last decade. The Astros have reached the ALCS seven years in a row, winning four AL pennants and two World Series titles -- the first of them under Hinch in 2017.
Game 1 is Tuesday afternoon, with first pitch scheduled for 2:32 on ABC. The same goes for Games 2 and 3, the latter if necessary. The Tigers enter their first playoff series in 10 years as the hottest team in baseball, and maybe the most dangerous.
"What I believe is, when you get to the playoffs, everybody's dangerous," said Hinch. "October comes and it's a whole new season. I've watched over the years, teams who were unexpected to be there go off and reach the World Series, sometimes win it. I've seen teams built as good as can be not get out of the first round.
"It's one of the most unique times in our sport, because it's as unpredictable as us. 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."
The only predictable element of the series is this: the Tigers will give Tarik Skubal the ball in Game 1.
"Who would you give it to?" Hinch said with a laugh. "That might be the easiest decision of my tenure here."
The Astros will counter with Framber Valdez, a left-handed ace in his own right, but Skubal should give Detroit the advantage out of the gate. He just won the American League pitching Triple Crown, with the Cy Young award coming his way.
Skubal said that it's "an honor, a privilege to have the trust from A.J. and the rest of the guys in this clubhouse to go out there Game 1 and put our team in position to win. So that's what I'm gonna do."
How long as he been dreaming about this?
"As long as I've been playing baseball," he said.
The Tigers are short on playoff experience, facing a team that's been there and done that. But as Skubal said, "I can counter and say we're naive."
"The group of guys here, I think the last month of baseball has kinda been playoff baseball," he said. "We had to win a lot of games in the last month to even be talking about this situation. Obviously it wasn't on the (same) stage, but it's going to be fun. I think our guys are going to respond and show up and play good baseball."
