Swept under: Guardians win again, close in on Tigers in AL Central

Chris McCosky, The Detroit News on Sep 18, 2025

Published in Baseball

By clicking submit, I authorize Arcamax and its affiliates to: (1) use, sell, and share my information for marketing purposes, including cross-context behavioral advertising, as described in our Privacy Policy , (2) add to information that I provide with other information like interests inferred from web page views, or data lawfully obtained from data brokers, such as past purchase or location data, or publicly available data, (3) contact me or enable others to contact me by email or other means with offers for different types of goods and services, and (4) retain my information while I am engaging with marketing messages that I receive and for a reasonable amount of time thereafter. I understand I can opt out at any time through an email that I receive, or by clicking here

DETROIT — As the Cleveland Guardians completed a three-game sweep of the Tigers at Comerica Park Thursday, it was hard not to hear Paul Simon’s voice singing, “Slip-sliding away.”

The Guardians, with a 3-1 win in the finale, have won seven in a row and are within 3.5 games of Central Division-leading Detroit with nine games left.

“You know the nearer your destination the more you’re slip-sliding away,” as the song goes.

Jose Ramirez, a certified Tiger-killer who had been relatively quiet through the first two games, got loud at exactly the right time for the Guardians.

He clubbed a 1-0 cutter from rookie Troy Melton with one on in the seventh inning, sending it over the wall in right field and breaking a 1-1 tie. It was Ramirez’s 29th homer.

The Tigers’ offense picked a bad week to stop hitting.

They mustered two runs against the three Guardians’ starting pitchers. It was right-hander Tanner Bibee’s turn Thursday.

He had one spot of bother through six mostly breezy innings.

Colt Keith ripped an RBI double in the second inning and the Tigers still had runners at second and third with no outs. But that’s all the damage Bibee would abide.

Wenceel Perez was thrown out at the plate, running on contact on a grounder by Dillon Dingler. Zach McKinstry struck out and Parker Meadows popped out.

Bibee allowed just one other hit through the sixth.

On Wednesday, the Tigers got one hit total against five different relievers over the final four innings. Same story Thursday. Only it was one hit in three innings and three relievers (Tim Herrin, Kolby Allard and Hunter Gaddis).

It was a double-whammy for the Tigers. Keith left the game after that inning with what the team initially diagnosed as lower-back stiffness.

The Tigers leaned on their ace to stop the bleeding and Tarik Skubal held up his end of the bargain, emphatically.

He powered through six innings, the only smudge a solo home run by Jhonkensy Noel in the fourth inning. Skubal put an 0-2 change-up on the outer edge of the plate, but Noel was able reach out and line it over the bullpen in left-center.

It was just the third 0-2 home run hit against Skubal in his career.

The Guardians, as they do, created a couple of long innings against him. They slapped a couple of singles in the second and again in the fourth after Noel’s homer.

Skubal worked his way out of both and followed each with a clean, eight-pitch inning. And he capped off both of those by striking out David Fry — with a 99.7-mph four-seamer in the third, then a 101.5-mph four-seamer in the fifth.

Skubal rang up triple digits three times and struck out nine. He’s set a new single-season personal best with 237 strikeouts.

He left the game tied 1-1.

The Tigers' half of that score stayed the same, not the other.

The Tigers finish their home schedule this weekend with three against the Braves and then try it again against the Guardians in Cleveland. The magnitude of both series has spiked massively.