October 19, 2013: Red Sox beat Tigers in Game 6 , wrap up worst-to-first American League pennant

It was Saturday evening in Boston. Game Six of the 2013 American League Championship Series. The Boston Red Sox had taken a three-games-to-two series lead over the Detroit Tigers with a one-run win in Game Five at Comerica Park.

If the Red Sox won Game Six, they’d have gone from last place in the AL East Division in 2012 to the World Series in 2013. If the Tigers won, the battle for the pennant would continue to the following day. Four of the first five games in the ALCS had been one-run games. This game held every promise of being another hard-fought one.

Red Sox manager John Farrell had right-hander Clay Buchholz start for Boston. He’d been 12-1 (1.74) and an All-Star in the regular season, but not as successful in the postseason – with no decisions but an ERA of 6.17 in his two starts.1

Max Scherzer was Detroit manager Jim Leyland’s choice. Scherzer’s 2.90 ERA was impressive, but more so was the 29-year-old righty’s 21-3 record, leading the majors in wins. He was later named the winner of the AL Cy Young Award.2

Broadcaster Tim McCarver noted in pregame remarks that Scherzer had started 173 games in his major-league career but had never thrown a complete game.3 This fact was significant to McCarver because “the Boston bullpen is much better than the Detroit bullpen.”4 Over the first five games of the ALCS, the Tigers’ bullpen had an ERA of 4.91 whereas Boston’s was a stunning 0.53.

The two pitchers had faced off six days earlier in Game Two of the ALCS, a 6-5 Boston win. Buchholz had been hit for five runs in 5⅔ innings. Scherzer had worked seven full innings and given up only one run, departing before Detroit’s bullpen squandered a four-run eighth-inning lead on David Ortiz’s game-tying grand slam.

Leyland largely stuck with the reconstituted batting order he had used since Game Four, though Alex Avila and Omar Infante swapped positions in the order. Austin Jackson, Detroit’s leadoff hitter in the first three ALCS games, was batting eighth, and Torii Hunter led off.

Both starters matched scoreless innings early on. The first batter Buchholz faced – right fielder Hunter – singled. Miguel Cabrera struck out, though, and then Prince Fielder.5 Victor Martinez flied out to center.

Scherzer got two outs in the bottom of the first before Dustin Pedroia singled to left, and Ortiz drew a walk, but Tigers nemesis Mike Napoli grounded out, short to first.6

Buchholz allowed a two-out single to Infante in the second inning, but no more. Scherzer faced three batters in Boston’s half and struck all three out, each swinging – Jarrod Saltalamacchia, Jonny Gomes, and Stephen Drew.

In the top of the third, Buchholz again gave up a single – to leadoff batter José Iglesias – but retired the other three Tigers. Scherzer got himself in a little trouble in the bottom of the third, walking Xander Bogaerts and Jacoby Ellsbury to start the inning. Right fielder Shane Victorino tried to advance them with a bunt but popped up to a diving Scherzer and the runners had to stay put. Pedroia just missed a home run to left, when the ball went foul by inches.7 He then hit into a double play, grounding to Cabrera at third, who took it at the bag and threw to Fielder at first. 

Both teams went down one-two-three in the fourth. Jackson worked a one-out walk off Buchholz in the top of the fifth, but two pitches later the inning was over when Iglesias hit into a 4-3 double play.

The Red Sox finally broke through in the bottom of the fifth. The first two batters both flied out, but on a full count Bogaerts doubled off the wall in center, to the left of the flagpole. Ellsbury swung at the next pitch and singled to right, Bogaerts scoring.8 With Victorino at the plate, Ellsbury was caught attempting to steal second and the inning was over, but the Red Sox had a 1-0 lead.

The lead flipped the other way in the top of the sixth. Hunter walked and took second on Cabrera’s single to left, Buchholz’s 85th pitch of the game. Farrell made a move. Lefty Franklin Morales was brought in to pitch to Fielder.

Prince Fielder had not been productive in postseason play. In 38 previous postseason games with the Tigers and Milwaukee Brewers, Fielder – who finished in his league’s Top 10 in RBIs six times in his career, including leading the National League with 141 in 2009 – had just 11 RBIs, none in his last 17 games.

Against Morales, Fielder walked on four pitches, and the bases were loaded with nobody out. Victor Martinez singled high off the wall in left and drove in two runs, though he held at first base. Fielder stopped at third.

Brandon Workman was brought in to pitch to Jhonny Peralta, who grounded to second. Pedroia fielded it, tagged the oncoming Martinez for the first out, then threw toward the plate and got Fielder out as he fell down scrambling back toward third.9 Peralta reached second, but Workman struck out Alex Avila, keeping it a 2-1 game.

The Red Sox attempted to rally in the bottom of the sixth inning. Scherzer hit Victorino with a pitch; he had been hit 18 times in the regular season, leading the AL, and seven more times in the postseason.10 Pedroia reached on a five-pitch walk. Scherzer worked out of it, though. Ortiz lined out to left, with the runners unable to move up. They moved up on a wild pitch to Napoli, but then Scherzer struck out Napoli and got Saltalamacchia to pop up to short.

Jackson singled with one out in the seventh, but Workman picked him off first. Iglesias reached on a single. Hunter then laid down a bunt, which Workman couldn’t grip.11 With runners on first and second, Junichi Tazawa relieved Workman. He got Cabrera to ground out, Drew diving forward, snaring the ball, and then throwing to first.

Scherzer was nine outs from winning the game and tying the series, with another one-run outcome looming. Gomes led off the seventh with a double very high off the left-field wall.12 Scherzer struck out Drew but walked Bogaerts on his 110th pitch of the night.

Leyland brought in lefty Drew Smyly to pitch to the left-handed-batting Ellsbury. Ellsbury hit a groundball to short and reached when the ball went in and then out of Iglesias’s glove. Rather than an inning-ending double play, the bases were now loaded.

Victorino, a right-handed hitter, was up. Leyland called in righty José Veras, who had allowed just one run in seven prior postseason appearances but was one of three relievers who failed to hold the four-run lead in the eighth inning of Game Two.

Victorino had grounded out, popped up to Scherzer, then been hit by a pitch. He was 2-for-23 at that point in the series. Strike one. Strike two. On the third pitch, Victorino hit a grand slam into the Green Monster seats in left field. The Red Sox had a 5-2 lead. Boston’s second game-changing eighth-inning grand slam of the ALCS now left the Red Sox six outs from the World Series.

Craig Breslow, Boston’s third pitcher of the game, dispatched the Tigers on 10 pitches in the eighth.13 Three outs to go.

Boston’s closer Koji Uehara was asked to hold the three-run lead, coming in to the music of “Mr. Automatic” playing over the Fenway Park sound system. Chants of “Koji! Koji! Koji!” resonated throughout.

Avila struck out, swinging, on three pitches. Infante tried to get on by bunting, but Uehara fielded the ball and threw to first for the second out. Jackson singled to short and took second on defensive indifference.

Iglesias was up, the 23-year-old former Red Sox shortstop who’d been swapped to the Tigers on July 30 as part of the three-team trade that brough Jake Peavy to Boston. He struck out, and the Red Sox had won the pennant. 

In postgame remarks on the field, Victorino twice proclaimed “Boston strong!” – harking back to the memory of the Boston Marathon bombing back in April.14

The Tigers had relied too much on power, wrote John Lowe of the Detroit Free Press.15 The Red Sox had marshaled theirs; they hit four home runs over the six games, contributing to each of their four wins. The first one tied the game, the next two broke ties, and the fourth catapulted the team from behind to win.

Scherzer took the loss. The winning pitcher was Tazawa, who had thrown all of two pitchers in facing one batter but was in the right place at the right time.

It was the final game of Leyland’s 22-year Hall of Fame managing career. Leyland, who had informed Detroit President Dave Dombrowski in September of his decision to retire, told the Tigers team after Game Six, then made a public announcement two days later, on October 21.16

The 38-year-old Uehara, who pitched in five of the six games and was credited with a win and three saves, was named the AL Championship Series MVP. The Red Sox were set for a World Series date with the St. Louis Cardinals, who had closed out the Los Angeles Dodgers in the National League Championship Series a day earlier.17

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Gary Belleville and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com, Retrosheet.org, and a video of the game on YouTube. Thanks to Gary Gillette for providing access to Detroit newspapers.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BOS/BOS201310190.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/2013/B10190BOS2013.htm

https://youtu.be/EwmIWhDLyF4

Notes

1 Buchholz gave up three runs in six innings in Game Three of the Division Series against Tampa Bay, a 5-4 Red Sox loss. He had started Game Two of the ALCS and given up five runs in 5⅔ innings, a game Boston won thanks to an eighth-inning grand slam by David Ortiz.

2 It was the first of three career Cy Young Awards for Scherzer. He received the NL Cy Young Award in 2016 and 2017 with the Washington Nationals.

3 He later threw a complete game in 2014 and a league-leading four with the Washington Nationals in 2015.

4 See the YouTube video of the game.

5 It was noted that Cabrera had been playing for some weeks despite abdominal pain. He nonetheless had seven RBIs in the 2013 postseason. George Sipple, “Leyland: Cabrera ‘Tough as Nails’ for Playing Through the Pain,” Detroit Free Press, October 20, 2013: 1D.

6 Napoli’s solo home run had won Game Three for the Red Sox, 1-0. His home run in Game Five had provided the first Boston run and his ground-rule double set him up to score the run that made the difference in Game Five. He’d played errorless ball at first base, which had at times required a little extra.

7 It was noted by more than one writer that television showed the shadow of the ball on the foul pole. Shira Springer, “Pedroia Isn’t Feeling Left Out,” Boston Globe, October 20, 2013: C3.

8 For an article about Bogaerts and his contributions, see Bob Hohler, “Sox Rookie Became the X Factor in Clincher,” Boston Globe, October 20, 2013: C3.

9 Fielder was tagged out by Saltalamacchia just a very few feet from third base. In a postmortem, Drew Sharp wrote of the “nausea at an offense that never got on track” and predicted that Fielder would get most of the blame. He faulted Fielder for not running on contact on the play: “Not having speed doesn’t offer an excuse for poor fundamental base running.” Drew Sharp, “No Doubt, This Season Is Failure,” Detroit Free Press, October 20, 2013: 1D.

10 The seventh hit-by-pitch came in the World Series.

11 Workman was charged with an error.

12 Tim McCarver said it hit maybe six inches from the top of the wall.

13 Ten years later, in 2023, Breslow became the chief baseball officer of the Red Sox.

14 Victorino also cited the line from his walkup song, “3 Little Birds” by Bob Marley: “Every little thing’s going to be all right.” An appreciation of his season was offered in the next day’s newspaper. Nick Cafardo, “Victorino Hit Switch at Right Time,” Boston Globe, October 20, 2013: C2.

15 They had led the league in runs scored right up through September, but then went “into a funk that lasted all of September.” Their starting pitcher had been superb throughout the postseason but they were “still stuck in the offensive malaise” that had afflicted them. John Lowe, “Offense Relied Too Much on Pure Power,” Detroit Free Press, October 20, 2013: 13D. The Red Sox took the league lead in runs scored on September 4, when they beat Detroit, 20-4.

16 George Sipple, “Into the Sunset,” Detroit Free Press, October 22, 2013: 1B.

17 The Red Sox defeated the Cardinals in six games for the 2013 World Series championship.