CLEVELAND — Lane Thomas hit a grand slam off Tarik Skubal and Cleveland beat the Detroit Tigers 7-3 on Saturday in Game 5 of their AL Division Series, moving the Guardians into another postseason matchup against the Yankees.
Cleveland will meet New York in the ALCS, setting up a series between two teams that have crossed paths six previous times in October. They last met in 2022, with the Yankees taking their ALDS in five games.
Game 1 is Monday in the Bronx.
Thomas had five RBIs for the Guardians, who weren’t expected to contend this season. But they won the tough AL Central under first-year manager Stephen Vogt, and Cleveland is still alive with a chance to end a World Series title drought stretching to 1948.
“We’re a step closer. Any time you’re a step closer, the more you want to win,” All-Star third baseman José Ramírez said in Cleveland’s champagne-soaked clubhouse. “And we want to win it for the city.”
The Guardians had to take down Skubal, the front-runner for the AL Cy Young Award, to keep it going. The left-hander had not given up a run in 24 consecutive innings — 17 in this postseason — before the Guardians tagged him in the fifth for five runs, tying the most he allowed in 2024.
And Cleveland did it with its familiar, scrappy style dubbed “Guards Ball,” getting three singles — one an infield roller — to load the bases before Skubal hit Ramirez on the left hand to force in a run.
“That’s who we are,” Vogt said. “That’s who that group has been in that room all year. As soon as we get punched, we answer. That’s been our M.O. all year long — as soon as we give up a run, our guys come right back.”
That brought up Thomas, who hit a three-run homer in Cleveland’s 7-0 win in Game 1.
The center fielder, who struggled in his first month with the Guardians after coming over in a July trade from Washington, connected on Skubal’s first pitch, sending it just over the 19-foot-high wall in left-center field.
When the ball touched down, the Guardians’ dugout emptied and the screaming, red-clad Progressive Field crowd erupted in celebration.
“He just threw me a pitch to hit,” Thomas told TBS after the game. “To his credit, he threw me a lot of pitches that were tough to hit [in my previous at bats].
“It just takes one.”
Thomas became the fourth player in postseason history — and first on Cleveland — to hit a go-ahead grand slam in a winner-take-all game. It was the sixth grand slam hit by a Guardians player in the postseason and first since Francisco Lindor in 2017 against the Yankees in Game 2 of the ALDS.
“It was one pitch,” Skubal said. “I would love to have it back. But what a swing. In the moment, you think about executing the pitch and I didn’t do it. This will sting a little bit and it should.”
As has been the case all season, Vogt leaned on his MLB-best bullpen, which showed some wear and tear.
After Thomas hit his homer, the Tigers threatened in the sixth, scoring a run on a single by Jake Rogers and loading the bases with two outs. But Hunter Gaddis struck out Kerry Carpenter, who won Game 2 with a three-run homer in the ninth.
The Tigers, though, kept clawing and closed to 5-3 on Colt Keith‘s one-out RBI double in the seventh. Eli Morgan came in for Cleveland and struck out both batters he faced.
Thomas hit an RBI single in the eighth to put the Guardians up by three, and that’s when Vogt turned to All-Star closer Emmanuel Clase, the AL’s saves leader, to put the Tigers away.
Throwing one 100 mph fastball after another, Clase got the final six outs. When he retired Keith on a routine grounder to first, the Guardians could finally exhale and plan for their first ALCS visit since 2016.
Skubal lost for the first time since Aug. 2, and the Tigers, who missed a chance to eliminate the Guardians at Comerica Park on Thursday, had their unimaginable late-season push end in disappointment.
“I have a heartbroken team for all the right reasons,” said Detroit manager A.J. Hinch, who pushed all the right buttons down the stretch. “I mean we left everything we could on the field against a really good team and we didn’t want the season to end as abruptly as it did.”
Out of contention in August, Detroit regrouped and rerouted its season. Energized by some young players they brought up from the minors, the Tigers took off and went 31-13 after Aug. 11 to earn a postseason berth — one of three AL Central teams to make it.
They then swept Houston in the wild-card round before meeting Cleveland in the postseason for the first time after more than 2,300 games between the franchises.
The Guardians took hold of first place in April and never let go. Cleveland became one of the season’s biggest surprises, winning 92 games under Vogt, a former journeyman catcher who had no previous managerial experience.
Before the game, Vogt was confident his team wasn’t done.
“It feels like we’re going to New York,” Vogt said.
The Guardians are on their way.
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.