Leyland Sets Things Up Differently
The rules are different in the postseason.
And because existence is a day-to-day thing in the playoffs, managers (well, most of them anyway) treat each game like it was the last one of the season.
Jim Leyland did something Sunday that he seldom does during the regular season -- he summoned setup man Joaquin Benoit in the seventh inning.
His thinking: The crisis was immediate. Max Scherzer had pitched 5 1/3 innings of no-hit ball but gave up a walk and single to begin the seventh, and Detroit's 4-0 lead was in jeopardy.
Benoit had worked more than an inning only three times this season, and one of those was back in May (1 2/3) when the setup man was searching for his mechanics. He had a pair of two-inning stints in August.
"This is playoff time," Leyland said. "I didn't want to use him in the seventh inning. I just felt I had no choice. If we were going to be in a position where we had a shot to win this game, we definitely had to win it. I just felt like it was necessary for me to go to him in the seventh.
"It's playoff time. You do some things in playoff time you don't do over a 162-game schedule. We didn't want to go down 0-2. You do what you have to do. Sometimes you don't like to do it.
"Basically what you do as a manager, you try to do what you can to give your team its best chance to win the game."
And Leyland's best chance to win this game, which eventually turned out to a 5-3 Detroit victory, was to bring Benoit in to squelch a seventh-inning threat.
Leyland wasn't thinking about having Benoit available for Monday. If the Tigers had lost, they would have been down 2-0 in the best-of-five series.
So he worried about the game at hand. Of course, that's easier to do when you have Justin Verlander pitching the next game.
And while they had heavy workloads, Leyland will check with his setup man (23 pitches) and closer Jose Valverde (34) Monday to see if they're available for duty in case Verlander needs late help. Normally, they might automatically get a day off, but a 2-1 lead in the series means going beyond normal practices.
"I don't think anybody's off now," Benoit said. "I think I'll be OK."
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