Detroit Tigers Series Finale vs. Cleveland Indians Postponed Due to Rain

The Detroit Tigers had Thursday’s season finale with the Cleveland Indians washed out due to rain. A makeup date has been scheduled for Monday, October 3.

The Detroit Tigers had Wednesday night’s game against the Cleveland Indians shortened to five innings when rain persisted throughout the night. The same system remained in place through Thursday afternoon preventing the field from drying out.

The Tigers grounds crew gave it a go, however. Around 2:00 the tarp was removed and the field was worked on. They had to remove puddles from the warning track around the park and apply drying agent to the dirt.

A little while later the managers and umpires took a stroll around the field to assess the situation. The field looked to be in good shape but was soggy from a night and day’s worth of rain.

After the walkabout the tarp was pulled back onto the field and the holding pattern resumed. A new rain cell was on the horizon and the field had to be re-covered in preparation.

And so the delay rolled on into the early evening. Eventually it was decided that the game simply couldn’t be played. The game was postponed with a scheduled makeup date of Monday, October 3 (one day after the season was supposed to end).

The Tigers and Indians will not have to play the game if it no longer carries playoff implications. That would mean either the Tigers clinching or being eliminated from the Wild Card over the weekend or (perhaps) the Indians having home field advantage available to them in the ALDS.

This could create a scenario in which the Tigers would have to play five games in five different cities in five different days.

In that scenario the Tigers would finish their series in Atlanta on Sunday and need to play their 162nd game of the season on Monday. They might end up tied for the Wild Card with the Baltimore Orioles, who won the season series with the Tigers, so a game 163 tiebreaker would be played on Tuesday in Baltimore. That would bump the American League Wild Card Game to Wednesday, and it looks right now like that game will be played in Toronto. Winning all of those, the Tigers would be scheduled to begin the ALDS (on the road in Texas, Boston, or Cleveland) on Thursday.

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That would be a heckuva way to end the season and begin the playoffs, but it would make for a near impossible set of circumstances for a team to overcome.