7 facts, figures about Carpenter-Clase Game 2 showdown

After taking a 7-0 loss in Game 1 of the 2024 American League Division Series, the Tigers, making their first trip to the postseason in a decade, needed a win in Game 2 to avoid the nightmare scenario of potentially playing three straight elimination games.

The tension over the sort-of, not-quite must-win game only built over the course of the evening, as Tarik Skubal, Matthew Boyd and their respective bullpens spun collective masterpieces. The game was still scoreless heading into the ninth inning, with neither club having gotten particularly close to scratching a run across since the fifth.

Enter Kerry Carpenter. After consecutive two-out singles from Jake Rogers and Trey Sweeney, Carpenter, who’d entered the game as a pinch-hitter in the top of the eighth, came to the plate against formidable closer Emmanuel Clase and launched a game-winning three-run home run to send the series back to Detroit tied at a game apiece.

Here are seven notable facts and stats on Carpenter’s Game 2 heroics.

1. Game 2 marked the first time in their history that the Tigers won a postseason game in which a single home run accounted for all their runs scored. Carpenter is the fifth Tiger overall to represent the club’s entire offensive output with a home run in a postseason game, following Ryan Raburn (2011 ALCS Game 2), Victor Martinez (2011 ALDS Game 4), Sean Casey (2006 WS Game 5) and Jim Northrup (1968 WS Game 4).

2. Carpenter is just the second player in Tigers postseason history to hit a game-winning home run in the ninth inning or later. He’s following in iconic footsteps, too – the first was Magglio Ordonez’s walk-off, series-clinching homer in Game 4 of the 2006 ALCS against the A’s.

3. Obviously this wasn’t just a game-winning home run in postseason play, because it also came against the man many consider the best closer in baseball. Emmanuel Clase had a 0.61 ERA in the regular season and had allowed just two home runs in 75 1/3 innings leading up to his appearance in Game 2.

4. In the regular season, Carpenter, a left-handed hitter, hit .107 against left-handed pitching compared to .305 against righties, the reason behind his appearance as a pinch-hitter in Game 2 despite his great year at the plate. Clase is a righty, but his left/right splits lean in the other direction — left-handed hitters had a .139 slugging percentage against him compared to righties’ (still measly) .260. It had actually been well over a year since a left-handed hitter last took him deep — the most recent before Carpenter was Ozzie Albies of the Braves back on July 4, 2023.

5. Carpenter’s home run was just the third Clase has allowed on a slider in his Major League career and the first since July 7, 2022. That one came off the bat of Kody Clemens, then also a member of the Tigers.

6. Despite having 319 2/3 innings (including postseason) under his belt, Clase still, somehow, had never allowed a three-run home run (or a grand slam, for that matter) … until Monday. Of the 1,248 batters Clase has faced in his career, just 10.9% — 136 — have come to the plate with at least two men on base. Carpenter, in this huge spot, was No. 136.

7. The game-winner came off Carpenter’s bat with an exit velocity of 110.8 mph and now accounts for the hardest-hit ball both of his career and against Clase.