Seattle – If Seattle’s Josh Naylor happens to get on second base in Game 5 Friday and starts giving overt hand signals to Mariners hitters, pay it no heed.
That’s what the Tigers will be doing. Because it’s just shenanigans, gamesmanship.
“That is pretty standard nowadays,” Tigers manager AJ Hinch said Thursday. “I know there’s been a lot of debates about what’s real, what’s not real, the gamesmanship that comes with the motions and things like that.
“Different teams are doing more outlandish things as they go — and the paranoia is real, too.”
Pitchers have become increasingly wary of tipping pitches, even with the PitchCom removing the catcher’s signals from the equation. Where a catcher sets up behind the plate becomes a focal point.
That’s why, when he got on second base against Casey Mize in the second inning in Game 4 Wednesday, there was an initial concern that Naylor, with his arm motions, was giving the intended location of the pitches.
He did it again in the fourth, but by then, two things were clear: His hitters weren’t paying attention and the Tigers weren’t buying the ploy.
Eugenio Suarez, who struck out in the second after Naylor’s double, told Seattle reporters he never looked at Naylor.
Catcher Dillon Dingler initially tried to give a couple of different set-up locations to throw off Naylor. But he soon realized Naylor was just trying to distract his pitchers.
“I didn’t see a single good take or anything like that,” Dingler told MLB. com. “A lot of times people do that just to try to get into pitchers’ heads. Guys in the dugout, they’re like, ‘Oh, I think they’re tipping location.’ And I was like, ‘They’re doing the same thing over and over and they’re not making adjustments, so obviously they don’t have anything.’”
Naylor was coy about it after the game, telling reporters he was just trying to help his teammates.
But it’s highly doubtful any of those types of ploys will divert Tarik Skubal’s focus Friday.
“I don’t have much take on it because we don’t pay a ton of attention to it,” Hinch said. “It’s a distraction either way. If it’s something that you’re doing, then obviously you’ve got to clean up your tipping. If it’s not, then it’s wasteful energy to worry about it.”
@cmccosky
