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⚾ THE PANEL DISCUSSION — BNN POSTGAME EXTRA
BOB COSTAS
“On a cool October afternoon in Arlington, we were treated to one of those postseason games that felt like a fever dream from the dead-ball era colliding with the aluminum bat era.
Thirty-two hits. Twenty-one runs. A catcher — a catcher — Juan Santos, becoming a kind of folk hero in Detroit with a four-hit masterpiece: a homer, a double, eight total bases.
And the Tigers… let’s be honest… they kicked the ball all over the yard. Four errors. At times it looked like a 1912 sandlot team playing on uneven dirt.
But what October teaches us, and what this game reinforced, is that sometimes survival is the story. Detroit survived. They now take this circus back home, where the ghosts of Tigers teams past — from Cobb to Greenberg — will be watching.”
CHRIS “MAD DOG” RUSSO
“A COUGH—STAS! LET ME TELL YA SOMETHIN’ RIGHT NOW, THIS WAS A DISGRACE FOR THE TEXAS RANGERS!
YOU SCORE TEN RUNS! TEN! AT HOME! YOU HAVE EIGHTEEN HITS! AND YOU LOSE?!
I MEAN WHAT ARE WE DOIN’ HERE?!
The Rangers had this game TWICE. They get the 4-run inning. They get the 3-run inning. They got Morton OUT of the game! The Tigers couldn’t field — Fleming’s throw goes to Galveston, Macario bobbles a ball, DURAN kicks one… and they STILL WIN?!
And this Cisneros double — listen, I like the kid — but YOU CAN’T GIVE UP THAT GAP SHOT IN THE EIGHTH! WHITE CAN’T DO IT! You're one out away from takin’ the series!
Now they gotta fly to Detroit — Comerica — and deal with that crowd and the cold?! HO HO HO, GOOD LUCK!”
MIKE FRANCESA
“Let me just say this. Okay? Enough with the nonsense. This game was a joke.
First of all, the Rangers bullpen… terrible. Absolutely terrible. You can’t walk guys, you can’t fall behind hitters, you can’t give up rockets all over the ballpark in a closeout game. That’s the whole ballgame right there.
And I told you — I TOLD YOU — Santos is a problem. That guy hits everything. Everything. You could roll the ball to him and he’ll smack it somewhere.
Now, the Tigers… listen, they may be the World champions, but they’re not a great team. They’re not. But they battle. They’re pesky. They’re annoying. And in a Game 5, you do not want to deal with a team like that.
And Texas? They had their chance. They blew it. They absolutely blew it. If they lose this series, they will think about this game ALL. WINTER. LONG. You cannot lose a game when you have 18 hits at home. You can’t. It’s impossible. And they just did it.”
COLIN COWHERD
“So let me bring a little structure to the chaos here, because what we just saw was the baseball version of a Big 12 shootout — Oklahoma–Texas, 58–55, nobody plays defense, everybody’s exhausted, and at the end you just shrug.
Detroit’s identity all year has been chaos. They’re scrappy, they’re weird, they’re that startup that keeps winning pitches they probably shouldn’t.
Texas, meanwhile, is like a Fortune 100 company with a great logo and an expensive bullpen… but we saw today that when you put them under pressure, they get rattled. They’re a front-runner team.
Santos? That guy’s a unicorn. He’s the tight end who runs a 4.4. You can’t game-plan it. He just takes over moments.
And now Game 5 shifts to Detroit — and this is where brand and culture matter. Detroit is loose. Texas is tight. One team is playing with house money; the other is playing like their CEO is standing behind them breathing down their necks.
If I had to do a Herd Hierarchy for this series, right now?
Momentum
Santos
Everybody else
Texas let Detroit off the mat. You never — I repeat, NEVER — let the defending champions breathe in the playoffs.”
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