NEW YORK — It was such an interesting moment – a bit of foreshadowing.

Dillon Dingler, the Detroit Tigers ' catcher, stood in front of his locker on Tuesday, Sept. 9, a few hours before the start of this week's three-game series against the New York Yankees .

“Starting this week, it's gonna really start to feel like playoff baseball,” Dingler said. “This week – it's gonna be awesome.”

At that moment, the Tigers were scuffling something awful. They were coming off a bad series against the lowly Chicago White Sox , in which they had lost two of three to a team with the second-most losses in MLB. In fact, over their previous 50 games, the Tigers had more losses (28) than wins (22).

Meanwhile, the Yankees were red-hot, winning 11 of 14 games to get to 80-63, back in the American Leag

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