Briggs: With big hand from Toledo, the Tigers are authoring a baseball storybook for the ages

DETROIT — The Tigers wrapped up the regular season on Sunday playing meaningless September baseball.

It was just as expected, but for one little twist.

The game — a 9-5 loss to the White Sox — was (relatively) insignificant not because Detroit was playing out the string.

It was because its boys of summer — counted out by everyone, their brother, and their own front office — had strung together six weeks of pure wonder and were already assured a spot in the playoffs.

I popped in Saturday at Comerica Park, where the magic — at least the frat-house-basement perfume of domestic light beer — was still in the air.

A night earlier, the Tigers had clinched their first postseason trip since 2014, and first baseman Spencer Torkelson spoke for everyone in the booze-drenched clubhouse, declaring the celebration “a dream come true.”

Can you believe this team?

Neither can I.

One of my favorite sports movies as a kid was Tiger Town , the 1983 Disney feature about a 12-year-old boy who — heeding the never-stop-believing final words of his late father — wills his beloved but down-and-out Tigers to the playoffs.

It may be time for a sequel.

No playoff team of recent vintage was more down and out than this Detroit nine.

The Tigers were deader than a doornail, their obituary written in July — when they traded the best player available at the deadline (starter Jack Flaherty) — and touched up in the ensuing weeks.

On Aug. 10, they were 55-63 and 10 games out of the last wild-card spot. The club had a 0.2 percent chance to make the playoffs, per FanGraphs.

Then …

Well, you know what happened next, and I think back to the day the Tigers retired the No. 10 of former manager Jim Leyland.

As much as the evidence suggested otherwise — this was Aug. 3, mind you — Leyland encouraged fans to keep the faith.

“I’m a little concerned because they’re struggling right this moment and probably not gonna to get in,” Leyland told reporters. “But I think this team, they’re gonna get healthy and they’re gonna have a great September. It’s probably gonna be a little late, but I believe that.

“I don’t talk about this much, because I don’t want to preach patience any more to the fans, and I’m sick of hearing the word ‘patience’ in a lot of different areas, and I understand the fans are, too.

“But one thing I will tell you: If you trust my judgment as a baseball man — and I hope you do — there are a lot of good ingredients for a great cake here. I believe that.”

He could not have been more prescient.

The Tigers did not just have a great September. They authored one of the most unlikely tales in modern baseball history, ripping down one flag (the white one raised at the trade deadline) to go chase another (the pennant).

A rebuild threatening to go nowhere suddenly found the open road.

Detroit — which is headed to Houston for a best-of-three AL Wild Card series — closed the year on a baseball-leading 31-13 heater, becoming the first team since the 1973 New York Mets to make the playoffs after being at least eight games under .500 through 115 games. (Sure, it’s easier to make the playoffs today. No, that doesn’t make this run any less implausible.)

How did the Tigers do it?

No idea.

After trading the 28-year-old Flaherty and three thirty-something veterans, they were left with two healthy starting pitchers and the youngest team in baseball.

In fact, one of the coolest parts of this story is how many Mud Hens have helped tell it. The Tigers’ playoff roster could feature a whopping 13 players who spent good chunks of time on this year’s Toledo club: Torkelson, Dillon Dingler, Trey Sweeney, Jace Jung, Wenceel Perez, Justyn-Henry Malloy, Keider Montero, Beau Brieske, Sean Guenther, Brenan Hanifee, Brant Hurter, Ty Madden, and Jackson Jobe. (Congratulations to every level of the Tigers’ organization, including Toledo manager Tim Federowicz and his Hens coaching staff.)

It’s unbelievable.

But that’s what makes it all the sweeter.

The best — and most exhilarating — adventures are those that thrill us out of nowhere.

Turns out, the Tigers had the ingredients, including a lot of belief, heroes sung (Cy Young lock Tarik Skubal and all-star Riley Greene) and unsung, and a manager in A.J. Hinch who pushed every right button, including with his piecemeal pitching staff.

With just two traditional starting pitchers (Skubal and Montero), Detroit starters tossed just 152⅔ innings between Aug. 11 and Friday’s clincher. That’s an average of 3⅔ innings per game, and, if conventional wisdom counts for anything, it should have put an impossible strain on the bullpen. Instead, Tigers relievers registered an MLB-best 2.27 ERA in that span.

Everything came up Motown, and now the Tigers — with momentum and a shutdown ace on their side — are a team no one is pining to see in a short series.

Early in this extraordinary late charge, fans cheekily began to warn, “Don’t let the Tigers get hot.”

It’s too late.

The only question left is how much better this baseball storybook can get.