"I didn't know what happened in real time. I didn't see it until somebody brought up the video when we were back in the dugout after the inning. …Honestly, I missed the tag, and I didn't put myself in the best position possible. Honestly, it wasn't that big of a deal," Dillon Dingler said Saturday after Josh Naylor slid home and scored on Randy Arozarena's two‑RBI double.
The exchange matters because Naylor's slide ended with what looked like a tossed sliding mitt aimed in Dingler's direction at home plate — a flashpoint in a series that has already featured collisions and hard feelings. Naylor slid hard to score, Dingler said he missed his tag, and the play left both benches watching closely.
Naylor, who was at the center of several confrontations over the two games, gave his side of the mitt story in blunt fashion: "I couldn't get [the mitt] on in time at first base," he said, adding that he "really didn't expect Randy to swing at the first pitch" and that he then "forgot about it as I was running the bases." He said he later saw the clip and "it just flew, and I felt really bad. I just totally blanked on it."
The mitt episode is the latest thread tying together two earlier plays. On Friday night, Tigers rookie Kevin McGonigle and Naylor collided at first base in the fifth inning. McGonigle, who carried a scratch on his left temple near his eye from his helmet after the collision, said he thought Naylor was going to flip the ball to Bryan Woo and that he was "not sure why he took himself there." He added, "I kind of hustled toward the bag and we ended up colliding. All good."
Naylor went further than regret about the mitt. He also believed Keider Montero intentionally hit him with a 96 mph fastball on Saturday and said he felt the reaction on the bench — that Framber Valdez was laughing at him afterward — and concluded, "I knew it was on purpose." Manager AJ Hinch, wary of escalation after another high‑profile collision elsewhere in the league, said of the first‑base contact that "Naylor was the bigger vehicle coming into first base and he knew he was going to win that battle" and added, "After the nasty collision in the Dodgers‑D‑backs game the other night, we don’t want to see any of that."
Dingler's response reframes the moment. By saying he did not even register the mitt toss until teammates replayed it in the dugout, and by admitting he missed the tag and "didn't put myself in the best position possible," he removed some of the theatrical fuel that usually feeds bench tensions. His summation — "it wasn't that big of a deal" — is a small but deliberate attempt to cool the narrative that the play was an intentional act of malice.
Still, the sequence sits inside a larger pattern: Friday's collision at first, Saturday's hit‑by‑pitch that Naylor saw as deliberate, and now the mitt flying at home plate. The Mariners and Tigers split the first two games of the series, turning the third game into a rubber match with a little extra edge attached.
The immediate question is plain: will either side let it drop when they meet again Sunday at 1:40 p.m. ET in Detroit, or will Naylor's belief in an intentional HBP and Dingler's casual dismissal of the mitt toss fuel another exchange on the field? That is the unresolved hinge on which this series now turns.
