TORONTO — The ball hit his glove, trickling a few feet away into shallow left field, and as Jordy Mercer stumbled, off-balance, toward it, the crowd noise tipped him off.
After having played next to him for so long, Josh Harrison — sitting in the Detroit Tigers dugout on this day — knew what was coming next.
“I knew when it hit the glove,” Harrison said. “That’s awareness, knowing the game.”
That awareness is why the Tigers coveted Mercer this off-season, why they signed him to a one-year, $5.75 million deal when other comparable shortstops — including one that used to play the spot in Detroit — went for far less.