Ausmus keeping an eye on playoff races

DETROIT — Brad Ausmus experienced the tension of a postseason race from the managerial side in his first season as a skipper two years ago. Going through the motions down the stretch without it last year gave him a taste of life on the other end of the standings.

“Last year, our only purpose for coming to the field [down the stretch] was to finish out the season,” Ausmus said. “Now we’re coming to the field trying to extend the season.”

He isn’t immersed into scoreboard-watching mode just yet, but Ausmus is appreciating what he missed last year.

“I definitely look more now than I did,” he said. “The first two months of the season, I’ll look at highlights of games and parts of games, but I don’t look at the standings very often, a cursory glance every week or so.”

That said, he pointed to the wild swings of the American League Central race, or the back and forth in the National League West between the Giants and Dodgers, as reasons why it’s still too early to put too much into the day-to-day movements of the standings.

“I’ll say that I have, not regularly but with more frequency, looked at what other teams are doing in the last week,” Ausmus said. “But there’s still so much fluctuation.”

The …

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