The Tigers looked to right the ship after several crushing, walk-off losses in Cleveland over the weekend, coming home for a three-game series against another division rival, the Minnesota Twins. They got a little revenge on their opponent for bashing them around last week, starting off the series with a tight 5-4 win featuring a long home run from a guy on a heck of a hot streak.
Troy Melton has been having a sensational year for the Tigers, and he started for them today. However, his previous start was
in Minnesota and it did not go well: while he got into the sixth, he was charged with five earned runs (with another pair unearned) on the way to a 15-2 drubing.
Making his twenty-fourth start of the season for the Twins was Joe Ryan, who’s been a stalwart in their rotation since the tail end of 2021. He’s having his usual “above average, but not outrageously so” season: striking out a little more than one per inning, keeping traffic more-or-less off the basepaths, However, back in early August he strained his left gluteus maximus muscle and this is his first start back from spending time on the shelf, and it’s funny (to me, anyway) to think that “straining your ass” can be an actual baseball injury. He wasn’t going to go deep in this one.
The Twins made noise early: a leadoff plunking and single in the first was followed, after a strikeout, by a double steal to put runners on second and third with one out. A weak grounder to John Peck at shortstop produced a high throw home which allowed the annoying Luke Keaschall to score from third and put runners at the corners. Fortunately the next batter hit a harder grounder at Peck, who turned it into a 6-3 double play. But at that point the Tigers were behind — something they never were, at any point, during the Cleveland series. Le sigh.
Kevin McGonigle wouldn’t stand for that, though: he hit a laser-beam line drive into the right-field seats in the bottom of the first to even the score at 1-1.
Zach McKinstry led off the bottom of the second with a triple to the right-field corner, and then Ryan couldn’t find the strike zone: he walked Max Clark and then hit Peck and Colt Keith on consecutive pitches to drive in McKinstry. McGonigle then hit a grounder to first; the throw came home a little wild as Clark raced home to score for a 3-1 lead. It looked like the Tigers might be able to break the game open at that point, but a strikeout and a groundout kept the score static.
Things were quiet until one out in the top of the fourth when Trevor Larnach hit a line-drive home run to right field to narrow the lead to 3-2.
After Ryan’s pair of plunkings and the fielder’s choice in the second, he settled down and got the next eight hitters in a row, ending his day after 66 pitches and four innings. Remember, he was coming back from a butt-strain. Connor Prielipp replaced him to start the bottom of the fifth; with one out, Gleyber Torres singled, and a white-hot Riley Greene said a little “how-do-you-do” to a four-seamer on the outer half of the plate:
Melton got the first two batters out in the top of the sixth; you had to wonder, is he going to go a full six or maybe even seven innings? Well, a pair of singles and a two-run double narrowed the score to 5-4 and ended Melton’s day, which is a darn shame. Tyler Kinley, who had a nice 1 ⅓-inning stint in Minnesota last week, was brought in to deal with the situation and he promptly walked Keaschall and Brooks Lee to load the bases for Old Friend™ Kody Clemens, who has had quite a season bashing dingers. He started Clemens off with a juicy middle-middle slider that got fouled off, but ended up freezing him on an inside fastball for strike three to end the inning. Baseball is fun!
Jacob Waguespack came on for the seventh and after a strikeout and a four-pitch walk, Royce Lewis hit a grounder to third for the ol’ 5-4-3 double play.
Drew Sommers was brought in for the eighth and Old Friend™ Ryan Kreidler walked, but like Waguespack before him, a double-play grounder followed. Walker Jenkins was plunked — the fifth hit-batsman of the day — and a comebacker went off Sommers’ glove and into centrefield to put runners on the corners. But a fly ball to right got Sommers and the Tigers out of a too-eventful inning unscathed.
After not adding any insurance in the bottom of the eighth, the Tigers brought out Kenley Jansen to face the heart of the Twins’ lineup. Clemens led off with a walk, and the dangerous Ryan Jeffers hit a long fly ball to centrefield; Clark caught it at the wall while Clemens was near second base, so he couldn’t tag up to advance on the out. (It was a 411-foot out: Comerica gives, and it takes away.) And you’re thinking shoot, a walk and a long fly ball, what are we in for here? But on the very next pitch, Josh Bell hit a grounder to Peck at shortstop for a 6-3 game-ending double play, the first double play behind Jansen all year. See? It’s fun, everyone!
Final score: Tigers 5, Twins 4
Numbers and Commemorations
- Those walk-off losses in Cleveland (three in a four-game series) really stung. But do you remember the wretched 1989 season in which the Tigers lost four consecutive walk-off losses against the California Angels in late July? I sure don’t, as they were all on the west coast and probably past my bedtime, especially the third one which went sixteen innings.
- The Tigers may have had a generally lousy weekend in Cleveland, but Riley Greene found his groove, going 6-for-12 with three doubles and a pair of home runs, scoring four times. And then the home run today amidst a 3-for-4 performance? Looks like we got Greeney goin’.
- Spencer Torkelson’s 2026 season is exceptionally average by his standards. I’ll give his 2026 stat, with his career average in parentheses… batting average, .222 (.226); on-base percentage, .313 (.311); slugging percentage, .411 (.412); OPS, .724 (.722). I mean, that’s not Khris Davis-level consistency, but that’s creepily close.
- The radio broadcast used an instrumental snippet from “Life During Wartime” by the Talking Heads. You know what really propels that song? The extra percussion.
- Happy Labour Day, everyone! Today is the day on which we celebrate the achievements of organized labour: health and safety standards, the power of collective bargaining, and even things so basic (like an eight-hour work day and paid overtime) that most of us take for granted. These were all hard-fought gains, the struggles for which saw people lose their lives in the name of worker rights. Solidarity!
