The finale and rubber-match of a three-game series in Houston, in which the Tigers blew a golden opportunity for a series victory on Tuesday night, saw them struggle against a solid-but-not-great starting pitcher and lose the game by a 4-2 score.
Casey Mize, who just returned from the Injured List with a right adductor strain in the groin (ouch), made his tenth start of the season for the Tigers. He was put on the shelf in late May and was recativated today; he spent a couple of weeks on the IL a month
earlier for the same affliction. When he’s been healthy this season he’s been fantastic, with a WHIP under 1.00 and only a pair of home runs given up. Stop pulling that groin, young man! (Take that any way you like.)
Facing Mize and the Detroiters for the Astros was Peter Lambert, who’s in his first year in Houston. He’d been up-and-down with the Rockies since 2019, so a return to (almost) sea level was probably a welcome development. His season so far has been pretty solid, but like his colleagues on the ‘Stros, he walks too many batters. He seems to have genuinely found a home in Houston’s rotation, though, which is nice for him.
Both pitchers were in control early on; through two innings each team only had one baserunner, although the Astros had some hard contact with only a harmless double to show for it. What wasn’t so harmless was Jeremy Peña’s fourth home run of the year with two out in the third to put Houston up 1-0.
The Astros loaded the bases with two out in the bottom of the fourth and Jake Meyers at the plate, but Mize made Meyers fly out harmlessly to centre and the quandary was quelled. Lambert, however, was rolling: through five innings he only gave up a Dillon Dingler single and had Tiger hitters flummoxed with a half-dozen different pitches. It’s like that thing you hear about occasionally, the “paradox of infinite choice.” Remember when there were three television channels? You found a show to watch. Looking at an endless scroll of streaming-movie choices? Impossible to find anything you like. Something like that.
Houston extended its lead in the fifth with a single-productive groundout-double combination to go up 2-0. Plenty of long at-bats, plus it being Mize’s first start back from being on the IL, shortened Mize’s start; he exited after the second out in the fifth in favour of Kyle Finnegan with a runner on second. The change did not do the Tigers good, as Finnegan surrendered an RBI double to Isaac Paredes to put the lead at 3-0.
Houston went up 4-0 in the sixth after a double, a pair of walks and a single; it would’ve been 5-0 but Meyers was thrown out at home on the relay from Kerry Carpenter.
And since baseball kinda works this way, Carpenter smacked a solo home run in the top of the seventh to narrow the gap to 4-1.
Leading off the ninth, Kevin McGonigle hit his own solo home run off tough lefty Josh Hader for a 4-2 score. Nice to see the Kid taking a tough lefty oppo to stay hot. But from there Hader slammed the door on the Tigers and that was the end of the proceedings.
Final score: Astros 4, Tigers 2
Injury News and Such
- In case you missed it, Gleyber Torres is back on the IL with his oblique, something that flared up with a swing-and-miss on Monday night. My goodness, what a season it’s been for him.
- In other, weirder injury news, Chris McCosky of the Detroit News reported that Wenceel Pérez was injured after Tuesday night’s game after a plyo band — basically a bungee cord used for workouts — hit him in the face. No word on whether it was his own or someone else’s. We thought nothing could surprise us anymore this season, but the creativity on display is unmatched.
- Colt Keith missed Tuesday’s game due to wrist discomfort, but he was back in the lineup today.
- On this day in 1579, Francis Drake claimed modern-day California for England. The most recent episode of Map Men, in its hilariously British-humour kind of way, tries to answer the question of who circumnavigated the Earth first, Drake or Ferdinand Magellan (spoiler: neither, probably). Both those voyages sounded pretty miserable.
