The middle game of a three-game series with the Mariners in the Emerald City featured plenty of plunkings, a couple of ejections, and a crucial, late-innings home run in a 4-2 Seattle win.
The, uh, “revamped” Tigers rotation has a couple of new faces in it, and one of those belongs to Drew Anderson. After working as a starter in South Korea last season, the right-hander has done a little of everything for the Tigers this year: started a couple of times, saved a couple of games, and been brought into
games anywhere between the fourth and the tenth inning. But now he’s been put into the starting rotation, and the plan is to have him gradually stretch out his start-lengths, so he wasn’t going to go starter distance in this one.
Bryan Woo got the nod for the M’s, and his home/away splits are truly astounding. Now, the stadium over there in Seattle is, and always has been, quite the pitcher’s paradise, but get this: at home this year he has an ERA of 2.20, and elsewhere it’s 6.71. At home, hitters are batting .167 with a .463 OPS; away, they’re batting .300 with an .819 OPS. That’s bananas, and the Tigers had their work cut out for them.
Detroit got its first baserunner in the top of the third when Max Clark got clipped by an inside sinker to lead off, which wouldn’t be the only such occurrene on this evening. With one out he advanced to second on a groundout, but with two outs Kevin McGonigle flew out harmlessly to left to strand Clark.
The bottom of the third saw the Mariners get back-to-back singles to lead off. But Anderson got a flyout and a ground-ball double play — the second consecutive inning that ended on a double-play grounder — and he’d made it through three innings on only 33 pitches.
Gleyber Torres led off an eventful fourth inning with a single to right, and he tried to advance to third on a Dillon Dingler single to left. He slid into third feet-first and actually beat the throw, but his momentum carried him off the bag and he was tagged out. Riley Greene followed by getting hit as well, putting two runners on for Colt Keith who had a three-run home run taken away from him by a leaping Randy Arozarena.
Spencer Torkelson then, anticlimactically, struck out.
After a two-out infield single in the bottom of the fourth, Anderson’s day was done and Tyler Holton was brought in to face fellow lefty Josh Naylor. Holton got Naylor to pop out to shortstop and the inning was done. The book also closed on Anderson: 3 2/3 IP, 3 H, 0 R, 1 BB, 0 K, 28 of 42 pitches for strikes. The plan was for Anderson to throw about 45 pitches, and I’m no mathematician but 42 is right around 45.
With two out in the fifth Woo hit his third batter of the night, nicking Zack McKinstry’s toe (which was confirmed on review), but McGonigle fouled-out to third for the final out. In the sixth with Dingler on first and two out, Keith again hit a ball hard — at 108 mph — but it was directly at the right fielder for the third out, and the game remained scoreless.
Holton carried on into the bottom of the sixth, and with two out his day was done; he retired all six batters he faced. Brenan Hanifee was summoned as his replacement, and the game did not remain scoreless for long: Arozarena double, intentional walk, three-run home run by Julio Rodríguez, whoopsie-daisy. That was it for Hanifee, as Drew Sommers was brought in to limit the damage, which he did by striking out Naylor.
With one out in the seventh Clark singled to centre, but was erased on a double-play grounder by Eduardo Valencia. That was the end of Woo’s night: seven shutout innings, three singles sprinkled here-and-there. Exactly what you expect from him in his home park.
Enmanuel De Jesus took over the pitching duties in the bottom of the seventh, and he started off by plunking Cal Raleigh in the gut, which certainly got the home team’s attention despite it clearly being unintentional.
If you’ve been counting, and the players certainly had, at this point the Mariners had hit three Tigers batters against one that the Tigers had hit. So with two out in the top of the eighth — the first two batters being rookies, natch — the first pitch from Gabe Speier to Torres was extremely inside, near his belt buckle. The second pitch made contact with Torres, the benches emptied, the bullpens emptied, much yelling and milling-about ensued, and both Speier and Seattle manager Dan Wilson were shown the door by the umpiring crew.
Eduard Bazardo was brought in to replace the ejected Speier; the first batter he faced was Dingler, and Dingler made the Mariners pay for their transgressions with a long two-run home run to narrow the score to 3-2.
De Jesus carried on into the bottom of the eighth and gave up a leadoff solo home run to Colt Emerson to push the score to 4-2. So much for momentum.
Andrés Muñoz, the Seattle closer with lights-out stuff, was brought in for the ninth: he got a pair of strikeouts and a groundout, and that was that.
Final score: Mariners 4, Tigers 2
Numbers and Observances
- Coming into tonight’s game, Colt Keith has had quite a post-All-Star Game run: 48 plate appearances, 19-for-43 (.442) with four doubles and two triples, for an OPS of 1.107. Pretty unlucky tonight, though.
- That may not quite be sustainable, though: his batting average on balls in play (BABip), normally around .290 for hitters, is a ludicrous .500. (That means he’s been very lucky.)
- A certain ex-Tigers right-handed pitcher gave up eight runs in 3 1/3 innings for the Padres tonight.
- On this day in 1888, Bertha Benz drove from Mannheim to Pforzheim, in southwestern Germany. Those two cities are about 100 km (60 mi) apart, which means that this was the first long-distance trip taken in an automobile. She took her two teenage sons with her, and they spent the whole time telling her to change the radio station, despite radio not having been invented yet.
