The Detroit Tigers went into their Wednesday-afternoon tilt at home against the Houston Astros looking for a three-game sweep, not having given up a run in either of the first two games. Well, they allowed a pair of runs to the visitors but scored a pile of runs early for a comfortable 7-2 win, brooming the Astros out of town.
Charlie Morton had made three starts for the Tigers coming into today, two great and one not-so-much. He was facing the team for which he’d pitched in 2017 and 2018, going 29-10
and famously finishing Game 7 of the 2017 World Series with four innings of one-run relief and a bushel-basket full of curveballs. He’s bounced around the major leagues, coming up with Atlanta, then spending seven years with the Pirates; after that he had shorter stints with the Phillies, Astros and Rays before returning to Atlanta for four years and earning another World Series ring. He started this year with the Orioles, and now he’s plying his trade in Detroit, of course.
Facing Morton was his former teammate on the Astros, Framber Valdez, who came up in 2018 with Houston and has been there ever since. The lefty seems to be allergic to giving up home runs, and coming into today he was averaging a svelte 0.5 of ’em per 9 innings pitched; he also led the American League with the same value in 2022 when he finished third in the league’s Cy Young voting. He’s been incredibly consistent the past few years in terms of the major stats, although his hard-hit percentage has ticked a bit upwards this season — despite that, he still keeps ‘em in the yard better than anyone else.
The Tigers got down to work early: Valdez walked the first two batters he faced, Jahmai Jones and Gleyber Torres, and then Andy Ibáñez singled to drive in the first run. Spencer Torkelson hit a ground-rule double to right for the second run, and a wild pitch scored a third run. Riley Greene walked, another wild pitch scored Torkelson, and Dillon Dingler tripled to left-centre to score Greene, and holy mackerel, it was 5-0 with none out. As Ernie Harwell might’ve said at this juncture, “The Tigers are kickin’ up their heels!”
Wenceel Perez struck out for the first out, but Javier Báez singled to left to score Dingler to make it a nice half-dozen runs in a first inning that lasted quite some time, and gave Charlie Murphy Morton quite a nice cushion to work with as the Tigers batted-around.
With one out in the third, Dingler doubled and was brought around to score by a Báez single and the Tigers were up a full touchdown (with extra point).
Mauricio Dubón got the Astros on the scoreboard — for the series — with an opposite-field two-run home run just over the right-field fence to narrow the lead to 7-2. Good for them, I say.
Morton got through six innings rather nicely: 3 H, 2 ER, 3 BB and 8 K. He had the curveball working, and Jake Rogers’ framing skills were stealing strikes aplenty. Now, lest you think that, if some version of the strike-zone challenge system is coming to the Major Leagues next year, pitch-framing skills will be a thing of the past, consider this: teams only get a few challenges a game, and if a catcher like Rogers keeps framing ‘em up, that may cause teams to use more challenges, inevitably burning through them, putting the team with the good-framing catcher at an advantage (or, perhaps, less of a disadvantage than you might’ve initially thought). Or I might be totally wrong. It’s been known to happen.
Brenan Hanifee got into the game in the seventh, after being recalled from Toledo a few days ago. He was nails down the stretch last year, and if he can be anywhere close to that good this year, he’ll be quite a weapon out of the Tiger bullpen. He allowed a harmless single in the seventh, carried on to the eighth to strike out Christian Walker, and gave way to Tyler Holton, who gave up a harmless single.
Rafael Montero started the ninth for the Tigers and got a groundout, a strikeout and a lineout to end the game. Is he the same pitcher that effectively closed out that extra-inning win against the Twins? Optimism should always be cautious, and this situation is no exception.
The Tigers have Thursday off before welcoming the Royals into town on Friday night. Kansas City is, as of right now, in second place in the division, edging in front of Cleveland. Please note the Friday night game will be on Apple TV+ and start at 7:10 pm EDT.
Final score: Tigers 7, Astros 2
Numbers and Occasions
- With their win on Tuesday night, the Tigers ensured their fourth straight series victory. That’s good.
- Since their 10-4 victory to salvage one game from the Blue Jays series on July 27, the Tigers have gone 16-7. That’s very good.
- In the last eight games (including this one), the Tiger bullpen has thrown twenty-seven scoreless innings and counting.
- On this day in 1858, Charles Darwin first published his theory of natural selection, the driver of evolution, in an academic journal. While Darwin usually gets the lion’s-share of credit for the theory, Alfred Wallace independently came up with the same idea, and their research papers were both published in the same year. No word on whether or not Darwin and Wallace became besties because of it.
