After 22⅓ innings, the Detroit Tigers snapped their scoreless streak with one out in the second inning of Tuesday’s game. Spencer Torkelson drew a six-pitch walk and scored when Eric Haase’s doubled down the left-field line.
A feel-good moment for a miserable offense, avoiding a third straight shutout, wasn’t enough to spark a victory against the Houston Astros. The Tigers lost, 6-3, in the second of three games at Comerica Park.
The Tigers (54-88) have an 18-41 record since July 9.
“They’re good,” manager A.J. Hinch said. “They can beat you in a lot of ways, and we’ve seen two different ways, especially with their two-out hitting today. We couldn’t keep the ball in the ballpark. … They’re tough, we know it. They have very few holes. That’s why they lead the league in wins.”
Astros right-hander Hunter Brown, who attended St. Clair Shores Lakeview High School and Wayne State, battled command issues early but continued to get better as he worked deeper into the second start of his MLB career.
“Definitely warming up in the bullpen, I heard my name a lot, which is cool,” Brown said. “After the game, I looked up and saw my Wayne State teammates and a lot of family and friends and stuff like that. It was really fun and really exciting.”
The 24-year-old, a fifth-round pick in 2019, threw a game-high 98.9 mph fastball in the fifth inning, which featured two of his six strikeouts. Brown allowed two runs on five hits and two walks over six innings. He tossed 57 of 82 pitches for strikes, generated six swings and misses and tallied 22 called strikes.
“He’s a good looking kid,” Hinch said. “I know why they like him. He’s easy to like. I think he had some nerves early and wanted to pitch well in front of his friends and family. But it’s a good arm with good pitches. He settled in and started to land his secondary pitches, which is going to be a huge difference maker as a young pitcher in this league, just like our young guys.
“We did have a pretty good approach. When he started to land his breaking ball, it became a little bit more difficult to piece together a few things. He escaped with a couple double plays, found some punch outs and controlled the strike zone a little better as the game went along. But yeah, he’s a good pitcher.”
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Brown retired the final seven batters he faced.
“He started to challenge us more with the fastball later in the game,” Baddoo said. “That was really it. He had pretty good stuff, though, but that was really it, just challenging us more with the fastball.”
The Astros crushed three home runs and scored all six runs with two outs, capped by a two-run home run from Yuli Gurriel off left-handed reliever Andrew Chafin for a 6-2 lead with two outs in the seventh inning.
Chafin walked Yordan Alvarez, who finished 2-for-3 with a walk, to begin his relief appearance.
After Brown exited, right-handed reliever Hector Neris took over for the seventh inning. Kody Clemens hit an opposite-field home run, his fourth of the season and first since July 6, for the Tigers’ third run.
Astros closer Ryan Pressly struck out the side in the bottom of the ninth.
Shooting stars out of Houston
As Brown worked through six innings, the Astros’ offense provided run support in a matchup with 32-year-old veteran right-hander Drew Hutchison.
Alvarez cranked a changeup at the bottom of the strike zone for a solo home run in the first inning for a 1-0 lead. He collected his 33rd home run of the season with two strikes and two outs. Two-strike hits haunted Hutchison.
“This offense, they rarely swing out of the zone and make you earn your three strikes,” Hinch said. “They’re never out of an at-bat. Yordan takes two pitches that are fastballs inside the big part of the strike zone and hits a two-strike secondary pitch for a homer. … These guys make you complete the at-bats, and if you make a mistake, they have the opportunity to punish you.”
The Astros scored three more runs in the third inning, once again with two outs. Alvarez, the No. 3 hitter, ignited the offensive surge with a double — his 21st of the year — on a two-strike slider below the strike zone.
Alex Bregman drove in Alvarez for a 2-1 lead with a one-strike single, and Kyle Tucker crushed a two-strike slider at the bottom of the zone for a two-run home run. Tucker’s 26th homer increased Houston’s margin to 4-1.
“It just comes down to executing pitches,” Hutchison said. “I didn’t execute my pitch in the first inning to Alvarez. I executed my pitch to Bregman, but he was just able to get enough on it. And then I didn’t execute my pitch to Tucker. That was the difference maker.”
A scoreless fourth and speedy fifth allowed Hutchison to return for the sixth inning. He retired the first batter before Aledmys Diaz reached safely on a fielding error by shortstop Javier Báez, who leads MLB with 24 errors. The ball — hit directly at Báez — snuck into the outfield. An ensuing double from Mauricio Dubon chased Hutchison from his outing.
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Right-handed reliever Alex Lange struck out Martin Maldonado, then hit Jose Altuve with a curveball to load the bases. He fell behind 2-0 in the count against Jeremy Pena but responded with three consecutive strikes — sinker (called strike), sinker (swinging strike) and curveball (swinging strike) — to escape the sixth without damage.
Hutchison allowed four runs on nine hits. He did not walk a batter and struck out two, throwing 63 of 89 pitches for strikes. He used 34 sliders (38%), 30 four-seam fastballs (34%), 21 sinkers (24%) and four changeups (4%).
Baddoo finally does it
The improbable happened in the third inning, as Baddoo produced his best swing of the season on Brown’s two-strike curveball and ripped a triple to straightaway center field. He scored the Tigers’ second run on Riley Greene’s RBI single.
“It felt good, man,” Baddoo said. “It’s been a minute since I touched third base. I was a little winded. But it wasn’t bad. It was good. I had a good at-bat, trusted by abilities and took care of business.”
It marked Baddoo’s third extra-base hit of the season and his first extra-base hit since an April 13 home run, despite playing in 49 MLB games since then. He went 1-for-3 with one strikeout and is batting .184 in 54 games in 2022.
From that point forward, Brown dominated the Tigers by working ahead in counts and flexing his high-velocity fastball. He threw fastballs for 54 of his 82 pitches, a 66% clip. He also tossed in 17 curveballs, 10 sliders and one splitter.
Brown owns a 1.50 ERA after two MLB starts.
Contact Evan Petzold at epetzold@freepress.com or follow him on Twitter @EvanPetzold.