After a comfortable series-opening win on Monday, the Tigers’ pitching-by-committee couldn’t quite tame the Guardians as they dropped the second game of their four-day weekday series 5-4 in Cleveland.
The Tigers had Ol’ Reliable, “TBA,” listed as the starter for most of the day. Eventually it was determined that Tyler Holton would kick things off on such a summer’s bullpen day; the reliable lefty out of the ‘pen has been lights-out off late. Don’t be fooled by his low-3’s ERA; that’s largely skewed by three outings in which he gave up 3, 3 and 5 runs. Other than those, he’s been a valuable multi-inning relief option who routinely comes in, mows down six hitters, and barely breaks a sweat.
The visitors sent Xzavion Curry to the mound, making his fourth start and sixth appearance overall for the Buckeyes. It was his first start since May 27 in Colorado, which did not go well (as it often does for a pitcher when he’s at such an elevation). He’s been back-and-forth between Cleveland and Triple-A Columbus, and he hasn’t acquitted himself particularly well for either club.
Holton ended up going 1 ⅔ innings off the top, giving up a walk and a hit but nothing really of note. Alex Faedo followed in the second, hit the first batter he faced but ended up closing out the inning.
The Cleves got on the board in the bottom of the second with a solo home run by, who else, Steven Kwan. It was only the second home run Faedo has surrendered to a left-handed batter all year, but hey, Kwan’ll do that sort of thing to ya. What a pest. (I’d love to have him on the Tigers, obviously.)
Detroit got that run back and then some in the top of the fourth: Mark Canha rapped a double to left field with one out, and Wenceel Pérez followed with a home run to right-centre to put the visitors up 2-1.
However, the home squad promptly evened the score via a Jhonkensy Noel solo home run in the bottom of the frame. After a one-out single by Tyler Freeman, who seems to be exclusively torching Tigers pitching, Faedo gave way to Joey Wentz, and despite allowing a stolen base and a walk (something Wentz has really struggled with this year), he managed to get out of the inning without any further damage surrendered.
With one out in the fifth, Jake Rogers smashed a double to centre; that represented twice through the order, so Curry’s night was done. Rogers took third on a Matt Vierling groundout, but a ground ball comebacker concluded the ultimately fruitless inning.
José Ramírez’s leadoff at-bat in the following half-inning wasn’t fruitless, though, as he clubbed a solo home run down the left-field line for a 3-2 Cleveland lead.
Wentz handed a second-and-third-with-one-out situation to Will Vest in the sixth, and a sacrifice fly followed by a Ramírez double made it a 5-2 lead, which would ultimately be enough to seal the victory.
With one out in the seventh, Gio Urshela walked and Zach McKinstry doubled, putting runners on second and third. Rogers then made a bid for an opposite-field home run but had to settle for a sacrifice fly to narrow the lead to 5-3 and push McKinstry up to third. A walk to Vierling put runners on the corners, and pitcher Hunter Gaddis threw over to first; Josh Naylor bobbled the throw and McKinstry alertly dashed home for a 5-4 score.
Justyn-Henry Malloy fought off a steady diet of nasty sliders from Scott Barlow to eventually hit a line-drive single to centre to lead off the eighth. After a flyout, a dropped Pérez popup to third caught Malloy between the bases and he was a dead duck at second for the second out. Pérez stole second to get himself into scoring position, but Bligh Madris struck out and that was that.
Shelby Miller came on for the eighth to hold the fort, and he gave up a two-out double to Martínez with the dangerous Ramírez coming up, and some hard contact already surrendered. Nonetheless, he induced a popup to shortstop to send a one-run game to the ninth…
…which brought on the inevitable Emmanual Clase from the Cleveland bullpen. I mean, he’s not invincible, but I’m not sure you would exactly call him vincible, either. The moral of this story is that the Tigers couldn’t do anything against him, and the series was thus knotted at a game apiece.
Box Score: Cleveland 5, Detroit 4
Notes and Numbers
- I really like how Justyn-Henry Malloy is heating up. From June 29 through July 22 (57 plate appearances), he’s hitting .306 with an OPS of 1.057, clubbing five home runs, including that grand slam in Toronto.
- Strikeouts are still an issue for him, though; in those 57 plate appearances, 16 of them (28%) ended in a whiff or a called strike three.
- By contrast — and yes, I know they were different times — but in 1950, Tigers third baseman and future broadcaster George Kell came to the plate 724 times and a mere 18 of those (2.5%) ended in a strikeout.
- The radio guys mentioned that Cleveland’s outfield has roughly 10,000 ft² (∼930 m²) less area than Comerica Park’s. That’s roughly the area, from sideline to sideline, on a football field from the goal line to the 20-yard line. Despite that, Cleveland’s stadium is somewhat pitcher-friendly; I can’t imagine the tall wall in left field isn’t part of that.
- On this day in 1921, Calvert DeForest was born in Brooklyn. That name may or may not mean anything to you, but if you ever watched any of David Letterman’s late-night shows, you surely saw him in some sort of bizarre role in a sketch or an on-stage appearance. For the latter, he’d usually yell some sort of non-sequitur, laugh at his own joke, and walk off leaving everyone just a little more confused than they were a moment earlier. For the Late Night show on NBC, DeForest went by the name Larry “Bud” Melman.