St. Petersburg, Fla. – Spencer Turnbull spent 20 months building himself back up after Tommy John surgery. Twenty months, a lot of that time spent alone or with his rehab team, just sweating and grinding and dreaming of the day he could step back on that mound in a regular-season game.
And then that day comes, at last, and he can’t find his best weapon.
Cruel business.
“Definitely pretty disappointed,” Turnbull said Saturday after he was knocked out of the game in a seven-run third inning in the Tigers’ 12-2 loss to the Tampa Bay Rays at Tropicana Field. “Not exactly how I was hoping today would go. But I’m mostly disappointed because I didn’t give us a chance to win today. It’s very frustrating but I have to flush it and get ready for next week.”
His last regular season start was June 4, 2021, and he admitted he felt his nerves. What he couldn’t feel, though, was his slider — his best out pitch.
“Honestly, warming up (before the game) I felt great,” he said. “I didn’t miss a spot. I’m not sure what that was. Maybe it was nerves, trying to do too much.”
He ended up getting just two swings and misses on 10 swings. The four sliders the Rays put in play had an average exit velocity of 98 mph.
“That’s one of his elite weapons,” Tigers catcher Eric Haase said. “We had a chance to finish some guys off early and we didn’t. Like I told him, the game plan was fine, he was getting ahead of hitters fine — it was just execution.”
Turnbull was in trouble right from the start, giving up three hits and a walk to the first four batters he faced. But he got out of the first inning allowing only a run on a double by Randy Arozarena.
With the bases loaded and no outs, and the one run already in, Turnbull struck out Luke Raley and got Jose Siri to bounce into a 6-4-3 double-play.
“I felt good about getting out of that inning and I had an OK second inning,” Turnbull said. “Then in the third the crap hit the fan. You can’t have innings like that. You have to find a way to limit the damage and I didn’t do that.”
He hit Arozarena to start the third inning, then gave up doubles to Wander Franco, Siri and Josh Lowe, with a single and a walk mixed in, before departing.
“You don’t ever want to give up a seven-spot in the third inning and get pulled out of the game,” said Turnbull, who ended up allowing seven runs and eight hits with three walks and three strikeouts in 2.1 innings. “It’s tough for the boys to rally behind that. I am glad to be back out there and pitching in a big-league game. It’s been a long time. And games like that are going to happen — probably not very often.
“I’m going to do everything I can to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”
Before the game ended, he’d already pored over the video, checking for mechanical clues in his delivery as to where his slider might’ve gone.
“I just pitched bad, there’s not much more to it,” he said. “I didn’t execute. I gave them a ton of good pitches to hit and I didn’t make mine. I will figure out what it was and be better next week.”
His next start will be the home opener at Comerica Park Thursday.
The Tigers, who start a season 0-2 for the first time since 2018, didn’t score a run for 12 straight innings, the offense effectively disengaged by the two Rays starters in this series. Lefty Shane McClanahan blanked them over six innings in the 4-0 opening day loss and right-hander Zach Eflin checked them on three hits and a run over five innings Saturday.
The Tigers finally cracked the scoring column in the fourth. Kerry Carpenter doubled and scored on a two-out single by Miguel Cabrera, who fouled off three two-strike pitches before knocking the seventh pitch of the at-bat into right field.
Kerry Carpenter, who led off the inning with a double, scored.
Carpenter doubled and scored again in the sixth, this time against Rays’ Rule 5 rookie right-hander Kevin Kelly. Carpenter got a good read on a bloop single by Austin Meadows and slid across home plate just ahead of the throw from Siri in center.
Lefty Tyler Alexander managed to calm the Rays offense down somewhat through the middle innings. Mixing his cutter and sinker expertly with four-seam fastballs and change-ups, he struck out seven of the 12 batters he faced, including six of the last seven.
He got seven swings and misses on 26 swings, but more impressively, 16 called strikes. The Rays hitters took seven cutters for strikes and six sinkers.
“We needed that from Tyler to get to the back end of the game,” Tigers manager AJ Hinch said. “When Tyler can come in and give us three-plus innings and bridge it to the end, that’s key for us tomorrow.”
The only mistake Alexander made was a center-cut cutter than Yandy Diaz hit into the left-field seats, a two-run homer.
Diaz ended up a triple short of a cycle, with a single, double and homer, and knocked in three runs. Franco also collected three hits and knocked in three.
Twitter@cmccosky