After a pair of disappointing losses and a rainout at home against the Guardians, the Tigers hit the road for the Lone Star State, the Bluebonnet State, the Home of the Whopper (I assume) for the opener of a three-game series against the Astros in Houston. It didn’t exactly go as the Tigers initially envisioned it, I imagine, but in the end Detroit came away with a comfortable 9-3 victory on Monday night — and, holy mackerel, did Colt Keith have a night.
Troy Melton woke up with lower-back tightness, so Drew Anderson got the spot start. (Get well soon, Troy. Please.) Anderson has generally been solid whenever in the game he’s been asked to pitch; he made a similar start back on May 20 against Cleveland and he pitched into the fifth, giving up no runs, two hits, and striking out seven. He’s been decent recently, too: in June coming into today, Anderson had pitched 5 2/3 innings, giving up seven hits and two runs across five relief appearances.
Facing the Tigers was Kai-Wei Teng, a right-hander from Taiwan in his first season in Houston. He’s had some mixed results so far in his career in North America, spending time with the Giants the last two seasons. Like almost all of his colleagues on the Houston pitching staff, he’s been walking a ton of batters — about 4.2 per 9 innings — so it was important that the Tigers needed to be patient against Teng to get runners on base.
The Tigers loaded the bases with two out in the first after a pair of walks and a hit-batsman. Keith then got clipped by a very, very wild pitch that nicked his back-foot calf pant-leg to force in a run, putting the Tigers up 1-0. With the bases still loaded, Spencer Torkelson struck out on a sweeper for the third out, and what a strange inning: two walks, two hit-by-pitches, three strikeouts, and no balls in play. (Do not say Teng “struck out the side.”)
Anderson had a similarly silly first inning: he struck out three, but walked a pair and gave up a single; fortunately there were no runs scored. Sheesh, if you were going to show a young pitcher a tape of how not to pitch an inning of baseball, show him either halves of this one (or both).
Kevin McGonigle tattooed a fastball in the second, smashing a solo home run to right field for a 2-0 lead.
The next batter, Gleyber Torres, swung-and-missed and appeared to re-aggrivate that oblique injury from which he’d just returned from the Injured List. It was a problem last year, it’s been a problem this year, and you have to wonder for how long he’ll be on the shelf this time. Hao-Yu Lee came into the game in Torres’ place.
In the third inning and with a runner on base, Keith launched his first home run of the night deep to right-centre to put the Tigers up 4-0. Torkelson followed with a home run of his own, his twelfth of the year, off the left-field foul pole for a 5-0 lead.
Anderson departed with two outs and a runner on first in the bottom of the third, and Jacob Waugespack relieved him. It did not go well, as Old Friend™ Isaac Paredes smacked a home run for a 5-2 score. Jose Altuve, a thorn in the Tigers’ side for years, completed Houston’s own back-to-back trick to narrow the lead to 5-3.
The first two times through the Tigers lineup, Teng faced 18 batters: he struck out nine of them, walked two, hit two, and gave up three home runs. That’s just silly. Not long after, having given up a pair of singles to put runners on the corners with one out in the fourth, Teng departed for a lefty and Jahmai Jones pinch-hit for Kerry Carpenter.
Now, I know, by the numbers, you sometimes have to look at the lefty-righty thing. But really, in the fourth inning, in a two-run game at the time, do you really want to pull Carpenter from the game in favour of Jones? Knowing Carpenter is now gone for the remainder of the contest? That’s two at-bats (at least) that you’re getting Jones instead of Carpenter. I’m no major-league manager, but that just feels… wrong.
Dingler led off the fifth with a triple, and after a one-out walk he scored on a passed ball to make it 6-3. Then, in the top of the seventh, Keith blasted his second tater of the night, scoring Dingler again, for an 8-3 lead.
And if you thought Keith was done — remember, coming into tonight he had exactly one (1) home run so far this season — well, he wasn’t. Here’s his third home run:
That is a silly, short left field, but hey, the Tigers spend half the year in a park in which 410 feet to straightaway centre is an out. Dimensions give, and dimensions take away; just relax and enjoy one of our fellows hitting three dingers in a game, alright?
Final score: Tigers 9, Astros 3
Notes and Corrections
- Further research has uncovered that the Home of the Whopper — i.e., Burger King — is, in fact, Jacksonville, Florida. Bless You Boys apologizes for the error
- Did you see that, after taking two out of three on the weekend against the Dodgers, the Chicago White Sox are tied for the lead in the American League Central? As Clark Griswold once said, “I wouldn’t have been more surprised if I’d woken up with my head sewn to the carpet.”
- On this day in 1789, Josiah Henson was born as an enslaved person in Maryland. Eventually, after a tough early life — as you can imagine — he made it to freedom in Canada with his wife and children in 1830. They settled near Dresden, Ontario, starting the Dawn Settlement and Henson became a pastor and a community leader, a soldier in the Canadian Militia, and eventually met Queen Victoria. His homestead near Dresden is now the Josian Henson Museum of African-Canadian History.
