After Friday night’s easy win with you-know-who making his big-league debut, Saturday night’s contest was a little closer than it should have been. Obviously the bigger news of the evening was regarding a certain other you-know-who on the Tigers, and that will be dissected in-depth for years to come, I assume (cf. the Smoltz/Alexander trade). All I can tell you here, though, is that the Tigers won 8-6 after being ahead by six runs at one point.
Making his twenty-second start for the Tigers this year was Framber Valdez. It’s been A Tale of Two Pitchers lately: it was the best of starts against these same A’s in Detroit on July 9, in which he went seven sensational innings, giving up a single run. It was the worst of starts the game after that on the north side of Chicago on July 21, in which he gave up six runs and only got two outs. Then again, just before the latter he was on the bereavement list for almost a week, so it’s very possible he had something else, much more important than any silly game, on his mind.
Jack Perkins got the start for the (West) Sacramentans. He’s started some, he’s been the “bulk guy” after an opener, he’s done a little of everything, and none of it had gone particularly well for him coming into tonight. He’s in his second year in the big leagues, and he’ll typically strike out a bit more than one batter per inning. He’s a pretty extreme fly-ball pitcher, although he typically limits hard contact.
Well, so much for limiting hard contact: Kevin McGonigle smacked the third pitch of the game into the left-field seats for his eleventh home run of the year.
A trio of singles by Gleyber Torres, Dillon Dingler and Colt Keith pushed another run across the board to put the Tigers up 2-0 at the end of a half-inning. In the bottom half a pair of two-out singles put runners on the corners, but Valdez coaxed a grounder to first out of Lawrence Butler to end the mini-threat.
Torres started a magnificent double play in the second off a 107-mph scorcher of a ground ball. Enjoy.
The A’s got on the board in the bottom of the third; as in the first inning, they had runners on the corners and Butler up to the plate. However, this time Butler hit a solid single into left field to score Jacob Wilson to make it a 2-1 game. Hey, on Friday night it was 2-1 for the Tigers for a while… could this one also turn into an easy Detroit win, too? (Nope.)
Valdez wasn’t as sharp as you’d have wanted him to be; there was plenty of traffic on the basepaths, too. The speedy Henry Bolte hit a ground-rule double to lead off the fourth and moved up to third on a groundout. Jonathan Ornelas bunted back to Valdez, who threw to first but not in time to get Ornelas; somehow Bolte didn’t score on the play, even though he probably could have moonwalked there in time No matter; a not-quite-double-play ball hit by Wilson allowed Bolte to score and tie the game.
Torres un-tied the game in the following half-inning, though: McGonigle singled to lead off the fifth, and Torres smacked his sixth dinger of the year for a 4-2 Tigers lead.
With two outs in the inning Keith nearly had a home run of his own, but his 401-foot (66.8-fathom) drive ended up in Bolte’s glove for the third out.
Spencer Torkelson singled to lead off the sixth. Max Clark followed, and he dug a low sweeper out and parked it over the right-centrefield fence for his first major-league home run.
Clark and McGonigle are, by all accounts, good friends — and they both hit home runs in this game. I hope that’s the first of many such occurrences for these fellows.
The A’s started the bottom of the sixth with a walk and a single to put runners on first and second as the bullpen started to warm up. But Valdez got a shallow flyout and another double-play grounder, and thus got out of trouble.
With two out in the top of the seventh Riley Greene walked, and he took third on pinch-hitter Eduardo Valencia’s single. Torkelson hit a grounder to third that clanked off Tommy White’s wrist; Greene scored from third to make it 7-2.
Given that five-run lead, and how he’d settled down quite nicely since the fifth, Valdez was allowed to carry on into the seventh — and he got the A’s 1-2-3. That was indeed the end of the day for him, and his final line was not too shabby: 7 IP, 9 H, 2 R, 2 BB, 6 K. He got ten groundouts and two flyouts, and that’s what he does when he’s going deep into games.
The Tigers added onto their lead in the eighth after Zack McKinstry doubled with one out, and McGonigle followed with a single to make it 8-2. It was right around that time in the game that multiple reports surfaced online, from reliable sources, that Tarik Skubal had been traded to the Dodgers, and it sounded like someone had deflated Dan Dickerson on the radio broadcast. We have plenty of prospect-experts on staff here at BYB, and I ain’t one of ‘em, so darned if I know if we got fleeced or were the fleecers.
Kyle Finnegan took over for the eighth. It’s been a rough go of it for him lately, and tonight was no exception: with two on and one out, Bolte hit a three-run home run to narrow the score to 8-5. After a four-pitch walk that was it for Finnegan; Jacob Waugespack came in and gave up a single on his second pitch to bring the tying run to the plate with one out. But he got a strikeout and a 3-1 groundout and the lead remained at three runs.
In the top of the ninth the Tigers looked to add some insurance: Valencia singled with one out and Clark did the same with two out, but Javier Báez — stop me if you’ve heard this before — swung and missed for strike three at an outside slider in the dirt.
Kenley Jansen was brought in for the save, and he gave up a leadoff double to Tyler Soderstrom that was nearly a home run. A pitch in the dirt that bounced away from Dingler advanced Soderstrom to third, but Jansen got pinch-hitter Carlos Cortes to strike out for the first out. On a full count, Butler looked at what was initially called ball four on the outside corner, but Dingler’s challenge was successful and the second out was thus recorded. Jeff McNeil surprised everyone by placing a perfect bunt single down the third-base line, scoring Soderstrom and narrowing the gap to 8-6 and bringing up Bolte, the author of a home run a few innings earlier. But Bolte popped up to Greene in left field and that was that… except there were some spicy words exchanged after the third out between Jansen and McNeil. Or maybe they were exchanging chocolate chip cookie recipes, who knows?
Numbers and Whatnots
- Some debut by Max Clark on Friday night, eh? Three hits, two doubles, a walk, and a partridge in a pear tree. And a dinger and a single tonight? Marvellous.
- Clark, Kevin McGonigle and the late Billy Bean — nope, not that one, this one — are the only Tigers to have debuted with at least three hits, two of them being for extra bases. I know you know of the first two, but how many of you remember April 25, 1987 against the Royals? (Note courtesy of the always-informative Rogelio Castillo.) Bean, notably, batted leadoff in his debut.
- A’s outfielder Tyler Soderstrom’s name reminds me of SodaStream. There’s nothing more to that, just something I’ve been thinking about.
- On this day in 1834, slavery was officially abolished in the British Empire. Many former British colonies, especially those in the Caribbean, have celebrated Emancipation Day with carnivals and parades for many decades. That tradition, especially as celebrated in Trinidad, has carried on to what is (usually) called Caribana in Toronto: a huge festival weekend with food, dancing, and of course the spectacular parade with steel-pan bands and elaborate costumes.
