After a disappointing series loss to the Yankees featuring two very close defeats, the Tigers looked to right the ship in the opener of a four-game weekend series at home against the Houston Astros — and, yes, the Tigers just played them last weekend, who the heck is making this schedule anyway? Despite some incredible starting pitching, the Tigers couldn’t solve Houston’s pitching and dropped the series opener 2-1 on Thursday night.
Making his sixth start of the year for the Tigers was Troy Melton, who has been good-to-great so far this year. His last start featured six innings of one-run ball against the White Sox in the midst of that lovely sweep last weekend. Curiously, while his ERA is a sterling 2.56, his FIP (fielding-independent pitching; essentially ERA with average fielding behind him) is a bizarrely-high 5.41. But he also has a walks-plus-hits-per-inning-pitched (WHIP) of a sensational 0.947, so I can honestly say I have no idea what the heck is going on there.
Tatsuya Imai, in his first season in North America after a few excellent years in Japan, has been up-and-down. He still strikes out a lot of batters like he did in Japan, but his walk rate is an astronomical 5.3 per 9 innings. His previous start saw him strike out 11 in six innings, but in the one before that he didn’t get out of the first inning. Much was written about Imai describing how he was having trouble “adjust[ing] to the American lifestyle” and how that might have contributed to some arm fatigue early in the spring. (Remember, Japanese starting pitchers throw in about a game a week.)
A fun thing happened on the first pitch of the game: the pitch was delivered and called a ball, “Marshall” Dillon Dingler immediately challenged it, and the call was overturned. That guy, man — not only does he hit dingers, but he’s one of the best in MLB at getting calls overturned.
Both pitchers were crusing early on, and Melton’s fastball was really sizzling, touching 98 mph (44 m/s) early on. He mixed in cutters and sliders, and he also featured a much sharper splitter in this one to keep hitters honest. The whiffs and strikeouts are starting to arrive for Melton. Imai’s splitter-ish slider was used pretty heavily, and he certainly made Hao-Yu Lee look quite the fool on a third-inning strikeout.
The first hit of the game for either side appeared with two out in the bottom of the fourth, with Riley Greene poking a single to right field; Colt Keith lined out sharply to centre for the third out of the inning.
Through five innings Melton hadn’t allowed a baserunner and had struck out six, but was at 75 pitches. If he was going to, youuu knoooow, he needed some quick innings.
However, after retiring the first 16 hitters in a row, Melton hung a slider to Taylor Trammell in the sixth and he hit it a long way over the right-field fence for a 1-0 Houston lead. After a two-out single to Jeremy Peña, Melton got the dangerous Yordan Alvarez to fly out harmlessly to Greene in left field on one pitch.
Kyle Finnegan took over for Melton to start the seventh; Melton’s fantastic final line was 6 IP, 2 H, 1 R, 0 BB, 6 K. Finnegan’s been no slouch himself recently: in the middle game of the Yankees series he pitched 1 1/3 innings and struck out all four batters he faced. Tonight he had a pleasantly uneventful seventh inning: groundout, flyout, strikeout.
The eighth brought Tyler Holton to the mound, and he’s been good lately too. Coming into tonight he’d had seven straight scoreless appearances (although he did allow an inherited runner to score in the Yankees series). He gave up a harmless single but otherwise had a clean sheet, to borrow a soccer term.
With two outs in the eighth, Lee punched a single into centre against AJ Blubaugh, bringing Kevin McGonigle up to the plate, but he grounded out to first and we were on to the ninth.
Kenley Jansen, who’s been pretty solid lately, came on for the ninth; he gave up a leadoff single to Peña, who stole second. Let’s just say that, if there are ten things on Jansen’s mind on a mound, holding runners close ain’t one of ’em — and that would prove to be very important, as Alvarez hit a grounder to second that advanced Peña to third with one out. Isaac Paredes hit a fly ball to score Alvarez and push the lead to 2-0, and that lack of attention to a runner may have ultimately cost the Tigers the game.
As he has done lately, Dingler put the team on his back and blasted a home run to centrefield with one out in the ninth to narrow the gap to 2-1.
Greene followed with a single to give the Tigers hope, but Keith hit a hot grounder right to first base — exactly where Christian Walker was, as he was holding Greene on. Walker threw to second, the throw came back to first, and that was the ball game.
Final score: Astros 2, Tigers 1
Notes and Whatnot
- Let’s talk about Dillon Dingler. His batting average (and OPS) by month: .247 (.800), .206 (.743), .361 (1.093). Whoa, he really likes June! (And so have the Tigers.)
- Another fun statistic about Dingler: coming into tonight he had led off an inning 65 times so far this year. In those plate appearances he’s hit five home runs, two doubles and two triples (amongst his 20 hits), walked five times and has an OPS of an astronomical 1.172. I know that’s a small sample, but holy mackerel, those are some numbers, small sample size or not.
- I’m not the only one who’s sweet on this Dingler fellow; Fangraphs likes him too.
- Catalonian architect Antoni Gaudí was born on this day in 1852. If you’ve ever been to Barcelona, you’ve definitely seen his work: the Sagrada Família cathedral, which has been under construction for about a century, was his design. He also designed Park Güell, which looks like it came out of a psychedelic drug-fueled dream, and is stupdendously cool.
