Less than a mile down the road, the Detroit Pistons took care of business earlier in the day, and tonight, on a Sunday night game at Comerica, the Tigers did the same thing. That’s one of the best performances of this young season so far. It felt like it was going to be a tall order this evening with Jack Leiter featuring some pretty legitimate stuff. He retired the first 12 he faced and set a career high in strikeouts, but the Tigers were able to take advantage of some serious mistakes with two strikes. For a time in this game, Detroit’s only hits came on 0-2 pitches from Jack Leiter. The first big blast came from Spencer Torkelson. He got a 0-2 breaking ball right over the heart of the plate, and he didn’t miss it. When he hits mistakes, he’s dangerous, and he was dangerous tonight.
This evening also featured the return of pitching chaos. It worked out perfectly. Tyler Holton started the game. You got Brant Hurter for the bulk of it. Hurter has been excellent up to this point in this campaign. He’s often asked to pitch kind of thankless innings, but he’s been very effective. There might not be a ton of swing and miss so far, but he’s getting ahead and counts and inducing a lot of weak contact. Having a weapon like that in your bullpen is a huge plus. As a matter of fact, except for the Jansen blowup against Atlanta earlier this week, this has actually been a pretty darn good week for this Tiger bullpen. It’s a very small sample size, but it seems like some guys are starting to step up.
Detroit was able to tack on four runs in the seventh inning, including the second of 2 two two-out RBIs from Kevin McGonigle tonight. He is simply a hard player not to love. You talk about a guy with elite instincts on the baseball field, McGonigle has it. We focus on what he’s able to do at the plate, but we’ve seen him impress both defensively and on the base paths this year.
Detroit stays at home for the next series. They start a three-game set against Boston tomorrow. The Red Sox have been a mess to begin this season, and Detroit took two out of three from them a few weeks ago at Fenway Park. It will be a battle of lefties as Tarik Skubal takes the mound against Payton Toole.