The orange towels were flying around Comerica Park as fans sat through a three hour rain delay. Miguel Cabrera, one of the best players to put on the old English D, threw out the first pitch and received a thunderous applause.
The results, however, on offense, remained the same, as the middle of the order struggled to generate any type of offense as the Tigers fall 8 to 4. Seattle has now outscored Detroit at home 43 to 18 in their last four games and are now 0-8 in the last eight games at home.
"It was just kind of a werid game from even first play, Glayber makes a great play after I tipped it, and they put together some long at-bats in the second" Jack Flahtery said.
It continues the rut the offense has seen over the last month. In their past 21 games, the Tigers have scored five or more runs just three times, including the postseason. Their first run in the fifth came the old-fashioned way — small ball. After Dillon Dingler was hit by a pitch, Parker Meadows laid down a perfect sacrifice bunt to move him into scoring position. Javier Báez followed with a single to right, putting runners at the corners, and Kerry Carpenter’s fielder’s choice brought Dingler home.
But by then, Detroit was already playing catch-up against one of the league’s more balanced lineups. Starter Jack Flaherty worked through an early rain delay and opened with a clean first inning, highlighted by a slick double play off a line drive from Randy Arozarena. Yet once the third rolled around, the Mariners began to chip away. A misplay in left by Riley Greene on J.P. Crawford’s single allowed a run to score, and Arozarena’s ground-ball single up the middle pushed another across to make it 2-0.
Flaherty’s night unraveled in the fourth. Eugenio Suárez launched a solo homer to left-center before Tommy Kahnle came in to limit the damage. Still, Seattle scratched another run across on Cal Raleigh’s single, giving the visitors a 4-0 cushion.
Detroit’s bats never found a rhythm against Logan Gilbert, who mixed in a steady diet of sliders and splitters to keep hitters guessing. According to Statcast, Gilbert peppered the strike zone with hittable pitches, several right down the middle, yet the Tigers managed just one extra-base hit off him. The pitch chart told the story: Detroit swung through pitches belt-high, fouled off mistakes, and rarely squared anything up. Even the middle-third offerings that most lineups punish became empty swings or routine outs.
Brant Hurter provided a brief spark out of the bullpen, retiring six straight, but J.P. Crawford’s solo shot in the sixth widened the gap to 5-1. Keider Montero followed with a clean inning of his own, but the deficit proved too steep.
For a Tigers team that has prided itself on pitching and defense, the formula still demands more at-bats like Dingler’s fifth-inning grind and fewer empty trips. With the offense sputtering for nearly a month, Detroit’s margin for error remains razor thin, and on this night, it wasn’t enough to keep pace with Seattle’s consistency at the plate.
By the time Gilbert handed the ball to Matt Brash in the seventh, Detroit’s offense looked overmatched. The Tigers went quietly in order — three groundouts, all weakly hit to the left side.
In the eighth, the Mariners tacked on one more. Luke Raley, pinch-hitting for Mitch Garver, was hit by a pitch, and a misplay by Kerry Carpenter in right allowed Victor Robles to reach and both runners to move up. J.P. Crawford’s sacrifice fly made it 6-1, though Montero limited the damage by catching Robles trying to take third.
Detroit had one more chance to show life in the bottom half of the inning, but the theme didn’t change. Báez went down looking, Carpenter swung through a fastball, and Torres lifted a lazy flyout to right, three batters, three outs, and no answers. However, in the 9th, AJ Hinch empited the bench, subbing in Jake Rogers, Jahmai Jones and Andy Ibáñez, Both Rogers and Jones scored on a Torkelson double. Andrés Muñoz came in, got Dillon Dingler to fly out to left to get the first out of the ninth. Then with a runner on, Parker Meadows hit a line to first and Ibanez would get doubled off to end the game.
Even with hittable pitches scattered through the heart of the zone, the Tigers’ offense couldn’t capitalize. The swings were late, the contact soft, and the approach passive. As has been the case for most of the past month, they’re seeing pitches they can hit, they just aren’t hitting them.
For Detroit, the formula of strong pitching and solid defense that has kept them into games disappeared on Tuesday night. but the one constant of an offense that continues to short-circuit at the worst times. When even center-cut fastballs turn into frustration instead of production, it’s not about effort anymore, it’s about execution. Casey Mize takes the mound on Wednesday as the Tigers try to force a Game 5.
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