That was one of those ball games that separates the diehards from the casual fans. I’m sure that there will be people who look at the final score and think that that game was “boring“, but for me, that’s about as entertaining as they come. It’s another night in which the Tigers played a low-scoring game with two starting pitchers who were featuring their best stuff.
It’s such a shame that it was all for naught, because Casey Mize was as good tonight as we’ve ever seen him. You can tell that the guy is pitching with a lot of confidence, but the stuff looks a lot crisper, and he’s pitching deeper into games. This was someone I was kind of skeptical about coming into this season, considering how he pitched in the second half last year and his frustrating spring training, but you feel good with him on the mound right now. It’s too bad they couldn’t get any runs for him.
On the other end, Ranger Suarez was fantastic. Suarez is a legitimate major league pitcher who just earned a pretty big-time contract with the Red Sox in the offseason, but his kind of pitcher, those slow-tossing finesse lefties, are the guys that I feel like Detroit always has a tendency to struggle with. Maybe I’m generalizing it a little bit too much. Perhaps it’s just left-handed starters that the Tigers can’t seem to hit.
I don’t know what the exact numbers show, but given the lack of contact in this offense, I never feel particularly good when the Tigers go to extra innings. You’re facing a swing-and-miss guy like Whitlock, and even though Riley Greene did his job and advanced the runner to third, you had a feeling that the Tigers were going to struggle to score there. Wenceel Perez is very fortunate that he had that big home run against Kansas City a few nights ago because if it weren’t for that, we’d be talking about a guy who’s done less than nothing since being called back up from AAA. His at-bat in the 10th was brutal. Torkelson at least worked the count, and he had a hard-hit ground ball against a good pitcher. Once Detroit came out of that frame with no runs, I was pretty confident that Boston was going to figure out a way to win this thing, regardless of who the Tigers had on the mound.
Detroit looks to start a new winning streak tomorrow. Tarik Skubal will be on the mound going up against Bryan Bello.