Max Clark finishes a homer short of the cycle, FCL Tigers fall in semifinals

Scores, news, and notes from around the Detroit Tigers’ farm system for Saturday, July 26, 2025.

Indianapolis Indians 5, Toledo Mud Hens 4 (box )

A planned bullpen day and lack of clutch hitting led to a series loss for Toledo on Monday as the Mud Hens fell to the Indianapolis Indians, 5-4, and moved to 1-4 on the week.

Eight different Mud Hens threw, generally going an inning. Woo-Suk Go and Ryan Miller split the first three frames. Go probably would have gone two complete innings, but a finger injury pulled him out of the game early. It looked like a blister or fingernail problem, both of which are minor yet problematic injuries on a bullpen day.

Toledo gave the pitching staff an early lead off a Brian Serven double in the second. Trei Cruz scored after a leadoff walk. Miller held the lead through the third, despite giving up a pair of base knocks.

Alex Lange was not as fortunate. Five of the six batters Lange faced in the fourth ended up scoring. Only one of them reached by putting the ball in play. Lange walked the leadoff man, induced a strikeout, walked another, gave up a two-run single, hit the next batter, and finally walked the bases loaded before getting the hook. At least he got that one out?

Blair Calvo took over and immediately walked in a run. An RBI single brought two more in before the inning came to a merciful end. The offensive outburst from Indianapolis blew away any memory of Hao-Yu Lee’s solo home run in the top half of the inning. Toledo now trailed 5-2, with four more innings to get through and limited arms.

Indianapolis also worked through its bullpen, though, throwing six different pitchers. Toledo got to Nick Dombrowski, or rather Kerry Carpenter got to Dombrowski for a two-run home run in the sixth. Carpenter is only batting .133 during his rehab stint, so it’s nice to see him get into one.

PJ Poulin, Bailey Horn and Ryan Boyer pitched the final three frames for Toledo, in that order. All three gave up one hit and struck out at least one batter — Horn had two.

Toledo went 0-for-10 with runners in scoring position.

Carpenter: 1-4, HR (1), R, 2 RBI

Jung: 0-4, BB, 3 K

Lee: 1-4, HR (10), R, RBI, BB, K

Coming up next: The series finale begins at 1:35 p.m. ET on Sunday. Toledo does not have a probable starter listed.

Somerset Patriots 9, Erie SeaWolves 6 (box )

Erie outhit Somerset, 14-13, Saturday night, but the Patriots came out on top, 9-6, over the SeaWolves, after a three-run ninth inning.

Somerset opened the game with a three-spot as well, hitting for the cycle as a team before recording the first out. Brendan Jones hit a leadoff triple and scored on a George Lombard Jr. double. Roc Riggio’s two-run homer left only a single was left to collect, which Dylan Jasso notched almost immediately.

Burhenn bounced back with a 1-2-3 second, but both teams traded runs in the third and fourth. Erie broke the shutout by scoring on a wild pitch in the third, and Justice Bigbie scored on a double play ball. For Somerset, Jasso drove in a run with a groundout, and Tyler Hardman scored after hitting a triple.

Still down three runs, Erie needed a big inning. The top prospects in the organization delivered with three swift blows. Max Clark tripled, Thayron Liranzo singled him in and Kevin McGonigle tied the game with his first Double-A home run.

How did Burhenn respond? By giving up a leadoff single, of course. An error ended up keeping the inning going, and Jordan Marks took over on the mound. Jared Wegner welcomed him to the game with an RBI single, scoring who else but Jasso.

Jim Jarvis tripled in the bottom of the sixth and re-tied the game by scoring on a sacrifice fly from Liranzo. And back and forth the pendulum swings. Except, it didn’t. The runs stopped there for both teams.

Erie’s best chance to take the lead came in the eighth after Clark doubled and Liranzo was hit by a pitch. McGonigle lined out to end the threat, though. Clark had a three-hit day, coming up a home run shy of the cycle.

Marks pitched through the seventh for Erie, and Yosber Sanchez ended up taking the loss in his second inning of work. A leadoff walk is never good, and three hits later, Erie was back down three runs. This is probably a game the offense deserved to win, but Burhenn and Sanchez struggled.

Clark: 3-4, 2B (1), 3B (2), R

McGonigle: 2-5, HR (1), R, 2 RBI, 2 K

Liranzo: 2-3, R, 2 RBI

Anderson: 1-5, K

Burhenn: 5.2 IP, 7 H, 6 R, 5 ER, BB, 3 K; 93 pitches (62 strikes)

Coming up next: Lefty Carlos Pena gets the start for Erie tomorrow at 1:35 p.m. ET.

7/25 Continuation: West Michigan Whitecaps 8, Peoria Chiefs 3 (box )

West Michigan took down Peoria in a continuation of Friday’s 4-0 game that was washed away by rain in the fifth inning. The Whitecaps nearly completed the shutout, but a tricky ninth inning led to an 8-3 final score.

For a recap of the first half of the game, please see yesterday’s story .

Picking things back up in the top of the fifth with two outs, neither team scored until Jack Penney singled in Izaac Pacheco in the seventh, making 5-0.

Freddy Pacheco took over pitching duties for West Michigan and delivered two shutout frames. He struck out three with just one hit and one walk. That’s the way to keep a team from getting a second life.

Marco Jimenez took over in the seventh and went six up, six down with three strikeouts over his two innings of work. What a nice day for the bullpen, right? Wrong…

Jose Lequerica got shelled in the ninth. Ian Petruz singled off him to open the inning, followed by Zach Levenson and Josh Kross to load the bases. Chase Adkison notched Peoria’s fourth-straight hit off Lequerica, a two-run double to break up the shutout.

A sacrifice fly gave Peoria a third run, but West Michigan had already built up quite the cushion. Austin Murr added two insurance runs in the eighth with a double, and Patrick Lee drove in Jenkins with a single in the ninth.

Graham: 2-4, 2B (21), 2 R, K

Pacheco: 1-3, 2 R, 2 BB

Jenkins: 3-4, HR (8), 2 R, 3 RBI

Howey: 3.0 IP, 3 H, 0 R, 0 ER, BB, K; 38 pitches (25 strikes)

(F/7) Peoria Chiefs 6, West Michigan Whitecaps 1 (box )

Because of the continuation game, the regularly scheduled game for Saturday turned into a seven-inning backend of a doubleheader. Peoria got the win back with relative ease, beating West Michigan, 6-1.

Things started out just fine with Seth Stephenson and Peyton Graham hitting consecutive doubles to score right out of the gate. The Whitecaps only notched one more hit for the rest of the game, however.

Andrew Sears got the start and retired 12 of the first 13 batters he faced. A leadoff walk in the fifth served as a bad omen for what was to come, though. Back-to-back singles and a double put Peoria out in front. Ian Petrutz added an insurance run with two outs later in the inning, and a wild pitch made it 4-1 in favor of the Chiefs.

A walk finally forced West Michigan to the bullpen. CJ Weins got the last out of the fifth and first out of the sixth for the ‘Caps, but three consecutive walks set up a two-run double, also known as the killing blow.

Moises Rodriguez finished out the inning, and that was that. No offense, no wins. What a boring game…

Graham: 1-3, 2B (18), RBI, K

Sears (L, 6-4): 4.2 IP, 5 H, 4 R, 4 ER, 2 BB, 6 K

Coming up next: West Michigan has Josh Randall slated to throw on Sunday at 3:05 p.m. ET.

Fort Myers Might Mussels 6, Lakeland Flying Tigers 0 (box )

Lakeland’s offense was also lifeless Saturday night. The Flying Tigers reached base just four times on three singles and a walk in a 6-0 loss to the Fort Myers Might Mussels.

Junior Tilien broke up the no-hitter in the top of the sixth. Stephen Hrustich had walked just before that, putting the go-ahead run at the plate with no outs. Three straight outs killed that rally, but that wasn’t the biggest blown moment for Lakeland on the day. Tilien hit into a triple play after Jackson Strong and Hrustich opened the eighth inning with back-to-back singles.

On the mound, Eric Silva went four innings as the starter, giving up two runs (one earned) on three hits and a walk. Logan Berrier went three in relief, but he was just there to take the blows at the end of a long week. Fort Myers notched six hits off him and scored four times (three earned runs).

Ignacio Briceno got the eighth. He’s the only Flying Tigers pitcher not to give up a run in the game despite allowing two base hits.

Coming up next: Lakeland and Fort Myers conclude the series at 12:05 p.m. ET on Sunday. The Flying Tigers don’t have a probable starter listed.

FCL Semifinals Game 1: FCL Twins 4, FCL Tigers 3 (box )

The Tigers’ rookie league complex team fell in the semifinals of the Florida Complex League, 4-3, against the FCL Twins on Saturday.

Kelvis Salcedo, a 19-year-old, right-handed prospect out of Venezuela, took the loss. He only went 1.1 innings in his start, allowing three earned runs on two hits and three walks. Salcedo had gone five innings with one earned run or less over his past three starts.

Pedro Garcia, a 25-year-old right-hander from the Dominican Republic, pitched the bulk of the game. He gave up three hits and walked two over 3.2 scoreless innings. Omari Daniel (Minnesota’s 14th-round pick in 2022), Eliseo Mota (D.R.) and Antonio Florido (Venezuela) each threw a hitless frame. However, an unearned run came across against Mota in the seventh thanks to a fielding error.

The Tigers outhit the Twins, but couldn’t capitalize enough to overcome the early deficit. It took until the fifth for the Tigers to score. Newremberg Rondon and Jose Dickson set things up with base knocks, then Anibal Salas and Jude Warwick delivered back-to-back RBI singles to get the Tigers on the board.

Salas and Warwick went back-to-back again in the ninth, but only scored one run this time. Brett Callahan walked to load the bases with no outs, but Warwick got caught in a rundown between third and home on a groundout. There’s no video available, so let’s assume he was trying to make a big play and tie the game, but it backfired.

It’s a disappointing end to an otherwise strong year for the FCL club. The Tigers led the league with 434 hits and 38 home runs while finishing 37-22 on the year.