Tigers 13, Angels 1: A California Sunday Funday

Trey Sweeney and Kerry Carpenter had four-hit games en route to an easy win.

The finale of a four-game weekend set against the Los Angeles California Anaheim Los Angeles Angels saw the Detroit Tigers go for the series win… which they did convincingly, in an easy 13-1 victory to take three games out of four.

Reese Olson made his seventh start of the season for the Detroiters. He’s had a solid 2025 so far, although his walk rate is up a notch from his previous two years. Conversely, coming into today’s game, he’d only given up one home run in 33 innings, and batters were slugging a paltry .292 against him, which is what you want to see.

Facing the Tigers was Jack Kochanowicz, which Baseball Reference says is pronounced KO-hawn-o-witz: emphasis on the first syllable, pretend the first “c” doesn’t exist, and that “cz” at the end is a “ts,” and I’m going to take a wild guess that name is Polish. Now that that’s out of the way, Kochanwicz is in his second year in the majors after being drafted out of high school in 2019: he’ll typically give you five-ish innings a start, not strike out too many guys, and give up his fair share of hits and walks.

Olson got into some trouble in the first with a single, a walk and a hit-by-pitch loading the bases with two outs. But he got Luis Rengifo swinging on a nasty slider at his ankles for strike three and the threat was extinguished. As it turns out, that was the closest the Angels would get to taking a lead.

The Tigers got on the board in the second: a pair of walks and a Trey Sweeney single made it a 1-0 game, and Kerry Carpenter smashed a double to the wall in right to score a pair more runs for a 3-0 lead.

That was almost one heck of a catch by Jo Adell, but the ball went in and out of his glove. Hooray for us!

With two outs in the third, Spencer Torkelson singled up the middle and Colt Keith followed with his third home run of the road trip, having hit none before it, making it a 5-0 game.

In the fifth, off a new pitcher, the fun continued: Javier Báez singled with one out, Tomás Nido singled with two out, and Carpenter made sure to put this one over the wall.

When the dust settled it was 8-0 for the Tigers and the rout was on.

Olson’s day concluded with two outs in the bottom of the sixth; he was looking great all game but he walked a pair of guys, and why put more stress on his arm with an eight-run lead? Brenan Hanifee was summoned, Adell popped-out to Keith in foul territory on the second pitch, and that was that. Olson’s final line: 5 ⅔ innings, 3 hits, 3 walks, 8 whiffs, no runs allowed.

The Tigers put runners on first and second in the seventh with two outs via a walk and a hit-batsman. Sweeney then joined the three-run-dinger party for an 11-0 lead.

A ground-rule double in the bottom of the seventh by the pesky Zach Neto spoiled the shutout, narrowing the lead to 11-1.

Beau Brieske came out for the bottom of the eighth. He’s had a rough season so far, spending a couple of weeks on the shelf with an ankle problem but also just not pitching very well. He looked good today, though, with his fastball topping 98 mph (158 km/h) and getting a pair of strikeouts. Hopefully the ankle thing is behind him and he’s pointed in the right direction.

Sweeney collected his fourth hit of the day in the ninth inning, a two-run single to right that pushed the score to 13-1. That also made it a 6-RBI day for him, and I’m too lazy to research this but I’m going to say that’s a career high. Check this out:

Will Vest pitched the bottom of the ninth to try to right his ship a bit after a tough outing in Houston on Tuesday. He looked great, striking out a pair and only giving up a harmless single. Here’s hoping he’s back on track.

The Tigers head to the thin air of Colorado for a three-game series starting on Tuesday, but all the weather reports seem to suggest that Tuesday-night game is going to be postponed. That might mean some roster moves are in the offing to make sure the pitching stays on schedule.

Notes and Observances

• Spencer Torkelson hit his tenth home run of the 2025 season, in his 34th game. That matches his home run total from all of 2024 with the Tigers, which was 92 games. While his batting average might be on the low end of things (.233 coming into today), his slugging percentage is a delightful .550.
• Want to know something strange and potentially great, though? His Batting Average on Balls in Play (BABip), which roughly measures how lucky you are, was a lowly .240, the lowest of his career, and way below the league average of about .290. I assume part of this is due to his way-higher-than-normal fly ball rate (43.5%, compared to the league average of 26.1%); fly balls are usually caught for outs, unless you hit them hard enough.
• On the other hand, his BABip for his entire career has been bizarrely low: .255, .269 and .285 (in his lousy 2024 year). As for the fly ball/ground ball/line drive splits, those have always been fairly close to league-average. So, I have no idea what’s going on. If you have thoughts about this, feel free to speculate in the comments below. Or, heck, if you’re really into this, write up a Fanpost and let’s see what you’ve got.
• I noticed a Chick-Fil-A logo on the mound. Are those allowed on Sundays?
• Today would have been guitarist Dick Dale’s 88th birthday. Probably the best ever surf-rock guitarist, you definitely know him from his song “Miserlou ,” which most famously appeared on the Pulp Fiction soundtrack. If the melody on that song sounds vaguely Middle Eastern, it’s because Dale (born Richard Monsour) was Lebanese on his father’s side, listened to a lot of music from the region growing up, and as a child also learned how to play the oud. It was originally a folk song, either from Egypt, Greece or somewhere in between; Dale sped it up and set it ablaze with his guitar, and the rest is history.