Tigers 7, Rockies 4: Six-run innings are a good thing, apparently

Kerry Carpenter had four hits, but Casey Mize still has some things to work on.

After a sensational pitching performance from Keider Montero on Tuesday night, the Tigers’ starter couldn’t quite finish things off in the same way on Wednesday night. But their bullpen did a mighty fine job holding off the visiting Colorado Rockies for a 7-4 win and a clinch of the three-game weekday series as a half-dozen first-inning runs held up quite nicely.

A rebounding Casey Mize made the start for the Tigers, his third since coming off the injured list. His previous two starts had some positives — keeping walks down is always good, but compared to his starts before the IL stint, he had far fewer swinging strikes in his most recent outings. So, something to keep an eye on, I suppose.

Rookie righty Tanner Gordon got the nod for the Rockies. I always wonder if, when pitchers get drafted by or traded to Colorado, they hang their head in the way George Michael Bluth did on Arrested Development. He’d had seven starts before tonight and it’s been a mixed bag: he pitched into the seventh in his first start, then didn’t make it out of the first on August 14.

Riley Greene saw what Parker Meadows did the night before — hit a first-inning solo home run — and thought it looked pretty fun, so he did it himself for a 1-0 lead.

Matt Vierling followed with a line-drive single, and he came around to score on a Kerry Carpenter triple. The hits kept coming with a two-out line-drive single by Spencer Torkelson to make it 3-0. Jace Jung followed with a single, and Trey Sweeney hit a long home run to right for a 6-0 lead; the Tigers batted around in the inning.

Ryan McMahon got one back in the second with a solo home run in the second, narrowing the gap to 6-1. Mize then really settled down and dialed in, notching six strikeouts through the first four innings and the splitter was looking good, although the slider wasn’t doing much at all. To his credit, Gordon also righted the ship after a disastrous first inning, lasting much longer than I thought he would, eventually tossing 3 ⅓ innings.

The Tigers got the lead back to six in the fourth: Jake Rogers led off with a double, took third on a flyout, and Riley Greene brought him home with a sacrifice fly for a 7-1 score as the throw from centre clanked off the mound.

The contact got harder off Mize in the fifth, with a trio of singles and a double eventually knocking him out of the game with two outs, a 7-4 score and a runner on second. For some reason Jake Rogers kept calling for sliders and they kept getting smacked around the yard. Tyler Holton — who else? — came on to quell the visiting batsmen by inducing a pop-fly down the left field line, Greene making the catch while falling into the first row of seats.

Holton carried on through the sixth and got the first two outs of the seventh, only giving up a single in his two innings of work. Will Vest took over to get the final out of the seventh on a harmless fly ball.

A Vierling leadoff walk in the bottom of the seventh and a Carpenter single, his fourth hit of the night, put two runners on with one out, but it would all ultimately be fruitless after a strikeout and a flyout.

Vest carried through the eighth and was tough-as-nails, and handed a three-run lead over to Jason Foley for the ninth. Foley hit 99 mph on a Jake Cave strikeout on a four-seamer, and after a two-out walk he induced a groundout to first to end the game and finalize the victory, earning his 22nd save of the year.

The third and final game of the series is Thursday afternoon at 1:10 pm EDT. Kirk Gibson has left 100 tickets at the Will Call Window which opens at 11:00. I’m not kidding.

Box Score: Tigers 7, Rockies 4

All Hail Fetter!

…and, probably, Juan Nieves too.

There’s nothing to fear but fear itself

Notes and Whatnots

• Matt Vierling has been Mr. Consistency pretty much all year. From June 5 through today, his OPS has been remarkably stable, in the .700s the entire time.
• Furthermore, from July 10 through today, his OPS has been even more stable: never lower than .720, never higher than .752. Plus he’s been rock-solid everywhere he’s been placed: 43 appearances at third base, 11 in left field, 57 in centerfield, and 30 in right field.
• The Tigers scored six runs in an inning for their third straight game. This was the first such stretch of games in 31 years. Neat.
• Physicist and mathematician Sir James Jeans was born on this day in 1877. His most useful contribution is the relationship between an ideal black-body emitter’s radiation intensity for a given wavelength… but only at long wavelengths. His theory (developed with John Strutt, later Lord Rayleigh) didn’t work for short wavelengths, creating a need for the development of quantum physics.