Even Monday’s runaway squirrel couldn’t get much of a laugh out of them. They needed to take out some frustration. They needed to have a little fun.
“They say stick around, you’ll see something you’ve never seen before,” manager A.J. Hinch said after a 14-0 win over the Orioles at Comerica Park. “Man, that was quite a night. I mean, we were relentless.”
The Tigers became the second team since 1900 to score in every inning they batted and not allow a run in that game, joining the Pirates (Sept. 6, 1935 vs. the Brooklyn Dodgers), per Elias Sports Bureau.
As Baltimore catcher turned pitcher Chadwick Tromp’s curveball floated in at 35 mph, about the speed of traffic on nearby Woodward Avenue, Eduardo Valencia waited patiently. Ranked by MLB Pipeline as the Tigers’ No. 11 prospect and a veteran of well over 400 Minor League games before making his big league debut on July 9, Valencia has seen plenty of position players pitching at various levels. He’s not going to worry about timing.
“I have a lot of troubles in the Minor Leagues against position players,” Valencia said.
The pitch was well over Valencia’s head when he began his front leg lift. It was right around helmet level when his front foot landed, and just below shoulder level when he unleashed his swing.
Valencia crushed it down the line. The 96.8 mph exit velocity was all swing. The 35-degree launch angle looked like something out of a driving range. Heads turned in unison in the Tigers dugout as the ball cleared the fence in the left-field corner.
“I think it’s my first extra-base hit against a position player,” Valencia said. “It’s crazy, but at the end of the day, that counts.”
It all counts. And with Valencia’s second home run of the night, the Tigers had scored in every inning, building a two-touchdown lead and turning the tables on an Orioles club that slugged early and never let up against Keider Montero and Detroit’s bullpen the previous night.
The only other time the Tigers scored in every inning of a nine-inning game, according to Elias Sports Bureau, was Aug. 2, 2014, two days after Detroit shocked baseball by pulling off a Trade Deadline deal for David Price. That team was going for it, trying to win a fourth straight American League Central title, and the Tigers battered the Rockies’ pitching staff for 11 runs.
Tuesday’s Tigers were in a nearly opposite position, trying to convince management that they’re a contender with Monday’s Trade Deadline looming at 6 p.m. ET. The resulting win reinforced Hinch’s mantra that they’re a good team with a bad record.
“We faced three [O’s batters] over the minimum, but offensively, we just did something positive every inning,” Hinch said. “We paired our hits together. We hit the ball out of the ballpark. We ran the bases incredibly well. Just a really fun, fun win to collectively take a deep breath.”
The Tigers’ plus-39 run differential for the season is the same as the Rays, owners of the AL’s best record at 62-44. Only the Yankees (+89), red-hot Red Sox (+48) and division-leading White Sox (+41) have a better run differential than Detroit among AL clubs.
In the Pythagorean AL standings, the Tigers would be a Wild Card team in the thick of a division race. In this universe, they’re still six games under .500, but 3 1/2 games out of a Wild Card spot with five teams to jump. One of those teams is the Orioles squad they just beat up.
“Their offense kept pouring it on us,” O’s slugger Pete Alonso said. “It was one of those games where it’s like, we just straight up lost. They straight up beat us. That’s really it. There’s no, ‘Hey, what if we had done this, what if we had done that?’ They straight up beat us. That’s as simple as that. They out-executed us and outperformed us. Simple as that. It was just one of those where it’s the nature of the beast.”
The Tigers have been there. They used two position players to pitch the final two innings of last Tuesday’s 11-2 loss to the Cubs.
Valencia and Kevin McGonigle both went 4-for-5; McGonigle added a walk and scored four times. Javier Báez celebrated his return from the injured list by going 3-for-5 with a double. Gleyber Torres hit a two-run homer and a two-run double in a five-RBI night. Troy Melton tossed seven scoreless innings with five strikeouts to lower his ERA to 1.75 — third-lowest among Major League starters since his return from the IL on May 24.
