Detroit — Tigers manager AJ Hinch offered a rather timely reminder before the game. The season does not end on Aug. 3.
“We’re going to wake up the day after the (trade) deadline with a large portion of our season yet to be played,” he said. “We’ve got to be good at understanding where we are today, where we could be depending on the next two series and then afterward. Regardless, we have a good chance to win because we have good players.”
There will still be 50 games on the schedule after the deadline, nearly a third of the season. Important perspective, though it doesn’t ease the sting after the Tigers lost their third straight game, 8-5, to a Baltimore Orioles team that they are trying to chase down in the Wild Card race.
“These are tough,” Hinch said. “But I just can’t live in a world where there is this dramatic falloff when you lose a game. We have to play again tomorrow. I try to do my best to maintain that momentum going forward. Of course we need to not lose three in a row. But I struggle to articulate what that means.
“Every time we lose it’s a catastrophic loss? We need to win the games. And these guys are giving everything they have. But you’ve got to keep pushing. This game is going to punch you in the face and you have to keep pushing.”
The Tigers fall back to seven games under .500 (50-57), four games out of the Wild Card and 6.5 back in the Central Division at game’s end.
“I don’t know how we’ll feel after a win tomorrow or two wins and we win the series,” Hinch said. “All of a sudden, things seem perfect and they’re not. We still have to keep pushing.”
The game turned into an odd kind of shootout, with the Tigers answering Orioles home runs with sacrifice flies. Sort of like bringing knives to a gunfight.
The Orioles swatted three home runs – Leodys Taveras, Coby Mayo and Tyler O’Neil. The Tigers stayed close with sacrifice flies by Hao-Yu Lee, who also extended his hitting streak to 12 games, Matt Vierling and Spencer Torkelson.
“It was what they did after we scored,” Hinch said. “Every time we scored tonight, they answered. They counterpunched well tonight. You put an inning together and you want to be perfect, especially when you are chasing the game.”
BOX SCORE: Orioles 8, Tigers 5
Try as they might, the Tigers never could climb out of the 4-1 hole dug by starter Keider Montero, who endured a rare off night.
Since allowing four runs on June 6, he had posted a 5-1 record with one save and a 1.80 ERA in his 10 outings before Monday. So he gets a little grace for this one.
His stuff seemed flat early in the game and the Orioles banged out nine hits and scored six runs against him in 4.1 innings. Two of the runs were unearned because of an error by third baseman Colt Keith that set up a two-run second inning.
“Honestly, I don’t know what happened,” Montero said through interpreter Carlos Guillen. “I felt good. It seemed like every contact they made was hit where nobody was. It was like they were tossing it out there with their hand. But I will do what I always do. I will learn from this, turn the page and do my best in the next outing.”
He settled in briefly, setting down six straight hitters between the end of the third and into the fifth.
But after the Tigers had just made it a one-run game, Taveras crushed an elevated, 3-1 fastball, sending it 416 feet over the wall in right field in the top of the fifth.
“Tough night for Keider from the get-go,” Hinch said. “It looked like he had a hard time executing pitches where he wanted to. It was rough. We haven’t seen him struggle with his stuff and command in a really long time.”
After Jackson Holliday produced the third of his four hits in the game, Montero was replaced by right-hander Brenan Hanifee.
Mayo, who was hitting .156 off right-handed fastballs, muscled an elevated sinker over the bullpens in left-center, restoring a four-run lead for the Orioles.
Montero’s velocity was down a tick on all his pitches. His spin rates were also well below his norm. The result was one strikeout, just six whiffs on 35 swings and an average exit velocity of 90.6 mph on 21 balls put in play.
“All of us know what we have to do,” Montero said when asked if he carried any extra pressure into the start with the trade deadline looming and the Tigers trying to stay in the fight. “I don’t think too much on that or feel any extra pressure because of that. We do our best to win games. That’s our goal regardless of where we are.”
The Tigers cut the lead to 7-5 in the fifth. After Dillon Dingler (single) and Keith (double) set the table against starter Kyle Bradish, Torkelson hit a sacrifice fly and Zach McKinstry, who tripled and scored in the second inning, ripped an RBI single.
Cowser’s pinch-hit homer off lefty Tyler Holton leading off the sixth made it a three-run game again.
“It’s part of baseball and they are coming in bunches,” Hinch said, after the Tigers have yielded seven homers in the last three games. “And they are coming at some really rough times. We went through a long stretch where we were executing pretty flawlessly. Right now, we make a mistake and they get barrel to it and it feels like every ball is flying out of the ballpark.”
The Tigers didn’t score against the Orioles’ bullpen. Yennier Cano, Grant Wolfram (from Davenport University in Grand Rapids), Andrew Kittredge and Rico Garcia, collected the last 13 outs.
“All of these are must-win games,” said Riley Greene, who doubled and scored in the fourth. “I don’t think the circumstances are really affecting how we’re playing. We go out and try to win every game, no matter what, if it’s now or if it’s May. We have to win all of them.”
Hinch reiterated his no-surrender message.
“I come in here seven minutes after the game and it’s really frustrating,” he said. “But you have to pick yourself back up because we have to play tomorrow and tomorrow’s game becomes incredibly important. Just like this one was.”
Chris.McCosky@detroitnews.com
@cmccosky
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Tigers drop opener against Orioles, losing streak at three games
Reporting by Chris McCosky, The Detroit News / The Detroit News
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By Chris McCosky, The Detroit News | USA TODAY Network
