The News’ Andrew Graham gives his quick takes on the Tigers’ 4-1 victory over the Orioles in Game 2 of the day-night doubleheader Sunday night:
One thing I loved
Hard not to love getting 5.2 innings of two-hit baseball out of Troy Melton in his first big-league outing of 2026. And on top of loving that for the Tigers, it’s also a pretty cool deal for him to step into a spot where his scuffling club needed him and come up clutch.
Melton’s final line: 5.2 innings, two hits, one run with three strikeouts and three walks on 79 pitches.
If this can be a sign of things to come for Melton, it could be a critical starting pitching infusion for the Tigers to keep shoring things up after the recent return of Casey Mize. It’s no Tarik Skubal, but it’d feel far less tenuous with Mize, Framber Valdez and the likes of Melton and Keider Montero pitching well.
And as for Sunday night’s game, specifically, Detroit needed a win badly as a losing streak stretched to eight games with an earlier walk-off in Game 1 of the doubleheader. Melton stepped in for the decimated Tigers and helped hold together, even just for a handful of innings, the hopes that Detroit has of turning this thing around.
One thing I didn’t
With 54 games played, the Tigers are officially done with a third of the season. Wild that it’s happened so fast, and disappointing to take stock of how things have gone for Detroit. And moreover, it’s hard to have a good taste about this team with two thirds of the race yet to run.
Detroit lost eight in a row, 11 of the last 12 and 17 of the last 19 games it played entering Sunday’s nightcap against the Orioles. A team looking to build on the successes of 2024 and 2025 has, in fact, gone in the opposite direction.
And things are still relatively early, many of the issues amount of a roster decimated by injury and some of where Detroit finds itself is just plain old bad luck.
But hitting the jets and turning this season around is feeling less and less likely by the day. And the same exculpatory explanation for the struggles — that the team is so injured — could be just as likely to hold this team back to a degree that’s too much to overcome.
But hey, they won tonight so I had to reach for existential dread, instead.
Three stars
(Season total in parentheses)
Dillon Dingler (15) — add another Dingler dinger to the tally, if you will
Kevin McGonigle (16)
Tyler Holton (5)
Player of the game
Tyler Melton — heck of a way to debut!
Next Tigers game
Game 55: Angels at Tigers, 6:40 Tuesday, Detroit SportsNet, 97.1
ICYMI: Sunday afternoon’s Tigers recap
Andrew Graham is a freelance writer.
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Detroit Tigers, Game 54: One thing I loved, one thing I didn’t
Reporting by Andrew Graham, The Detroit News / The Detroit News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
