Detroit — The Tigers couldn’t pull off another comeback, losing to the Toronto Blue Jays 2-1 on Saturday afternoon in extra innings.
In the top of the tenth, Daulton Varsho hit a line drive to center field off of relief pitcher Tyler Horton, allowing Vladimir Guerero Jr. to reach home from second base.
Then in the bottom of the tenth with Zack Short on third, Dillon Dingler swung and missed for the final strikeout.
The bats couldn’t come through despite Casey Mize’s return to the mound. He pitched six innings with four strikeouts while not allowing a walk. Despite not pitching in an actual game since suffering that right groin strain on April 28, Mize looked sharp apart from the two hits allowed, especially to his chemistry with catcher Jake Rogers.
“Not a ton of rust,” Mize said after the game. “I feel like I just treated it kind of like I did pre-injury and just ‘Hey, let’s just get back into things,’ and kind of went from there. I feel like the plan was really good, I feel like Jake (Rogers) was really good behind the plate. I probably walked off the mound like three or four times on the way back to the dugout and tell him ‘Great call,’ we were really on the same page, I feel like he was really insane today, outstanding.”
“I thought he pitched tremendously, coming off the injured list, getting right back into the competitive game,” Tigers manager A.J. Hinch said postgame. “I thought he held his stuff, I thought he had great tempo, I thought his stuff was good, he got some swing and miss, got some soft contact, everything you would want out of a normal start.”
When Blue Jays hitters did make contact, it was usually fly-outs and pop-outs. And some pitches just looked nasty, like in the second inning when a low splitter made Blue Jays outfielder Jesús Sánchez swing and miss for Mize’s second strikeout of the game.
“He’s one to react to a lot of different pitches a lot of different ways. So I don’t know if I interpreted that as he sees it well or doesn’t see it at all, so I don’t know,” Mize said. “Obviously, the swing and miss is the reaction I like the most.”
Riley Greene’s hitting and on-base streaks continued, as Tigers fans had to wait until the bottom of the ninth for Greene to record a hit. It’s his 11th straight game with a hit and 27th straight game reaching base, as he finished 1-for-4 with two strikeouts.
Spencer Torkelson, who was Friday night’s hero with a two-out, walk-off single, went 1-for-4 with three strikeouts, but had a clutch single in the bottom of the ninth that moved Greene to second base.
BOX SCORE: Blue Jays 2, Tigers 1, 10 innings
Colt Keith was brought in to pinch-hit in the bottom of the ninth, but he swung at a low strike to send the game into extra innings.
Strikeouts were a problem for the Tigers throughout the game, with six Blue Jays pitchers combining to strike out 14 Tigers batters. Although they outhit the Blue Jays 7-5 in this game, the Tigers went 0-for-7 with runners in scoring position and left seven runners on base.
“I think we missed some big at-bats, and that happens sometimes. (The Blue Jays) spin the ball as much as anyone else in baseball, we knew that and we did see a lot of different arms,” Hinch said.
“We got a handful of hits, we had some opportunities, we had guys on base. There were a couple of innings we left two or three guys on base. You’d love to capitalize on those and just chip away a little bit.”
The game remained scoreless until the bottom of the sixth inning, when Braydon Fisher’s slider went right down the middle and Vierling took advantage of it, sending it deep into left field for the Tigers’ first run, a 364-foot homer.
Vierling was the only Tigers batter with multiple hits, finishing 2-for-3 with a single as his other hit. Vierling, who had a stolen base in Friday’s game, couldn’t recreate the feat as he got caught stealing second base to end the second inning.
After Mize, Kyle Finnegan entered in relief in the seventh inning and immediately gave up a run, as Yohendrick Piñango caught Finnegan on a splitter hung down the middle, driving the ball deep before it bounced over the top of the wall and into the Michigan Lottery tunnel in right field for a 348-foot homer, his first as a major leaguer.
The Tigers had multiple opportunities to score after Piñango’s homer. In both the seventh and eighth innings, Detroit had runners on base but couldn’t bring them home.
“It’s tough. I think we came out, obviously with the Vierling homer was big there, right when Casey (Mize) came out, and that was, obviously for Casey pitching his butt off, us getting that home run was big for him,” said Rogers, who finished 0-for-3 with two strikeouts and a walk.
“Our hitters, we were a little off balance and that’s just kind of the way it is, we’re looking for the big hit right now and I think we need to, including myself, do a better job of just putting the ball in play and hit the ball to the right side and little stuff that we do a really good job of.”
Kameron Goodwill is a freelance writer.
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Detroit Tigers lose to Blue Jays, bats silent in Casey Mize’s return
Reporting by Kameron Goodwill, Special to The Detroit News / The Detroit News
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