Phoenix – Justin Verlander pulled no punches afterward, even though those punches were aimed at himself.
“Not the way you draw it up, obviously,” he said, after giving up five runs in 3.2 innings in his first start as a Tiger since Aug. 30, 2017, in a 9-6 loss to the Diamondbacks Monday night before a packed Chase Field. “You spend all spring training working on stuff and you feel OK. And in the first game of the season, it felt like nothing was right. And those guys were on time for everything.
“Just trying to scratch and claw and figure a way to get some outs any way possible. That’s what I was trying to do.”
Diamondbacks outfielder Corbin Carroll was the prime thorn in Verlander’s side, ripping an RBI triple in the first inning and a 403-foot, three-run homer in the second.
“Just execution,” manager AJ Hinch said. “I didn’t look like he was throwing the ball where he wanted to. He was yanking fastballs down and they put some pretty good swings on him. He battled until I took the ball out of his hand.”
Verlander struggles seemed to start with his inability to get a feel for his curveball, a massively important pitch for him. He tried to adjust by throwing more sliders and changeups, even mixing in some sweepers, but the D-backs continued to put barrels on baseballs.
Verlander said it wasn’t just the curveball.
“I was equally disappointed in all of them,” he said. “Later (in the third and fourth innings), I started to control my fastball better, which is good. But they had too many good swings on my pitches and that needs to be better.
“I need to be better.”
Through the first two innings, the Diamondbacks hit six balls with exit velocities of over 100 mph. Verlander ended up throwing 14 curveballs, five for strikes. His one strikeout came on one of the few well-executed curveballs, to Alek Thomas in the third.
The Diamondbacks got their five runs off Verlander on six hits and two walks. Besides the one strikeout, he got just six misses on 39 swings. And the average exit velocity on balls in play was over 90 mph on all five of his pitches.
“I’m grinding,” Verlander said. “It’s early. Emotionally I was excited. Obviously, I’m a bit defeated now. That sucks. It’s not the way I wanted it to go and that’s disappointing for myself more than anybody else in the world. But just like I’ve done my whole career, come in here and try to think about what was off and how I can fix.
“I already have a few ideas.”
The Tigers just about took the future Hall-of-Famer off the hook..
They were in an 8-0 hole after five innings. They had struck out 10 times against right-hander Michael Soroka, who in his Arizona debut recorded an immaculate inning in the fifth, striking out Javier Báez, Kerry Carpenter and Gleyber Torres on nine pitches.
But out of nowhere, the Tigers sent 11 batters to the plate and scored six runs in the top of the seventh.
“We could’ve rolled over,” catcher Dillon Dingler said. “But we put a lot of good at-bats together and scraped up six runs. That was cool to see. If our offense has that fight and can keep a game close like that, that will reward us in the next two games here.”
To say that six-run outburst came out of nowhere, the Tigers had just four hits and 11 strikeouts in the first six innings and hadn’t put a runner on base since the third inning when Riley Greene and Spencer Torkelson struck out stranding runners at second and third.
Reliever Joe Ross walked rookie Kevin McGonigle to start the seventh. Dingler doubled to score McGonigle and Baez bounced an RBI single to right field to score Dingler. After Carpenter struck out for the third time (he has 10 in four games), Torres kept the inning alive with a single and Keith, hitting .429 on the young season, hit his second double of the game, driving in two more runs.
Keith scored on a single by Greene.
Arizona manager Torey Lovullo, amidst a chorus of boos, replaced Ross with right-hander Ryan Thompson. Torkelson greeted him with an RBI double. McGonigle and Dingler also drew walks to load the bases.
BOX SCORE: Diamondback 9, Tigers 6
Again Lovullo made a pitching change, this time calling on Juan Morillo who got Parker Meadows to ground out and end the inning.
“We put some pressure on them and got to a lot of their bullpen arms,” Hinch said. “We will see how that plays out over a three-game series. We are going to play the whole game and I was glad our guys put together a few better at-bats. We were maybe one base hit away from a better result.”
It was a nice response but it was too little too late, largely because the Diamondbacks had put three more runs on the board in an ugly fifth inning.
Lefty Enmanuel De Jesus gave up three straight hits, including an RBI double to Thomas, and walked in a run. The third run of the inning came on a play where the Tigers thought they’d got an inning-ending force out at second.
Replays showed that the runner, Jordan Lawler, beat Baez’s throw to second.
Tigers’ lefty Brant Hurter, who had gotten five straight outs, gave up a two-out solo homer to Ildemaro Vargas in the bottom of the seventh to make it three-run game and, after former Tiger Paul Seawald got the final three outs, the Diamondbacks secured their first win of the season.
As for Verlander, he will certainly have better days.
“He is a perfectionist,” Dingler said. “He’s one of the best to ever do it. It’s so cool to see the constant drive he has. And each day he’s trying to get better and better. I’m sure he already has some ideas about what he wants to work on for the next one.”
Chris.McCosky@detroitnews.com
@cmccosky
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Justin Verlander roughed up in Tigers’ 9-6 loss to Diamondbacks
Reporting by Chris McCosky, The Detroit News / The Detroit News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
