Detroit — The Tigers are way past accepting moral victories. But this one is a little more tangible than that.
Yes, on the day the club announced that All-Star left fielder Riley Greene was going on the 10-day injured list with a right hamstring strain, they dropped a hard-fought game, 6-4 Wednesday night, to even the series against Central Division rival Cleveland Guardians at Comerica Park.
Stopped was both the club’s three-game win streak and its 100-day quest to get back to .500.
But the secondary goal after winning the game at hand is to win the series. And by staying in the fight to the final out, they may have burned the Guardians’ All-Star closer Cade Smith for the rubber game Thursday.
“We came up short but we gave pretty good effort,” manager AJ Hinch said. “We leaned on them quite a bit at the end. Maybe that’s a good sign for (Thursday) but I’m not sure what it gains us until tomorrow. I did love our effort. To have a chance at the end with a really good part of our order coming — you want a puncher’s chance and we had it.
“Cade Smith made pitches when he had to.”
With the win, the Guardians, who have won seven of eight against the Tigers this season, clinch the season series. The Tigers (59-61) stay at 3.5 games back in the division and one game back in the Wild Card chase.
The Tigers had the tying run either on base or at-bat in both the eighth and ninth inning, grinding out at-bats against the vaunted backend duo in the Cleveland bullpen — Hunter Gaddis and Smith.
“I have faced Cade Smith a few times now and he’s legit,” rookie Kevin McGonigle said. “What we did tonight against him was really good, I thought. We kept battling. We weren’t giving up.”
The Tigers, down 6-3, scratched a run against Gaddis in the eighth. McGonigle walked and moved to third on a two-out single by Zach McKinstry. Guardians’ manager Stephen Vogt went to Smith against rookie Max Clark.
In what ended up being an epic 12-pitch battle, Smith threw a splitter in the dirt that bounced in front of catcher Austin Hedges. Hedges couldn’t find the ball and instead of retrieving it, Smith merely pointed. McGonigle alertly bolted for home and scored.
“In that situation, my run didn’t mean anything,” McGonigle said. “I didn’t want to be over aggressive and run into an out. So I didn’t go right away. But when I saw he didn’t know where the ball was even after Smith pointed, I took the risk.”
It left Clark with another runner in scoring position.
Of the 12 pitches in the at-bat, Clark saw eight four-seam fastballs all 98 to 100.7 mph. He fell behind 0-2, fouled off a fastball and took and splitter to make the count 1-2. After fouling off another 99.9 mph fastball, he fouled off a splitter that was in the middle of the plate.
“As the at-bat went on, I started to see the heater better,” Clark said. “I felt like the at-bat was over when I missed that splitter he hung. Fouled it into the ground.”
He wasn’t done. Far from it. He took a 99.7 mph heater to even the count at 2-2 then fouled off four straight pitches, 99.3, splitter, splitter and 98. Finally, on the 12th pitch, Smith reached back and threw 100.7 mph past the swinging Clark.
“I was happy with the battle,” Clark said. “I just need to execute. I need to find a way to get that runner in. My takeaway from it is he’s probably not going to pitch tomorrow, which is good…I felt I left something out there but I was glad to extend the at-bat to 12 pitches and hopefully he’s down tomorrow and we can get a series win.”
The at-bat might’ve set up the ninth, too. Smith yielded singles to Javier Báez and Gleyber Torres with one out. But Smith, with his pitch count climbing to a season-high 38, struck out Dingler and got McGonigle to ground out with shortstop Brayan Rocchio making a slick play ranging far to his right and getting the force out at second base.
“It was nice to see Max control himself in that moment,” Hinch said. “If you overswing, you are going to punch. If you get out too far ahead of yourself because of your emotions, you are going to chase. There was a lot to like about that at-bat. It really set up a good ninth inning for us.”
A two-strike, two-out, two-run double by Spencer Torkelson in the first inning and a solo homer by Torres in the third was all the damage the Tigers did until the eighth.
But it wasn’t enough to offset another rope-and-dope outing for Tigers’ lefty Framber Valdez. He ended up allowing four runs on six hits, five walks and a hit-batsman in 5.2 laborious innings.
“The walks,” he said, through interpreter Carlos Guillen. “I don’t like giving walks. About 80 percent of those walks become runs. That’s why I was upset and frustrated with myself. They hurt me big time tonight.”
The Tigers will send Keider Montero out against lefty Parker Messick in the matinee finale Thurday.
BOX SCORE: Guardians 6, Tigers 4
Chris.McCosky@detroitnews.com
@cmccosky
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Tigers’ .500 pursuit hits another snag in loss to Guardians
Reporting by Chris McCosky, The Detroit News / The Detroit News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Chris McCosky, The Detroit News | USA TODAY Network
