SEATTLE – He got shut down before the season started, and when word broke that right-hander Troy Melton would begin the Detroit Tigers’ season on the 60-day IL, the news hit like an “Oh … darn?’ more than an “Oh, no!’
And, for good reason – or at least reasonable ones among those who considered the Tigers contenders in the American League back in March – he wasn’t slated for their rotation, despite an electric turn for the Tigers in their ALDS Game 5 loss to the Mariners in T-Mobile Park.
Mostly because the rotation was set in February. Let’s see … there was Tarik Skubal (the ace) and Framber Valdez (who’d been Houston’s ace) and Casey Mize (a former No. 1 pick who sometimes pitched like an ace) and Jack Flaherty (who … had the contract of an ace) and, finally, Justin Verlander:
The Tigers’ former ace, Houston’s ace before Valdez, a future first ballot Hall-of-Famer and, by all accounts an ageless all-timer who showed that he still had ace-like stuff just last season in San Francisco. Now the 43-year-old was back in Detroit, back home on a sweetheart deal.
That was a story – the story, if we’re being honest. Or, at least it was when Verlander reported to TigerTown. The other story, of course, was Skubal’s potential departure in the fall, not Melton’s right elbow inflammation in the spring.
He was promising, yes, but he was young – potentially a nice bullpen piece for this loaded pitching staff, even though he’d shown some under-the-radar poise in last year’s postseason.
In other words, he was the future, and the Tigers were going for it now in what would almost certainly be Skubal’s final season in Detroit.
Now look: Skubal’s in Los Angeles. Mize is in San Diego. Verlander is still here, mentoring during his time on the injured list. And Flaherty is also on the IL. Only Valdez is still in the rotation, and he’s been … well, not an ace.
All of that’s a long way to bring us to Tuesday, Aug. 4, at T-Mobile Park, where Melton threw seven more scoreless innings in the Emerald City and helped extend the Tigers’ winning streak to four. He entered Tuesday on his own heater, too, holding his foes to two runs or fewer in seven straight starts. That lowered his ERA to 1.75, second only to Milwaukee’s rubber-armed flamethrower Jacob Misiorowski (1.63) among pitchers with at least 60 innings thrown this season.
Wait, it gets better. Tuesday night was the second time in a row Melton has thrown seven scoreless with three or fewer hits. He’s the first Tiger with that mark since – you guessed it – Tarik Skubal, who accomplished the feat last season.
Not that Melton is trying to replace Skubal, or even Mize.
“To be honest,” Melton said after the Tigers’ 8-0 win over Seattle, “I haven’t thought about it. I mean, not at all. I’m just trying to get people out. Obviously, lost two pretty good players. Gotta find a way to replace however we can.”
No-contact policy
Of course, he isn’t going to tell anyone he’s the one to replace Skubal. He doesn’t need to. His stuff is spilling the beans. So are his numbers – Tuesday’s seven shutout innings dropped his ERA to 1.58, the best among any big-league pitcher with at least 70 innings pitched this season, and gave him a ridiculous 0.93 ERA over his past eight starts.
Oh, and his arsenal.
And the look of hitters who walk or jog back to their dugout shaking their head after they’ve guessed wrong at one of his six pitches and whiffed or swung off-balance and, handcuffed, sprung a harmless fly ball into the outfield.
Josh Naylor, noted Tigers nemesis, shook his head in the fourth inning after chasing Melton’s fall-off-the-cliff splitter with runners on first and second and a brief opportunity to get the Mariners back into a game they trailed, 3-0.
Melton had lost a few cutters, arguably his best pitch this season, and that tiny loss of control with that pitch put him in a bind early Tuesday a few times, and had against Naylor, who had worked a 3-2 count with runners on first and second. Which was fine, because catcher Dillon Dingler just ordered the splitter.
Whiff.
Dingler called for it on the fifth pitch against 2025 AL MVP runner-up Cal Raleigh, the next batter, and it struck him out, too.
If the splitter isn’t quite there, Dingler calls for the four-seam fastball, or the changeup – a pitch, Dingler said, that “we hardly use, even though it’s got great depth. If something is not as sharp, like his slider was tonight. We adjust. Use more curveballs … drop in a changeup, even a sinker if he wants it. … [It] makes my job easier because he’s got a plus fastball that never gets hit.”
Nothing gets hit lately. Not much.
Against Seattle, he allowed two hard-hit balls all night, and he was, um, slightly annoyed with himself afterwards, despite being as polite and jovial with his questioners as you might imagine.
“I feel like recently I really haven’t had my best stuff and command,” he said. “It’s just finding a way to grind through and get swing-and-miss when I need to get swing-and-miss. … I guess what I’m proud of is what I’ve been proud of for the last three or four [starts] now and that’s just battling with what I’ve got.”
Wait … with what he’s got? Did he just say that?
Yeah, he did, and his manager only added to the possibility of where this could go when he said this:
“When you’ve got different ways to get guys out, that’s how you stay in the game into the seventh and beyond,” A.J. Hinch said. “I think he’s got to continue to learn how to use his stuff. He’s got a lot to choose from.”
The Tigers’ next ace?
It’s hard to know where to start here, so let’s go with this: Staying in the game into the seventh and beyond is ace stuff.. And being this good this quickly and still not having a feel for how to use all your stuff is, well, ace stuff. And having “a lot to choose from” is, of course ace stuff.
But Hinch isn’t going to call him an ace just yet. Melton isn’t that presumptuous. Dingler didn’t use that word, either, but maybe he didn’t need to. Maybe none of us do. Maybe it doesn’t need to be said.
You can see. Hinch can see. His teammates can see. Heck, even I can see. Melton is changing how he is viewed, start by overpowering start, and it’s happening quickly. He has 12 starts since coming off the IL.
Twelve.
Now that Skubal is gone, now that Mize is gone, and Verlander is rehabbing and Valdez is searching … now that the trade deadline is over and the baseball cognoscenti have moved on … the Tigers could be inching toward something memorable once more.
They are young, and climbing from a hole dug in May by injuries and ineffectiveness. They are starting rookies and scoring bushels of runs and sit 1½ games from the American League’s third wild-card spot (and 4½ games out in the AL Central with 49 games to play, and more than a few against the teams in front of them).
And, among it all, their second-year, 25-year-old, fourth-round draft pick from Newport Beach, California – who pitches with the same confidently giddy and lowkey swag that propel the surfers just off the coast of his hometown – is increasingly leading the way.
Not by words as much as by high-90s heat and a bag of strikeout pitches to compliment it. He is an ace in the making, and the Tigers are lucky to have him. Doubly so, considering they, frankly, may not have fully known what they had, based on the pitching they chased over the winter.
But that’s history. Melton is a current event.
“He’s awesome,” said Dingler, and “he’s been incredible since he’s come back, an unsung hero of the season. I think he’ll now start to emerge once he’s one of the big dogs on the staff, because he’s gaining a lot of hype, especially with opposing teams. Like, they know. Opposing teams know that he’s nasty.”
The outside world is beginning to see it, too.
Contact Shawn Windsor: swindsor@freepress.com. Follow him @shawnwindsor.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Troy Melton mastery shows Tigers have an ace even after trade deadline
Reporting by Shawn Windsor, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
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By Shawn Windsor, Detroit Free Press | USA TODAY Network
