Minneapolis – April baseball is a dance between the daily result and the long view. You can’t help reacting to what’s happening on the field, especially after the Tigers’ maddeningly erratic 8-6 loss to the Minnesota Twins Wednesday at Target Field.
Nor can you intelligently affix any binding judgment on the overall quality and content of the team.
“It’s a tricky time,” manager AJ Hinch said before his team endured its second four-game losing streak in 12 games.
The Tigers have played mediocre to bad baseball so far. Hard to dispute that. But to say this is a mediocre to bad team based on that small sample would be foolishly premature. And yet, that’s the line Hinch and the coaching staff must navigate – can’t ignore the slow start, can’t completely freak out about it.
“I think team-wise, you are always pushing to play winning baseball,” he said. “And right now, we haven’t done that. We’re trying to find a way to get back to our brand of baseball that produces winning without overreacting to a lot of things as the competition gets stronger.
“You can also underreact, just chalk it up to, ‘Well, it’s just April.’ It’s a fine line in coaching to address the things that create wins.”
Digging a six-run hole with your $115 million No. 2 starter and not being able to push back against a struggling right-hander isn’t exactly the blueprint the Tigers strive for.
But there we were.
Lefty Framber Valdez, who was stellar in his first two starts, didn’t get started on time Wednesday.
BOX SCORE: Twins 8, Tigers 6
By the time the first inning ended, he had faced 10 hitters, thrown 29 pitches, allowed six runs, four hits, with a walk, hit-batsman and a run-scoring wild pitch. Valdez allowed a bloop RBI single to Josh Bell, a ringing two-run double to the only left-handed hitter in the Twins; lineup, Matt Wallner, and a two-run single to Royce Lewis.
He didn’t have a feel for his curveball, one of his signature pitches. The velocity on his sinker was down 1.5 mph and it was hit hard early.
“I was having issues with my breaking ball,” Valdez said through interpreter Carlos Guillen. “I was trying to put it on the ground but I kept hanging it up middle-middle. It was a bad day for me.”
He got it together after the first. He started mixing more changeups, which helped get the Twins’ hitters off his sinker. He ended up grinding into the sixth and allowed two more runs.
“I did my best to go as far as I could,” Valdez said. “I wanted to go six innings, regardless of how many they scored in the first.”
As frustrating as Valdez’s outing was, the slumbering offense against Bailey Ober might’ve been more disconcerting. In his two previous starts, Ober allowed six runs in eight innings with a four-seam fastball that sat at 89 mph.
It sat at 88 mph Wednesday and he still limited the Tigers to one hit through five innings before they broke through in the sixth.
“He’s got 7-3 extension and that always plays,” said Zach McKinstry. “Even though it’s 88, it’s still coming in a lot harder than it feels.”
Colt Keith led off with a double off the right field wall and scored on a single by Kerry Carpenter. Dillon Dingler chased Ober from the game with a two-out single.
One of the positives in the first two games of the series was the Tigers’ ability to force the Twins to use their bullpen. They’d seen seven of the eight relievers and were able to chip away against lefty Anthony Banda and Cole Sands, scoring four runs in the seventh to get back in the game.
Gleyber Torres sliced a two-run double. Riley Greene and Dingler each singled in a run.
The Tigers continued to apply pressure. They put two runners on in the eighth and ninth but couldn’t push anything across. The game ended when second baseman Luke Keaschall made an incredible catch on a liner by McKinstry with runners at the corners.
“I don’t know how he caught that ball,” McKinstry said. “But I think we need to start better and make better plays. We’re playing sloppy right now. We need to start the game like we are down 7-0 and start having better at-bats at the beginning of the game and make every out count.”
The fight-back was encouraging but this team isn’t looking for moral victories.
“Listen, I think it is always good that we know we’re going to play our 27 outs,” Hinch said. “It should be expected. This is the big leagues and we’ve done it for multiple years. But the first half of the game was equally as bad. We just didn’t do enough to put any pressure whatsoever on them and we paid the price.
“The story is not the comeback. The story is the complete game where we continue to do just enough to not win.”
The Tigers hadn’t endured two four-game losing streaks in the first 12 games of a season since 1998. They’ve also lost seven straight road games, which is hard to do in the first 12 games of a season.
That’s their immediate reality.
But if you think Hinch is turning over tables in the clubhouse and reading his players the riot act, you aren’t grasping the challenge of running a six-month marathon.
“Consistency is what wins in this sport, both in how you coach but also in what you stress,” Hinch said. “Players look for consistency in me and my staff and they’re going to get feedback. We’ve made a lot of mistakes and those have been addressed every day. We’ve also done some things right and got unlucky in certain ways. That needs to be pointed out, as well.
“We are going to bring our best mindset to the park every day and that’s going to win the test of time over a 162-game schedule.”
Chris.McCosky@detroitnews.com
@cmccosky
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Twins pound Valdez as Tigers’ losing skid reaches four games
Reporting by Chris McCosky, The Detroit News / The Detroit News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
