The Tigers crushed the Mariners, 11-0, as Detroit moved to within one game of a wild-card position.
The Tigers crushed the Mariners, 11-0, as Detroit moved to within one game of a wild-card position.
Seattle — It’s getting interesting, for sure. But it’s not for real. Not really. Not yet.
The Tigers have gamely fought their way back into the playoff conversation. They won their sixth straight road series Thursday, beating the Seattle Mariners 11-0 in the rubber match at T-Mobile Park.
It was their 12th shutout, their fifth win in six games on this West Coast trip and they are 34-21 since June 1. At game’s end, they were four games back in the Central Division and one game out of the final wild-card spot.
All good things
And yet, they are still under .500 (56-59). Maybe by the end of the season, being under .500 won’t be a roadblock to the postseason. But for now, the first fight is to get to and surpass .500 to establish the legitimacy of the chase.
“I think we are just putting our heads down, going out and playing,” said Colt Keith, who contributed three hits and a pair of RBI to the rout. “I don’t know other teams’ records. I barely know ours. We’re just playing good ball. We’re going out and having good at-bats and playing well.”
This surge, though, has been impressive. The last time the Tigers won six straight road series was in 1988. They’ve scored eight or more runs in seven of their last eight games and will carry a plus-37 run differential on this trip into San Francisco Friday.
BOX SCORE: Tigers 11, Mariners 0
In fact, they’ve outscored their opponents by 55 runs over the last eight games. They are only the third team in baseball to do that since 1958. And all of this happened around the trade deadline when the team lost Jake Rogers, Tarik Skubal and Casey Mize.
“Our personality is locked in,” manager AJ Hinch said. “This group doesn’t really get impacted by too much. Multiple things can happen at the same time. We can be bummed that a few of our favorites have walked out the door and still collect ourselves and go back to playing the game. That’s what we can control. We still have a lot of talent in this room as we proved by coming here and winning a series and chipping away at the hole we’ve dug.
“We’re not out of it yet. But we are heading in the right direction.”
The last time the Tigers scored a run against Mariners’ starter Bryce Miller was, never. Not one in 25 innings.
All-Star catcher Dillon Dingler put an end to that streak right away Thursday.
After Kevin McGonigle led off the game with a walk, Dingler slugged his 26th homer of the season, driving it over a leaping Julio Rodriguez and into the J-Rod Squad seats in right-center.
Riley Greene and Colt Keith followed with back-to-back doubles and the Tigers not only broke on top with three runs, they worked Miller for 40 pitches.
“We had a good plan against him,” Dingler said. “That team likes to use the fastball and we tried to take it away from them. Those at-bats we had in the first set the tone.”
It helped that Miller struggled to locate his splitter early in the game, too.
“He’s a good pitcher and he’s got us in the past,” Keith said. “We took advantage of him not having command of his splitter today. We didn’t chase it and he was missing in, missing off and missing up and we were able to take advantage.”
Dingler drove in McGonigle again in the second inning, this time with a two-out single to right.
“He’s been incredible,” Keith said of Dingler. “He’s shooting stuff the other way, driving balls to dead-central. He’s being a complete hitter right now and for us to keep winning, we’re going to need him to keep doing that and we’re going to get behind him and keep winning ballgames.”
Dingler, who came into the game with the third-highest position-player WAR in baseball (5.4 per FanGraphs), has 78 RBI, 38 of them with two outs, the most in baseball.
“It’s good,” said Dingler, who loathes talking about his own production. “I’m happy. But the spot we’re in, we’re not trying to get content with anything. You go through your ups and downs of the season. We’re just trying to put barrels on balls. Good things will happen if that’s the case.”
McGonigle’s two-run homer in the seventh (his 12th) ignited a four-run inning to effectively put the game on ice, though the Tigers insisted on adding another three runs to the total against position player Victor Robles in the ninth.
“We’re playing good ball,” Dingler said. “The offense is coming around. The defense has been great, the pitching is doing great. We have to keep on doing it.”
Speaking of the pitching: Framber Valdez picked a good day to showcase the best version of himself, delivering a second straight, seven-inning win.
“He locked in as the game went on,” Hinch said. “Early he was nibbling a little bit. They talked about it in the dugout between innings. Getting him to be a little more aggressive and trust his stuff was key. And the defense played really well behind him with a couple of double-plays. And Framber just kept stacking outs.”
He breezed through the first five innings, allowing just two hits and no hard-hit balls. The Mariners tested him in the sixth, with Colt Emerson and Randy Arozarena dropping singles with one out.
But Valdez punched out Dominic Calzone, freezing him with a sinker, and got the ever-dangerous Rodriguez to bounce out to third, coming back from a 3-0 count with three straight curveballs.
“After a waiting out that 40-pitch first inning, we had to be patient,” Dingler said. “But getting him through that first inning unscathed was big. And then he started to mix a little bit and he had really good feel on his curveball and sinker and he was able to keep them off-balance.
Valdez established his sinker early in the game, especially his ability to locate it on the inner third against the Mariners’ right-handed hitters. That opened up the plate for his curveball, slider and changeup.
“The separation in speed is there, too,” Dingler said. “It’s hard to wait back on his curveball and also honor a 95-mph sinker.”
Valdez used his curveball off the sinker to dispatch both Calzone and Rodriguez to get out the jam in the sixth inning.
“I understand that I need to throw the first pitch for a strike,” said Valdez through interpreter Carlos Guillen. “When I can do that, it gives me the opportunity to hold the hitter as a prisoner to what I want to throw. That’s what I did. I attack the zone, put the first pitch in the zone and then I can have leverage to put him away.”
He ended up allowing just five hits with five strikeouts. He induced eight ground ball outs and three double-play grounders.
“I think this team is showing that we’re hungry,” Valdez said. “We just have to stay focused and keep doing what we’re doing. Don’t pay attention to yesterday or what’s going to happen tomorrow. We’ve got a game today, win that game. I’m confident we’re going to be in the playoffs.”
The Tigers were 11 games back on June 1, seven games back in the wild-card race. They’ve posted the second-best record in the American League since then and it’s starting to feel like 2024 again. Even though they are still staring up at .500 as they head to San Francisco.
“We’ve collected ourselves,” Hinch said. “It doesn’t matter where we play. We feel really, really good about our chances to win, especially when we play as clean defensively as we did, hit the ball out of the ballpark and stack a bunch of runs. This team is still going to fight. I think we are trying to show people for them to believe it because we already do.”
@cmccosky
