Detroit — Yeah, the beard is staying.
“It’s really itchy but if it produces hits, I’ll wear it all year,” said Colt Keith, who has been sizzling hot since he decided not to shave over the weekend. “This is by far the longest I’ve ever gone. I don’t come from a beard family. My dad, I’m sure he hates it.”
Even Mr. Keith knows you don’t mess with a streak.
Keith, fresh off a huge night Monday, provided the big hits again Tuesday, breaking a 2-2 tie with a clutch, two-run homer to right field in the seventh inning, giving the Tigers their fifth straight win and second straight over the Tampa Bay Rays, 4-2, at Comerica Park.
“We need to remember he’s still scratching the surface (no pun intended) of who he’s going to be and what he’s going to be at this level,” manager AJ Hinch said. “We showed some patience with him over the last couple of years as he’s tried to figure it out. He’s always been a smart hitter and he’s learning that less is more.”
Keith, who doubled twice and slugged a solo homer in the 5-1 win in the opener, poked an opposite-field, RBI single to score the tying run in the fifth. And, with Zach McKinstry on third with two outs in the seventh, shellacked a 1-0 changeup from former Tiger Edwin Uceta.
The ball left his bat at 101 mph and flew 394 feet into the right-field seats. It was his eighth homer.
“I’m just trying to focus on swinging easy and I think that allows my hands to speed up and get to everything,” Keith said.
It sounds counterintuitive, but being free and easy with his hands enabled him to launch both an upper-90s fastball from Paul Gervase Monday and the changeup from Uceta Tuesday. Just like it enabled him to adjust to the changeup against starter Ryan Pepiot to score the tying run.
“My heartbeat has been so high my whole big-league career, always fighting to get that down,” Keith said. “And it makes sense, right? A tight muscle is a slow muscle, as they say. … Pepiot threw me a changeup and I was fooled. I was sitting on a fastball. But because my hands were loose, I was able to shoot it over there.
“It feels like myself, like me as a hitter. I was able to do that all through the minor leagues, so it’s nice and refreshing to feel that again.”
In the first eight days of July, Keith is 11 for 23 with three home runs and 12 RBI.
“Baseball is full of ups and downs,” he said. “I’m trying to ride this high was long as I can and keep these feels as long as I can.”
This one was a grinder.
Facing Pepiot hasn’t been much fun for the Tigers the last couple of years. Coming into the game, they’d managed just five runs and a .177 batting average against him in four games.
It was more of the same Tuesday. He struck out four of the first five hitters and allowed only three hits in his six innings of work.
“I looked up at one point and he had single-digit balls out of the strike zone,” Hinch said. “We chased a little bit so it doesn’t tell the whole story. But he was super efficient early. We wanted to be aggressive early and when you’re aggressive early and make outs, you look up and he’s got sub-30 pitches in three innings.”
But the Tigers started making him work, drawing walks. They ended up with six walks and three hit batters.
“We started to chip away and the walks helped,” Hinch said. “It just creates some traffic and pressure, even if it’s self-imposed, it’s still good pressure.”
And the Tigers made their few hits count.
Spencer Torkelson made Pepiot pay for a hanging slider in the fourth, slamming his 21st home run into the bullpen in left.
The Tigers then manufactured a run with a walk and a stolen base by McKinstry in the fifth. McKinstry swiped two (Nos. 12 and 13). This time he scored on Keith’s punch-single to left.
“Colt is a complete hitter and he doesn’t have to be perfect,” Hinch said. “He’s an impact guy. That’s whey I put him at the top of the order against right-handed starters.”
They loaded the bases in the eighth but didn’t cash it in. After two walks, Rays reliever Eric Orze hit Dillon Dingler in the chin-guard with a 94 mph fastball. Dingler seemed momentarily stunned, but he stayed in the game.
“He was stunned,” Hinch said. “It’s not intentional, you could tell by their reaction, how frightening that is for everyone. We didn’t know what it hit at first.”
The ball hit off what is called a C-flap, which wraps around the hitter’s jawline. The force of the pitch broke a piece of the flap off the helmet.
“It’s a new piece of equipment that’s come into the game which I think is really important,” Hinch said. “Especially as velo and pitching above the zone has become popular. When those pitches get away, it’s super dangerous.
“He was stunned and he needed to collect himself. We had him checked out twice and we will check him out again, but all signs are it grazed him and he’ll be fine.”
Thanks to some strong work by Tigers’ starter Jack Flaherty, it was a 2-2 game after six innings.
It was a very different version of Flaherty than the one the Rays saw in Tampa on June 20. They clobbered him that day, scoring eight runs and knocking him out of the games in the third inning.
On Tuesday, Flaherty held the Rays in check for 6.1 innings, mixing knuckle-curveballs and sliders indiscriminately off firm and well placed four-seam fastballs.
“It was a good day,” said Flaherty. “Ding called a really good game and the guys made some big plays.”
Jonathan Aranda was the only Ray to do damage against him. He clobbered a 1-2 four-seamer that Flaherty left up and in the middle of the plate, sending his 11th homer of the season into the right field seats.
In the third, Aranda doubled on a knuckle-curve and scored on a two-strike, two-out single by Josh Lowe.
But he faced just one batter over the minimum over the next three innings and left the game with one out and one on in the seventh. He finished with eight strikeouts, with 16 whiffs and 16 called strikes, an indication of how effectively he was keeping the Rays off balance in the batter’s box.
“It’s our job as starters to keep the game close,” Flaherty said. “Even if Pepiot did a great job the first handful of innings, the guys kept clawing. That’s what really good teams do. They keep clawing and fighting. As long as the game is close, you feel like you’re going to win, you feel you are going to find a way to win.”
Tommy Kahnle got the final two outs in the seventh leaving it to Tyler Holton (clean eighth) and Will Vest (scoreless ninth) to bring it home. It was the 15th save of the season for Vest.
The Tigers are now an MLB-best 59-34 and 32-14 at Comerica. It was their 18th comeback win.
“I will just say what I always say,” Keith said, “just keep our heads down and keep going out there and putting out our effort. The game is not over until it is over — play the whole nine.”
@cmccosky
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