Detroit — Afterwards, Chris Paddack was bemoaning the lack of swinging strikes he was able to get out of his former teammates Tuesday night.
“I don’t think I had a single swing and miss,” he said.
When he was told he had one, he quickly said, “Who was it, I need to text him.”
It was Royce Lewis in the first inning, but that will hardly get Paddack any bragging rights. Sometimes these so-called revenge games don’t go the way you want them to.
Paddack, traded from the Twins to the Tigers on July 28, lasted only four inning in the Tigers’ 6-3 loss to the Twins at Comerica Park.
“You can look at it both ways,” Paddack said. “If things happened and I pitched well, you can smile and move on from it. But I’ll get another go-around with those guys in a couple of weeks (in Minnesota). They got me the first time. I have to make some adjustments. Just put my head down and get ready for my next one.”
Manager AJ Hinch foreshadowed this before the game.
“Guys love to see old teammates but it’s not necessarily going to be all that friendly,” he said. “On the front end it’s fun banter. The fact that he was in their clubhouse and a week later he’s facing them. Then you get in the box.
“The first guy that gets a hit early will end the love affair of playing your former team.”
That certainly proved true. The Twins treated their former mate rudely right out of the gate, scoring three, two-out runs in the first inning.
“I think you can look at the outing and five of the six hits were slugged,” Paddack said. “I could’ve done a better job in the first. I got two quick outs. I have to be able to close the door there and not let that inning snowball.”
Paddack gave up back-to-back doubles to Ryan Jeffers and former Tiger Kody Clemens with two outs. Then rookie Luke Keaschall swatted his first big-league home run, rushing a mislocated cutter 402 feet into the seats in left field.
The cutter was not Paddack’s friend on this night. He left another one in the middle of the plate to Trevor Larnach in the fourth inning. That one traveled 409 feet. The Twins put four cutters in play with an average exit velocity of 97 mph.
“You could say that team knows me, but at the end of the day, I’m always going to pitch to my strengths,” Paddack said. “I’m just a little bit disappointed with not a lot of swing and miss today. Like at all. That’s something I’ve been trying to get back to.
“They came out with a really good game plan.”
Overall, the Twins, especially hunting heaters at the top of the strike zone, put 19 balls in play against him with an average exit velocity of 94 mph, with no strikeouts and only the one swing and miss on 32 swings.
Thus, it ended up being a short outing. Hinch went to the bullpen early, pulling Paddack after four innings, even though his pitch count was low (57 pitches).
“Five extra base hits,” Hinch said. “To send him back through (Matt) Wallner, Jeffers and Clemens — all that was damage. I wanted to give them a different look based on how they swung the bat against him and that’s what I told him.”
It cleared the way for right-hander Rafael Montero to make his Tigers debut. Acquired last Wednesday from the Braves, Montero endured a messy, two-run fifth inning.
A one-out walk to Wallner started his trouble. Jeffers followed with a liner that Matt Vierling misplayed in center field. Wallner chugged all the way around and looked like he was going to be an easy out at the plate.
Catcher Jake Rogers played Zach McKinstry’s relay throw on a tough hop and made a lunge across the plate. Wallner was called safe. The Tigers challenged but the video evidence was inconclusive and the safe call stood.
“I held my hand up (to challenge) just as a Hail Mary because it looked like he was safe,” Hinch said. “But I didn’t realize he didn’t get to the plate with his feet, he did it with his hand. When we challenged, I couldn’t tell where Jake tagged him. You couldn’t really tell if he actually touched him and the call stands.”
With two outs, Keaschall slapped an RBI single to left.
“The walk burned him,” Hinch said of Montero’s outing. “And the base hit. Matty got a tough read. But his stuff was obviously there. It’s the execution. The walk hurts you almost every time.”
Vierling was fooled by both of Jeffers’ doubles. The one that got over his head in the first inning was a tougher play. The ball was hit with back spin and an exit velocity of 107 mph and had, per Statcast, a .660 expected batting average.
Still, Vierling took a bad angle on the ball and couldn’t recover.
“It looked like he didn’t think the ball was going to carry and he took a more direct line,” Hinch said. “And then it was that, ‘Oh, no, I’ve got to go back,’ and it tipped off his glove. The other one was similar. He went to a spot but the spot was a little bit off from where the ball went.”
The second double by Jeffers wasn’t hit as hard (105 mph) and had a .550 expected batting average.
“We’ll go back and look at his jumps,” Hinch said. “The routes looked funky, which means his first read wasn’t the correct read.”
Rookie Troy Melton made his first appearance out of the bullpen, working two laborious but scoreless innings. He put himself in harm’s way with a pair of walks in the seventh. He punched out Jeffers for the second out and then Rogers nabbed Austin Martin trying to steal third base.
The strikeout of Jeffers was the Tigers’ only one of the game at that point and one of only two in the game.
“I thought his stuff was good,” Hinch said. “Had it not been for the umpire injury where he had to wait and restart again, which is like three ups, he was going to get a third inning. Being able to pitch out of the stress of his second inning was important for the game and for him.”
The final two-plus innings were played with only three umpires. Home plate umpire Chad Fairchild left the game after taking a foul ball of the top of his mask in the top of the seventh inning. The force of the ball knocked him backwards and he had to be held up by Rogers.
The offense, which was without second baseman Gleyber Torres (scratched with left forearm tightness) and left fielder Riley Greene (day off), was slow to get going.
Doubles by Colt Keith and Kerry Carpenter in the third was the extent of it against Twins’ starter Zebby Matthews. And they gave themselves a puncher’s chance of getting back in it in the eighth. Against right-hander Cole Sands, Jahmai Jones lashed a two-run, two-out triple to the right-centerfield wall, cutting the deficit to 6-3.
They didn’t throw any punches in the ninth, going quietly against right-hander Justin Topa.
“Right before batting practice, Gleyber said he was sore and he’d felt it for a couple of days,” Hinch said. “He didn’t love the way he could swing the bat. … It’s hard to go from not feeling good swinging to getting on time for 95 to 98 mph. We will see how he feels tomorrow but I hope to play him.”
The Tigers (66-49) saw their lead in the Central Division shrink to seven games after the Cleveland Guardians beat the Mets, 3-2, Tuesday night in New York.
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