Detroit – Parker Meadows has this thing he does when he first comes off the injured list.
He homers.
Last season, he came off the injured list in early July and homered in his first game. He got hurt again, came back a month later and homered in his second game back.
He didn’t wait that long Friday.
Out since July 27 with a quad strain, Meadows blistered the first pitch he saw and sent it on a wire into the right-field seats. The ball sizzled off his bat at 106 mph and flew 385 feet in a hurry.
“Just glad to get back out there with the guys,” said Meadows, after the Tigers endured a frustrating 7-5 loss to the Chicago White Sox before a crowd of 35,216 at Comerica Park. “Felt good. Felt free just running around out there. I feel really good to be back.”
That date, Sept. 5, also seems to hold some magic for Meadows. He hit a dramatic grand slam home run to beat the Padres on this date last year.
“He’s playing on this day next year,” manager AJ Hinch said. “I don’t know where it is or who we’re facing but he’s in there.”
This would have been quite the welcome-back party had the Tigers been able to stop the White Sox from scoring.
But they could not.
The White Sox, who have won six straight games, banged out 11 hits and scored in six of the nine innings.
“Frustrating night all around,” Hinch said.
The Tigers took a 4-3 lead in the bottom of the fourth inning one of the most bizarre, hard-hitting wild pitches you will ever see.
BOX SCORE: White Sox 7, Tigers 5
With two outs, Wenceel Perez drew a walk and scampered to third on a double by Zach McKinstry, on a ball that bounced off the glove of diving shortstop Colson Montgomery.
With Dillon Dingler batting, White Sox starter Shane Smith threw a pitch that bounced in front of the plate. The ball caromed off catcher Kyle Teel, up in the air and in front of home plate.
Smith is 6-4, 240 pounds. Teel is 6-2, 210. Both chased the carom at full speed and collided at full speed, both toppling to the ground immobile as both runners scored.
“Brutal collision,” said Meadows, who saw it play out from the on-deck circle. “You don’t see that every day.”
Amazingly, both Smith and Teel stayed in the game.
“That was scary,” Hinch said. “I don’t wish that on anybody. It was just two guys trying to make a play and not only did they not get rewarded for it, they took it out on each other. We benefitted from the collision but thankfully, both of those guys are OK.”
Nobody epitomized the frustration of this game more that starter Jack Flaherty, who continues to search for consistency from start to start.
“It’s the same conversation we’ve had every time, it feels like,” said Flaherty, who had six hits, four runs, two walks and a hit-batsman on his ledger in just 4.1 innings. “The inconsistency is frustrating. Not putting up a zero after we score and get back into the game. Just the inconsistency from outing to outing.”
The White Sox scored single runs in the first and third innings to jump ahead 2-0.
After Meadows’ homer tied it in the bottom of the third, Flaherty walked the leadoff hitter in the fourth and then gave up a two-out RBI single to .097 hitting Will Robertson.
“It’s execution, right?” Hinch said. “That’s what it is. When you don’t get the ball where you want, it puts you in jeopardy. He had a hard time today. There were flashes of it and there were some big pitches that he lost. A handful of hits with two strikes and late in the count barrels that tells me he’s not quite getting the ball where he wants to.”
After the Tigers took the lead in the bottom of the fourth, Flaherty didn’t finish the fifth.
No. 9 hitter Dominic Fletcher, just called up from Triple-A, led off with his second double. After a diving catch in right by Perez, Flaherty walked Teel and hit Curtis Mead in the back to load the bases.
Flaherty left at that point, with Fletcher scoring on a subsequent ground out.
“We’re doing the little things right, getting strike one, getting ahead 0-2 or 1-2 and then not putting guys away,” Flaherty said.
The velocity and spin rates on all his pitches were down and, as evidenced by the two walks and hit batter, his command was not sharp. Not only was his body not moving fluidly through his delivery, his his body language throughout the outing mirrored his frustration.
“He expects a lot out of himself,” Hinch said. “He puts a lot into his work between starts. He’s trying to catch that rhythm and repeatability he needs to execute. You can see when he starts having those gestures and the body language, he’s taking it out on himself a little bit.
“He hasn’t been able to get on track after that. At least he tonight he didn’t.”
Lefty Bailey Horn got the Tigers out of the fifth and kept the game tied, 4-4. But he stayed in to start the sixth, tasked with getting lefties Andrew Benintendi and Robertson out.
One out of two. Benintendi broke the tie with his 18th homer, a 399-footer to right-center.
Horn retired Robertson before departing, thanks to a spectacular diving catch in left-center by Meadows.
“We talked about how Parker can impact this team,” Hinch said. “That’s a lot of what we’ve missed, even without the homer. The walk and the energy in centerfield. Being able to run down a ball that was seemingly about to hit the ground. He came out of nowhere. It was a good night to get him back.”
Montgomery made it a three-run game with a two-out, two-strike, two-run homer off Keider Montero in the seventh inning.
“He’s growing into a problem,” Hinch said of Montgomery, who has eight home runs in his last 12 games.
The Tigers’ lead in the Central Division fell to 8.5 games.
@cmccosky
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