Detroit — Tarik Skubal, nine scoreless innings on Sunday.
Keider Montero, five scoreless innings Monday.
Jack Flaherty, virtually unhittable for six innings Tuesday night.
The Tigers are making that old saw about momentum being only as good as today’s starting pitcher ring true.
Flaherty’s gem helped the Tigers to a third straight win, beating the San Francisco Giants and their ace Logan Webb, 3-1, at Comerica Park.
“I go into every game with Jack thinking he’s going to dominate,” manager AJ Hinch said. “Like, he’s really good. He’s hard on himself and he does wear his emotions on his sleeve a little bit. You can tell when he’s fighting himself or when he’s cruising.”
In recent starts, Flaherty has done both. He’s battled himself at times and he’s cruised for stretches. On Tuesday, everything seemed to come together for him.
“I’m proud of him,” Hinch said. “He does battle perfection like a lot of guys do. But it doesn’t phase him from start to start. His reset button’s getting real good.”
He established arguably the best four-seamer he’s had this season early. Not only was the command precise at the top and bottom of the strike zone, he was getting extra ride on it. The induced vertical break was 18 to 22 inches, up from his season average of 16 inches.
“If you can pitch off your fastball and kind of get guys on their heels, it opens up everything else,” said Flaherty, who allowed only two singles and struck out eight. “I just need to continue to move better and stay within myself. I’m not going to do too much to make it happen (not force it), but if I can locate it, it opens up the rest of my arsenal.”
The knuckle-curve was his primary secondary weapon and he got five whiffs on 11 swings with it. With his four-seamer, he got seven whiffs on 25 swings and 13 called strikes. A lot of the called strikes were at the bottom of the zone.
“From what I was told, and this is going back to 2019 with Yadi (Molina) and Matt Wieters, guys who caught me, they told me that’s where it played best,” Flaherty said. “It does something down there and then you are able to go up and expand later as the game goes on or as the count goes on. There’s a lot of takes and early strikes down there.”
Flaherty’s only spot of bother was in the first inning. He gave up a leadoff single to Mike Yastrzemski. Wilmer Flores launched a slider to left field that Riley Greene tracked and caught at the top of the wall. He hit Jung Ho Lee with two outs to extend the inning.
But he got out of it freezing Matt Chapman with a borderline heater on the edge of the zone.
It was one of a couple of close calls that went Flaherty’s way, which ultimately led to Giants’ manager Bob Melvin getting ejected by home plate umpire Tony Randazzo in the fifth inning.
It ended being a 26-pitch first inning and when Willy Adames singled to start the second, it looked like it might be another long inning. First baseman Spencer Torkelson made sure that wasn’t the case. He got him out of it with a slick stop of hard-hit ball down the line by Patrick Bailey that he turned into a double-play.
“That was huge,” Flaherty said. “I’ve had a handful of those long innings and from there you just continue to make pitches and do what you can. Tork made a huge play there and even the play Greeney made in the first on that catch at the wall.”
He and catcher Dillon Dingler had to make a slight adjustment after the second when it became clear that Flaherty didn’t have his normal feel for the slider.
“This team was pretty keen on hitting the slider,” Dingler said. “You saw they almost left the yard a couple of times off the slider. The bigger spin (curveball) was keeping them more off-balance. And once he was able to show he could put it around the plate instead of burying it, it felt like it did well and opened up his heater.”
Flaherty left to a standing ovation from the announced crowd of 21,092.
“He was really good and it was really good to see,” Hinch said. “He put a lot into his work — he always works hard — but it was nice to see him go out and not only get into his outing but man, he hung in there all the way through the sixth inning.
“That was big for him and it was big for us.”
Big for Hinch because it enabled him to use sidearming righty Chase Lee advantageously against a pocket of mostly right-handed hitters who hadn’t faced him before. Lee put up zeros in the seventh and eighth.
Will Vest gave up a run on an RBI double by Flores, but he retired Matt Chapman and Adames to secure his seventh save.
“You never want to coast but when you get up early like that, you have the luxury to coast,” Dingler said. “You are still trying to put up runs, but you have a nice little cushion and everybody feels comfortable and everybody can get into a rhythm.”
Greene did the heavy lifting for the offense with three hits and a pair of RBI.
He scorched a two-out double to the wall in right-center to bring Gleyber Torres all the way around from first. The ball left his bat with an exit velocity of 114.5mph.
It was the Tigers’ MLB-leading 122nd run scored with two outs.
Greene singled home Colt Keith in the third after Keith drove a triple into the right field corner.
Greene, who has 22 RBI this month, also doubled with two outs in the fifth.
“He’s a big bat in the middle of everything,” Hinch said. “When he gets a good pitch to hit and gets a good swing off, it’s must-see TV.”
The third run was supplied by Wenceel Perez. Activated off the injured list before the game and making his season debut, he hit the third pitch he saw and drove it over the right field wall.
“It’s amazing,” said Perez, who missed the first 55 games with lower back inflammation. “I was so excited to play the game again. I thank God because of that. It feels great to be back with the boys and to be able to help the team right away.”
The Tigers are 36-20 on the season, the most wins in baseball, and 20-8 at Comerica Park.
@cmccosky
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