A night after a not-quite-comeback in Arizona on Monday, the Tigers were the ones with the comfortable lead for most of the game on Tuesday before it all went belly-up late in the game, ending up with a 7-5 loss.

Making his season debut for the Tigers was Casey Mize, who had a generally solid 2025 season… except for July, when in four starts batters had a .970 OPS against him. But hey, Porcello-out those starts and he was lookin’ gooooood. The key for Mize is to stay healthy and avoid spending time on the Injured List.

(For those of you who aren’t old-timers around here, to Porcello-out is a verb meaning to consider the entirety of something, minus a very specific, very crappy part in the middle. If you’re curious if this refers to former Tiger “Kid Rick” Porcello, why yes, yes it does.)

Facing Mize for the Diamondbacks was Brandon Pfaadt (pronounced the same as “fought”). The right-hander from Louisville has been reliable for Arizona in his two-plus years in the rotation, although his numbers don’t really jump out at you in any way. In his career he’s consistently had an ERA around 5, struck out around 8 batters per nine innings, and has had a WHIP of about 1.3 — again, not great, but not terrible.

Early on, the Tigers looked pretty sleepy at the plate while the Diamondbacks were getting some very solid contact. Arizona loaded the bases in the bottom of the second with two out, but Mize got Jordan Lawlar to strike out on a really nice splitter, and that was that.

The Tigers got on the board first in the top of the third: Parker Meadows legged-out an infield single, and Jake Rogers hit a double to the wall in centre, scoring Meadows for a 1-0 lead. Colt Keith singled to right to advance Rogers to third, and Kevin McGonigle hit a dribbler to first on which Carlos Santana (yep, still playing!) couldn’t make a play, scoring Rogers for a 2-0 score. Then, with two out, Riley Greene smashed a double to the right-centrefield gap to score both Keith and McGonigle to put the Tigers up 4-0. Kerry Carpenter thought that all looked pretty fun, so he singled to right to cash-in Greene for a 5-0 lead.

Jose Fernandez, who was making his major-league debut, had an infield single under his belt in his first at-bat. He added to that with great prejudice in the fourth with a no-doubter solo home run to left to narrow the lead to 5-1. (More on him later, unfortunately.) That aside, Mize’s splitter continued looking mighty fine, getting six swinging strikeouts on the pitch; he was also throwing it in unusual counts, too.

Pfaadt had kind of a pfunny game: he was dominant for the first eight batters, then gave up hits aplenty… but then buckled right back down and got a whole bunch of Tigers in a row. The Tigers have broken out for some big innings early on, but the middle of the order bats are scuffling early on.

Mize got the handshake after six innings and I will take this final line from him any old day you like: 6 IP, 4 H, 1 R, 2 BB, 9 K. Mize was relieved by Drew Anderson, who had a sensational spring but a mediocre first outing. Well, his seventh inning featured some nasty changeups and a couple of whiffs.

But in the eighth it all fell apart: Anderson started off the inning by serving up a first-pitch double by Old Friend™ James McCann, and a single to left put runners on the corners, and in came Will Vest. He walked Ketel Marte to load the bases, and Corbin Carroll hit a two-run double to make it a 5-3 game. Another walk reloaded the bases — again, with none out — and a grounder to third got an out but allowed another run to score. A soft grounder to second got the second out and put runners on the corners, and Vest was dispatched in favour of Kenley Jansen.

And then Fernandez, who — again, was in his first major-league game — already had a solo home run, smashed a three-run home run to put Arizona up 7-5.

Ouch. It was a meatball, belt high and down the middle, and the kid crushed it.

The Tigers meekly went 1-2-3 in the ninth and that was that.

Final score: Diamondbacks 7, Tigers 5

Saw this and thought you might enjoy this clockwork precision: second baseman moves in, glove drops, pitcher spins and throws, tag applied. That’s how it’s done, kids.

I know it’s early, but that New York Yankees pitching staff has really been getting it done: coming into tonight, they’d only given up three runs in four games.Ya gotta love the ol’ Small Sample Size, though, eh?C.B. Bucknor’s having himself a pretty tough week so far, eh?“Eh?” is a pretty good conversational lubricant, eh?On this day in 1889, the Eiffel Tower opened. What an eyesore!