West Sacramento, Calif. – Maybe it’s best to edit this entire series out of the Tigers’ year-end review. Just delete the footage. Flush the memory. Forget any of this ever happened.
If it were only that simple.
They ran into a young, enthusiastic and talented Athletics team playing its best baseball of the season and countered with three subpar performances rife with physical and mental misplays.
Predictably, the Tigers were swept out of Sacramento, losing the finale to the Athletics Wednesday, 7-0 at Sutter Health Park.
“We had a really (crappy) series,” manager AJ Hinch said. “We didn’t play well. We got beat in all facets…When you get outplayed on offense, defense, pitching, across the board, it’s painful to watch and it’s painful to experience as a team.
“But we know we’re going to be better. We’re going to head to Kansas City and be better.”
It’s four straight losses overall and the Tigers’ lead over the Royals in the Central Division is down to 8.5, with a three-game series set this weekend at Kauffman Stadium.
“Definitely not a lot of good in this series,” Spencer Torkelson said. “But what are you going to do. It’s three games and they played their butts off, too. Tip your cap a little bit. But reset, flush as fast as possible and then foot back on the pedal.”
The first two games of the series were close. They were never in contention Wednesday.
Casey Mize, for the second straight start, struggled to lock in his command early. He needed 31 pitches to get through the first and did well to limit the damage to a run.
But with one out in the second, he gave up an infield single to No. 8 hitter Brett Harris and light-hitting Zack Gelof ambushed a first-pitch slider and launching it over the wall in left center.
“We knew he was swinging and sometimes when you know a guy is hunting a heater early, you try to throw the short slider that looks like a heater to get it off the barrel,” Mize said. “I just threw it up and middle.”
Gelof came into the game hitting .063 and had just been recalled from Triple-A on Monday. The homer was his first hit of the series.
He got his second hit of the series in the eighth, a two-run, two-out double off lefty reliever Drew Sommers, raising his RBI total on the year from one to five.
That kind of series.
Mize ended up going 3.1 innings and was charged with five runs on seven hits. His ERA over his last seven starts has swelled from 3.15 to 3.95.
“Just way too many mistakes over the heart of the plate,” Mize said. “Too many three-ball counts. A frustrating one, again. Too many hits, too much traffic led to too many runs and it put us in a bad hole to start the game.”
And, insult to injury, Mize made a throwing error in the fourth inning. It was first error since 2021 and just the second of his career.
“He’s had a hard time controlling contact,” Hinch said. “He got a few more swings and misses tonight (14) but he really had to lean on some things early. He didn’t look like he was comfortable from the get-go and they tacked on some runs on him early and it was a hole we didn’t dig out of.”
Blame Cuban-born rookie Luis Morales for that. He was impressive.
In just his fourth big-league start, he stymied the Tigers on two hits over seven innings, bullying hitters with an electric four-seam fastball (97 to 99 mph) early and then cleverly mixing sweepers, sliders and changeups the second and third time through the order.
“He’s got a really good fastball and you also have to respect that slider that moves about four feet,” said Torkelson, whose triple off the wall in the second inning was one of the few good swings the Tigers had against him. “When you have to cover 98 (mph) and respect that slider — tough game.”
Morales finished with seven strikeouts.
“He’s got a good arm,” Hinch said. “Good young kid, great stuff. We hit a couple of balls hard with nothing to show but other than that, we couldn’t get any pressure on him.”
Torkelson ended up stranded at third when second baseman Gelof made a leaping stab of Zach McKinstry’s two-out liner.
First baseman Nick Kurtz took extra bases away from Kerry Carpenter in the first inning with a diving play on a ball ripped down the line. Centerfielder Lawrence Butler made a long running catch on a drive to the wall by Riley Greene in the fourth.
Butler took a hit away from McKinstry with a diving catch in the seventh.
Only once, though, did the Tigers have multiple base runners in an inning.
On the bright side, veteran right-hander Rafael Montero continues to state his case for a bigger role out of the bullpen. He quieted the pesky Athletics bats allowing only a walk in 2.2 innings with four strikeouts.
The Athletics, who are 21-10 since July 24, have actually had the Tigers’ number for a while now. They haven’t lost a series to them since 2016, posting a 40-13 record since the start of 2017.
“It’s Major League Baseball,” Torkelson said. “They’ve got really good players, regardless of what their record says. Anyone can beat anyone on any day. No one can be taken lightly. They are better than their record shows.”
The Tigers opted to spend Wednesday night in Sacramento and fly to Kansas City on the off day Thursday. In retrospect, after these three games, the decision seems punitive.
“I don’t want to play another game here, I can tell you that,” Hinch said. “I need to get out of Sacramento.”
@cmccosky