![\"Baseball](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/TMD-L-TigersSF2-01.jpg\")
Detroit Tigers’ Gleyber Torres slides safely into home plate against the San Francisco Giants in the fifth inning during a baseball game, Monday, May 26, 2025, in Detroit. (PAUL SANCYA \u2014\u00a0AP Photo)<\/p>\nDETROIT \u2014 It took until the fifth inning against the Giants on Memorial Day, but the fireworks arrived. Except at first, they weren\u2019t run-scoring kind.<\/p>\n
Upset with a called third strike on a ball that was low and out of the zone on a full count, Tigers center fielder Javy Baez voiced his complaints to home plate umpire Phil Cuzzi. Cuzzi responded. Baez retorted. They went back and forth when Cuzzi seemed to finally signal to the Tigers center fielder: Go back to your dugout.<\/p>\n
Baez didn\u2019t oblige, got ejected and the real fracas began. Baez went ballistic, as Gleyber Torres and third base coach Joey Cora swooped in to restrain him \u2014 with great effort \u2014 from further accosting Cuzzi, who was now face-to-face with manager AJ Hinch.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not even about the call, it\u2019s about how he treated me,\u201d Baez said postgame. \u201cI\u2019m not an animal. We can talk, we can argue. And that\u2019s it. If you\u2019re going to tell, \u2018OK, I missed it,\u2019 I would\u2019ve f******, straight up, \u2018OK\u2019 and go out [to center field.] Because we\u2019re competing. And I know he\u2019s not perfect. Don\u2019t treat me like that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Four batters later, after the melee had been averted, Detroit tacked on two key runs on a two-RBI single from Riley Greene.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou need a lot of things to happen to set up Riley\u2019s at bat, and Riley\u2019s gotta keep battling.<\/p>\n
Whether the home plate fracas spurred on the Tigers, discomfited the Giants or just snapped folks awake, the Baez ejection proved to be the inflection point Monday, as the Tigers immediately followed it up with two runs in a 3-1 win over the Giants at Comerica Park.<\/p>\n
That fifth-inning spurt would be enough on a day where Keider Montero made a spot start and went five innings allowing just one hit and no runs before giving way to a solid four innings of work from the Detroit bullpen. And while the day resulted in a win for Detroit, the main topic of conversation for Hinch and in the clubhouse postgame was the ejection.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhere he got heated was after he got ejected and how he was dismissed,\u201d Hinch said.<\/p>\n
And prior to Baez blowing his stack, things had been mundane.<\/p>\n
Through the first few innings, both teams were searching \u2014 and failing to find \u2014 any sort of significant offensive threat.<\/p>\n
The biggest early-game chance came for the Giants, who managed two men on and one out in the top of the first inning. But Montero induced a ground ball that became a fielder\u2019s choice to get the second out, then struck out Willy Adames looking on an outer-half slider.<\/p>\n
After that early threat, Montero didn\u2019t allow a baserunner for the rest of his outing. He finished throwing five innings of one-hit baseball, giving up no runs and striking out three. For Montero and catcher Dillon Dingler, it was just a matter of attacking the strike zone while he was in the game.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy focus was to attack the hitters, attack the hitters all the time, take advantage of the pitch count so I could go that far and keep the score that low,\u201d Montero said, via a translator.<\/p>\n
But the Tigers offense wasn\u2019t clicking early, either.<\/p>\n
Colt Keith reached with two outs in the first on a double but got stranded at second base. And in the second inning, Spencer Torkelson walked before getting stranded at first. The Tigers went down in order in the third inning before finally breaking through against Hayden Birdsong in the fourth inning.<\/p>\n
Keith led off this time, ripping a single up the middle on a liner. After Riley Greene struck out swinging, Torkelson continued his strong offensive season, getting his bat around a 3-1 slider and flinging it into left field for a single. Following a Zach McKinstry lineout, Dingler roped a two-out single into left center field that scored Keith, pushing Detroit ahead, 1-0.<\/p>\n
\u201cI knew he\u2019d probably either go fastball up or curveball down,\u201d Dingler said. \u201cHe hadn\u2019t thrown me a slider all day. So I was kind of anticipating those two. I saw it hop and it stayed up just enough for me to get a little bit of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dingler and Torkelson both advanced to second and third, respectively, on an error at the plate as the ball got to the backstop, but that threat ended before either could be scored.<\/p>\n
And after Detroit had done its scoring in the fourth and fifth innings, San Francisco did manage to claw one back, in the top of the sixth inning, as Hinch went to the bullpen.<\/p>\n
First Tyler Holton came on and got one out before giving up a pair of singles. Then on came Brenan Hanifee, who gave up an RBI-single before generating an inning-ending double play on a ground ball. Beau Brieske then threw a clean seventh inning, Tommy Kahnle came on for the eighth and got three outs without trouble before giving way to Will Vest, who polished off the Giants in the top of the ninth.<\/p>\n
And while it turned into the main event on Monday, Hinch and Baez were generally mum on what, exactly, was said to set of Baez so angrily.<\/p>\n
Detroit Tigers’ Gleyber Torres slides safely into home plate against the San Francisco Giants in the fifth inning during a baseball game, Monday, May 26, 2025, in Detroit. (PAUL SANCYA \u2014\u00a0AP Photo)<\/p>\n
Hinch alluded to a \u201cshort temper\u201d for the umpire today, resulting in the ejection, which Hinch didn\u2019t think was warranted at that point. Baez had been chasing out of the zone earlier in that at bat and one prior, Hinch said, and he wasn\u2019t making any point of arguing the call to the umpire. Hinch also apportioned some blame on himself, saying that had he inserted himself into the moment faster, Baez might not have been ejected.<\/p>\n
He added that Cuzzi said something to Baez and the Tigers hitter said something back, after the ejection had already sent things spiraling.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know what Javy said afterwards, and I know what he said,\u201d Hinch said. \u201cSo it was kind of a little more of an old-school approach behind the plate. As the player was walking off, he felt like he gave him a chance which is what he told me and just set off an argument.\u201d<\/p>\n
And Baez, for his part, made one thing thoroughly clear during his brief remarks to a gaggle of reporters postgame: He wants a fairer shake than how readily he was dismissed on Monday.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s why I got so mad, because you don\u2019t have to throw me out, because I\u2019m asking you \u2014 because I\u2019m saying something about the strike zone,\u201d Baez said. \u201cI was not even close to swinging at that pitch. And it\u2019s not even about the call, it\u2019s about the competition. \u2026 I make my adjustment, I win the battle and then he messed it up.\u201d<\/p>\n
And while the win certainly makes things a bit more palatable for Baez, he was certainly not ready to forgive and forget just a few hours later.<\/p>\n
\u201cGood, obviously good,\u201d Baez said of the rest of the inning and the win. \u201cI was still pissed, and I\u2019m still pissed.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DETROIT \u2014 It took until the fifth inning against the Giants on Memorial Day, but the fireworks arrived.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":56985,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2386],"tags":[5,147,53,2583,4901,4,185,594,3994],"class_list":{"0":"post-56984","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-detroit-tigers","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-detroit","10":"tag-detroit-tigers","11":"tag-detroittigers","12":"tag-michigan","13":"tag-mlb","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-tigers","16":"tag-wayne-county"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/114576418841820695","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56984"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56984\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}