CINCINNATI — Jeimer Candelario, professional hitter.
In the midst of a career offensive season, Candelario broke a scoreless tie in the top of the sixth inning, aggressively pounding a 3-1 change-up from right-hander Luis Castillo into the right field corner, plating two runs and sending the Tigers to a 4-1 win over the Cincinnati Reds Sunday in the rubber match of the three-game interleague series at Great American Ball Park.
Candelario scored the third run, tagging at third and scoring ahead of a strong throw from right fielder Nick Castellanos. Candelario had to race back and tag up on Eric Haase’s liner and he slipped on his first steps toward the plate.
But he alertly slid around catcher Tucker Barnhart and slapped home plate with his hand.
With 24 games still to go, Candelario has posted personal best in hits (135), doubles (major league-leading 39), triples (three), RBIs (56) and total bases (216). He’s got an .806 OPS hitting left-handed and a .794 OPS hitting right-handed.
Since July 3, covering 55 games (before Sunday), he slashed .303/.372/.548 with a .920 OPS. Just consistently productive.
In his game-winning at-bat in the sixth, Castillo fed him four straight change-ups. When the count was 3-1, you wouldn’t have blamed Candelario for gearing up for an upper-90s fastball. But Castillo stayed with the off-speed and Candelario was right on it.
The legs of Akil Baddoo produced the fourth run for the Tigers. He walked to start the eighth and, on a hit-and-run play, scored from first on a single to center by Jonathan Schoop.
But for a little drama in the eighth inning, the Tigers kept the Reds bats quiet. Rookie Casey Mize set that tone with three perfect innings.
But the dreaded governor is back.
From here on out, Mize will have his outings reduced to three innings or less. He doesn’t love it, of course. He didn’t love it earlier this year when he had four restricted-innings starts. But he certainly got the most out of it.
Mize dispatched the nine hitters he faced in just 34 pitches. He threw 27 strikes. He struck out two.
After Jose Urena (2.2 innings) and Michael Fulmer (four straight outs) kept the Reds off the board through seven innings, right-hander Jose Cisnero had the misfortune of facing Max Schrock to start the eighth.
A mere 13 pitches later, Schrock worked a walk. After a one-out single but runners on the corners, manager AJ Hinch brought in lefty Gregory Soto. After the Tigers blew a three-run lead Saturday, he wanted to stop the bleeding immediately.
Which Soto did. After uncorking a wild pitch to allow Schrock to score, Soto struck out Nick Castellanos and Joey Votto with sliders.
Soto pitched a clean ninth to earn a five-out save, his 18th.
The alternative to innings restrictions for Mize is to shut him down for the rest of the year, and that wasn’t ever a preferred option. With the three perfect innings Sunday, Mize has thrown 138.1 innings this season. That’s 110 more than last year. He’s thrown 2,150 pitches, 1,607 more than last year.
By restricting his innings down the stretch, he will get to pitch a full season, at least 30 starts, for the first time. There’s value in that.
“I think it’s gone well, given the circumstances,” manager AJ Hinch said before the game. “But I don’t want to evaluate it until we get through this month. There is still another month to work through. There’s going to be this workload management with Casey and Tarik (Skubal) but let’s get to the finish line and see how good we did.”
The hope is that getting through a full season, staying uninterrupted on a five-day or six-day regimen, will put both in a position pitch a full season without restrictions next year.
“We hope we’re going to have a full offseason to have recovery and strength and conditioning and go into next season with a baseline that’s been reset,” Hinch said. “I don’t know exactly what that means. I’ll be happy when the world is back to normal, to be honest.
“Before we get back to pitchers being normal, lets get the world back functioning normally.”
Fair enough.
