DETROIT — You knew going in the margins would be thin for the Tigers against Cleveland starter Shane Bieber, the reigning American League Cy Young winner.
Turned out they were paper thin.
Bieber took a no-hitter into the seventh inning Thursday and bullied Tigers' hitters for seven innings in a 5-2 win for Cleveland, which took three out of four at Comerica Park.
Jonathan Schoop led off the seventh with a solo home run to break up the no-hitter. He tattooed a slider from Bieber, the ball leaving his bat with an exit velocity of 115 mph. It was one of just two balls the Tigers hit out of the infield against him.
Bieber finished with 12 strikeouts, the Tigers whiffing on 51% of their swings against him.
Tigers manager AJ Hinch loaded his lineup with seven left-handed hitters, which Bieber trumped by unleashing a lethal dose of knuckle-curveballs. It’s usually his second most-used pitch behind his fastball, but it was his primary pitch against the Tigers.
He threw 45 of them, producing a career-high 13 swings and misses and nine called strikes. The collateral impact of that pitch, the Tigers’ hitters were late to or frozen by his fastball. Bieber had nine swings and misses and seven called strikes with his four-seamer.
Bieber essentially used the same sequence against the Tigers lefties the entire game with no visible adjustment or pushback. In the sixth, for example, he struck out both Willi Castro and Jeimer Candelario by setting them up with curveballs and freezing them with a fastball.
With all the strikeouts, plus four walks, his pitch count was 103 after seven innings and manager Terry Francona let his bullpen finish the job.
For five innings, Tigers starter Matthew Boyd did his level best to keep the Tigers within a loud swing of Cleveland. He gave up a run on successive hits in the first and just one other single through five innings, keeping it a 1-0 game.
But it was a grind and it felt like he was treading water. Boyd’s command wasn’t as precise as it has been this season. He'd gone to seven three-ball counts and in the fifth walked the eighth and ninth hitters in the Cleveland order after getting two strikes on both. His pitch count was at 91 going into the sixth inning.
With left-handed hitting Eddie Rosario due up third in the sixth, Hinch probably hoped Boyd could get to that point before going to the bullpen. He got there, but not how Hinch might’ve hoped.
Jose Ramirez, working the eighth three-ball count against Boyd, doubled and scored on a single by Harold Ramirez. Rosario then blew up the entire outing for Boyd, blasting a 2-0 slider 406 feet into the seats in right field.
The Tigers got a run in the ninth on a two-out triple by Victor Reyes.
