HOUSTON – After a miserable weekend in Cleveland, the Tigers decided to have some fun in Houston town Monday.
It started with a warm welcome back tribute to Tigers manager AJ Hinch – complete with a video montage and a standing ovation from the crowd of 15,779 at Minute Maid Park – and transitioned smoothly into a mostly comfortable 6-2 victory over the American League West leading Astros.
Detroit came in as the lowest scoring team in the American League, but you could’ve fooled Astros starter and former Cy Young winner Zack Greinke. The Tigers worked three walks in the first two innings, got his pitch count up over 50 and then started hitting bombs.
Grayson Greiner hit a two-run shot to right field in the second. Then Renato Nunez, who had doubled ahead of Greiner’s homer, and Rule 5 rookie Akil Baddoo hit back-to-back homers in the third.
Nunez, who was just activated off the taxi squad on Sunday, lined one off the foul pole in left. Baddoo hit the very next pitch, a center-cut, 88-mph four-seamer, 450 feet into the Budweiser party zone in dead center.
The ball left his bat with an exit velocity of 109 mph. It was his third homer of the season and the seventh longest home run by a rookie since the start of 2020 and the longest by a Tigers’ rookie in the Statcast era (since 2015).
The Tigers scored two more runs and chased Greinke in the fifth. Baddoo, who also later doubled to the base of the center field wall, plated one with a sacrifice fly and Greiner singled in another.
Against Greinke, Nunez, Baddoo and Greiner – the seven, eight and nine hitters – were combined 5 for 8 with three homers and five RBIs. The last time the bottom three hitters in a Tigers batting order homered was back in 2006 when Marcus Thames, Chris Shelton and Brandon Inge did it in Chicago against the White Sox.
Greinke had a moment, though, against Nunez in the fifth, where he floated in a 51.5 mph curveball. It seemed to surprise Martin Maldonado, his catcher, too. Because he immediately walked out to the mound as if he wondered if Greinke was hurt.
The six runs in five innings Monday matched the Tigers’ run total in the three-game series in Cleveland.
Not to be overshadowed, rookie Casey Mize pitched the best game of his young career. He went a career-long seven shutout innings, on an efficient 89 pitches, and allowed four hits, three of them singles.
The last Tigers rookie pitcher to throw at least seven shutout innings? Michael Fulmer on Aug. 14, 2016 against Texas when he threw a complete game shutout.
Mize's splitter was as effective as it’s ever been at the big-league level. He threw 26 of them and the Astros hitters were beating it into the ground. Mize got 11 ground-ball outs, five with the splitter.
The average exit velocity on those five splitters the Astros put in play was a meek 81.6 mph.
The splitter got him out of trouble in the first and second innings. With two on in the first, he’d gotten ahead of Carlos Correa with two splitters, then he froze him with a 97-mph elevated fastball.
In the second, with runners at second and third and one out, he struck out Martin Maldonado with splitter then got Jose Altuve to ground out with another.
Mize’s composure was tested again in the fourth inning. After a one-out single by Yuli Gurriel, Kyle Tucker hit a hard ground ball (101 mph off the bat) that ate up second baseman Schoop. Instead of an inning-ending double-play, he was facing Miles Straw with runners at first and second.
He threw first-pitch slider Miles Straw and got his double-play, 4-6-3.
The Astros came to life a bit after Mize left.
Michael Brantley homered off reliever Buck Farmer in the eighth. Correa walloped a hanging slider from Jose Cisnero in the ninth, sending it 415 feet on to the railroad tracks that run above the left field wall.
Hinch had to summon lefty Gregory Soto to get the final two outs.
The win stops a four-game losing streak for the Tigers.
