Anaheim, Calif. — There are regrettable moves and then there was the button Angels manager Ron Washington pushed in the eighth inning Thursday night.
Up 4-2, he summoned lefty reliever Reid Detmers to face lefty-swinging Riley Greene with a runner at first. Never mind that the next two hitters after Greene were righties Andy Ibáñez and Spencer Torkelson, followed by lefty Zach McKinstry, who is hitting over .400 against left-handed pitching.
Washington, it seemed, was not going to let lefty-slugger Kerry Carpenter, who did not start the game, get a swing in the eighth inning. He picked the wrong poison.
When the dust settled, the Tigers sent nine hitters to the plate and scored five runs to speed off with a 10-4 win in the first of four at Angels Stadium. It was the woebegone Angels’ sixth straight loss.
“I don’t know (if Carpenter’s presence influenced the decision),” Tigers’ manager AJ Hinch said. “But he’s a huge threat to come off the bench and we are willing to hit for anybody. It’s nice to have guys who can come off the bench and impact the game and sometimes it works out where they get left on the bench and the guys in the game go and do it.”
Catcher Dillon Dingler had the killing blow in the inning, blasting a 409-foot three-run homer off a hanging slider from Detmer.
“I think I got a little protection with Kerry sitting there,” Dingler said. “I felt like that’s why they didn’t bring in the righty. And I was able to get a good pitch. Feels good.”
The Tigers had drawn even before Dingler’s swat, foiling Washington’s strategy. Greene drew a walk and Ibáñez laced an RBI single to left. Both runners advanced 90-feet when centerfielder Jo Adell boxed the ball.
Detmers got Torkelson to ground out, but McKinstry punched a single through the drawn-in infield to score Greene – extending his career-best hitting streak to 11 — before Dingler emptied the bases with his fourth homer.
BOX SCORE: Tigers 10, Angels 4
“That’s part of the pressure we can put on you,” Hinch said. “We have a lot of options and we’re going to do it (pinch hit) for everybody.”
The Tigers kept on scoring in the ninth. Ibanez singled home another run and then Torkelson unloaded his ninth home run, an opposite-field blast to right-center.
“Our team is contagious with the hitting, for sure,” Dingler said. “There’s been some games where we got some big knocks and that’s how we won. But we have a good lineup and we can get it rolling. We’ve got a good team and we showed it.”
The Tigers are the first American League team to get to 20 wins.
“The boys gave me a real treat today,” said Tigers’ starter Casey Mize, who celebrated his 28th birthday soldiering through seven innings, allowing the four runs to earn his fifth win. “It was not my best day. I just tried to log some innings and eat some outs. I was happy to go seven innings and the boys rewarded me for it with that big top of the eighth.
“They played great defense behind me, scored seven runs while I was in the game — it was just a really good team win and one that I am appreciative of.”
Even though it was Mize’s birthday, for a while there it sure seemed like Javier Báez was having all the fun.
“Javy amazes me,” Mize said, speaking for all his teammates and every fan who watched the game.
Báez slugged a 410-foot home run in his first at-bat off lefty Yusei Kikuchi. It was his second homer of the season, second in two days. He hit another ball to the wall in center in the fourth inning.
He also robbed a homer. The one-time Gold Glove shortstop is playing center field these days. In the fifth inning, he tracked a majestic blast by Jorge Soler 391 feet to the wall in center, timed his jump expertly and snared the ball at the top of the wall.
“Just a freak athlete doing his thing,” Mize said. “Timed it up perfectly, like he’s been out there 10 years doing it. It looks so effortless. He’s just a great player.”
Dingler had a clear view of the play from behind the plate.
“I saw him start to drift and then he went up and I was like, ‘Oh my god,'” Dingler said. “Wherever you put Javy, he is going to make those kinds of plays. He’s incredible. He’s the best athlete on our team, I don’t care what Hurter has to say about it.”
Dingler was jokingly referring a poll taken by the Tigers’ social media team where pitcher Brant Hurter was voted the team’s most athletic player.
“It was another first for Javy,” Hinch said. “He’s never robbed a homer before. Just an amazing catch, great athleticism, great timing, great feel for the wall — all those things you could play outfield for a really long time and never quite get and he has it naturally. It was pretty awesome to see.
“And he continues to impact wins.”
Báez and Gleyber Torres both hit monster homers in the second inning to put the Tigers up 2-1. Torres’ flew 416 feet to left.
Torres, who was on base four times with two singles, the homer and a walk, was lifted in the eighth with cramping in his hamstring. Hinch said he will give Torres Friday off but he wasn’t sent for tests.
Mize was having trouble keeping baseballs in the yard himself. In the second inning, he got ahead of Logan O’Hoppe 0-2 and then sprayed three balls.
The 3-2 pitch was a mistake splitter over the plate and the ball ended up in the rocks beyond the center field wall.
He gave the 2-1 lead back in the third, center-cutting a 95-mph sinker to Soler with a man on and two outs. That one left the yard. By a lot.
“Just had to get the fastball out of the middle of the plate,” Mize said. “I didn’t do the best job of getting it in on the righties, leaving too many pitches middle. As the game went on, I did a better job. But guys are going to do damage in the middle of the zone and I was just too much there.”
The fourth inning very nearly ended Mize’s night. He allowed three singles and a walk but got out of it with only one run scoring. Two Angels runners were thrown out on the bases and the Tigers just missed turning a 5-4-3 triple-play on Adell.
But Mize settled in after that, allowing only a walk in his final three, finishing seven innings in 96 pitches and keeping the Tigers within striking distance, down 4-2.
“That was a big spot,” Hinch said of Mize getting through the seventh. “It’s a birthday win for him, which is nice and it was key that he figured a few things out and started to execute better as the game went on. You give up a couple of home runs and you struggle early, it’s real easy to hang your head and stop competing.
“Casey didn’t. He was nasty for the rest of the game and got rewarded with a win.”
Right-hander Tommy Kahnle, who got the last four outs in Houston on Wednesday, pitched a clean eighth and righty Tyler Owens, just called up from Triple-A Toledo, made his big-league debut, getting the final three outs.
“I wouldn’t say it felt magical or anything,” Mize said when asked if this win reminded him of some of the comeback wins late last season. “We stay in it. It’s a two-run game and I keep believing in our at-bats. It didn’t feel like we got lucky or anything today. We played a good baseball game.
“We played really good defense and if you hang around long enough you might break through and that’s what we did.”