Tigers strike first in rain-delayed opener, beat division-rival Twins, 8-2
Chris McCosky
Detroit — It was never going to be a comfortable night. Not with the rain, the wind and the relative chill. Rarely has 50 degrees felt as cold as it did when the wind gusted Friday night.
But, listening to Tigers’ manager AJ Hinch before the game, there was no way they weren’t going to play this baseball game.
“We need to play,” he said. “We need to get our season underway. We’ve fought weather in just about every series, one way or another. We’re here. We’re prepared. We’ve done our work.”
And, after a 65-minute delay, the Tigers shrugged off the elements and beat the Central Division rival Minnesota Twins, 8-2, in front of a spattering of diehard fans (announced at 12,434) at Comerica Park.
"I was happy with the vibe of our team all day," Hinch said after the game. "I hated the two days off. We had a nice win in Pittsburgh and then we just had to sit there. You don't get a ton of work in and you kind of wonder, are we starting over again? But our guys were into it the whole day.
"Waiting to play, there was no complaining about the weather. No whining about the cold and rain. Just a group that was ready to get on the field."
The Tigers broke open a 2-0 game with three runs in the fifth inning, chasing Twins ace Pablo Lopez from the game.
"That guy is really good," said Tigers' lefty starter Tarik Skubal who was better, throwing five innings of scoreless, two-hit ball. "He's one of my favorite big-league pitchers to watch and I thought our team did a great job of making him work and getting him out of the game.
"Kudos to our hitters."
Riley Greene, batting in the leadoff spot for the first time this season, rapped an opposite-field double to the gap in left-center scoring Jake Rogers from first. Lopez, who walked Rogers to start the inning, walked Mark Canha and then gave up a broken-bat RBI single to Spencer Torkelson.
That ended Lopez’s night. Against lefty reliever Kody Funderburk, Hinch had right-handed hitting Matt Vierling pinch-hit for lefty swinging Kerry Carpenter, even though he had singled in his first two at-bats. Vierling validated the move, though, blooping an RBI single in shallow right field.
Vierling knocked in the Tigers' eighth run with an RBI double to left-center in the eighth inning, scoring rookie Wenceel Perez from first base. Perez had walked, the first time he'd been on base in his young big-league career.
Canha started the scoring with a solo homer in the first inning.
"It's always nice to get a lead," said Canha, who also added an RBI single in the sixth when the Tigers tacked on two more runs. "You feel like you can play downhill a little bit. It's always good to get a run early."
The homer was Canha's third of the season and the seventh in his career at Comerica Park in just 70 plate appearances. He added had an RBI single in the sixth as the Tigers tacked on two more runs.
"Going into the game, I thought it was going to be a hard night to hit just because of the cold and those two pitchers and sitting around all day," Hinch said. "We did nothing outside before the game and Mark gave us a nice little jolt. He just takes whatever is given. When he has a chance to drive the ball, he does. When he has a chance to get the backside base hit, he does. And he drew a walk today.
"His presence is calming. You know you're going to get a good at-bat. You know generally you are going to get a ball in play. And he doesn't ride the wave of the momentum or the ups and downs."
Torkelson ended up with two singles and two RBI. One had an exit velo of 84 mph, the other, 30.7 mph. For all the hard contact he’s had go unrewarded the past couple of years, he will take it.
The Twins, meanwhile, had their hands full with Skubal. He breezed through the first eight hitters with a fastball that, despite the damp chill, was sitting at 96-97 mph and maxing out at 99.6 mph.
The at-bats started getting longer, though. And as the outing went on, Skubal’s fastball velocity started to dip down to 94-95 mph.
"I didn't have the best feel for my fastball today," Skubal said. "Just getting a grip and letting it rip was tough when it's so windy. It's not so much cold. It's just the wind dries everything out and it makes it tougher to grip the ball."
He threw a couple upper-90s heaters precariously close to Twins' hitters' heads and decided to throttle down.
"I just felt like I couldn't let it go as much," he said. "Because I didn't feel like I knew where it was going as much as I usually do."
The third inning got extended by an infield single and a walk. He needed 21 pitches to get through it, which matched his total in the first two innings combined.
He needed 31 pitches to get through the fourth as another walk and infield hit extended the inning. Ten of those pitchers were to Byron Buxton, who fouled off four straight two-strike pitches before Skubal froze him with a changeup for called strike three.
Skubal pitched a clean fifth with a pair of strikeouts, but he was at 93 pitches. His night was over. He allowed just the two infield hits and the two walks.
The changeup was his sanctuary. He threw 28 of them and got four whiffs on 13 swings and 10 called strikes.
"Tarik was great," Hinch said. "Everything he did was vintage Tarik. He dominated the strike zone. His misses were near misses if they were misses at all. He was coming at guys and that cost him some foul balls and a couple of long innings. But he brought intensity and he brought extreme competitiveness and he came right at them.
"His changeup was plus, plus, plus -- however many plusses you want to say -- and his relentlessness was really needed."
In all, the Twins put 12 balls in play against him with a mild average exit velocity of 79 mph.
Alex Faedo pitched two scoreless and hitless innings. Andrew Chafin struck out three and allowed a hit in the eighth. The Twins pushed across two runs against Will Vest in the ninth.
The Twins, who lost shortstop Carlos Correa to an oblique strain in the third inning, ended up using former Tiger Willi Castro to pitch the final out of the eighth inning. He got Colt Keith to ground out to second.
With the first game of this series already postponed and rescheduled as part of a doubleheader Saturday, you get why Hinch was so adamant about getting the game in Friday. Especially with these two teams set to play six more games in the next nine days and then not again until the end of July.
“It’s always easy to kick it down the road,” he said. “We should get into our season and start playing these games.”
The Twins don’t come back to Detroit until July 26 when the Tigers will be in the midst of a run of 12 games out of the All-Star break.
“We don’t want doubleheaders in June-July,” Hinch said. “It sounds good in April but check back in June-July and I’m going to say, ‘Man, I wish we would’ve waited out a couple more hours in April.’”
Especially given how this one turned out.
@cmccosky