NEW YORK - A.J. Hinch didn’t get to hide behind his roster on Monday night. Not with the Tigers rolling past the Yankees, 7-3, and not with the victory pushing him into a very exclusive corner of baseball history.
The win at Yankee Stadium made Hinch the 68th manager in MLB history to reach 1,000 career wins. It also made him just the fifth Tigers manager to get there, joining Hughie Jennings (1907-20), Chuck Dressen (1963-66), Ralph Houk (1974-78) and Sparky Anderson (1979-95).
And on a night when Detroit needed a reset after losing five of six, the Tigers delivered exactly the kind of game Hinch has been preaching: put yesterday aside, attack the day in front of you, and keep the line moving with quality at-bats and strikes.
That formula looked pretty good in practice.
Casey Mize set the tone with a dominant, efficient start, and the Tigers’ lineup kept passing the baton long enough to blow the game open early. Detroit finished with 11 hits and took advantage of two New York errors, turning a rough stretch into a complete team win.
Mize was the headliner on the mound. He went seven scoreless innings, allowed just one hit, walked none and struck out 10.
He didn’t allow that hit until the third inning, and he never really let the Yankees breathe. Through four innings, he had thrown only 49 pitches while Detroit was already sitting on a 7-0 lead.
The right-hander only seemed to sharpen as the night went on, too. He struck out the side to end the sixth, then came out after the seventh at 88 pitches. With the Tigers’ bullpen carrying a heavy workload into the series, that kind of outing mattered as much as anything else.
Hinch had practically called his shot before the game.
“Casey Mize, Casey Mize and Casey Mize!”
That’s what he got.
Detroit did plenty of damage long before the final inning. The Tigers ripped off a five-run second inning, pounding out seven hits in the frame and sending Ryan Weather to the showers before he could finish the second. The same lefty had held Detroit to one earned run over six innings in a 4-2 Yankees win at Comerica Park on June 24, but this time the Tigers flipped the script fast.
Seven different Tigers either scored or drove in a run over the first two innings, and the boos started raining down from the Yankee Stadium crowd as the inning got away from New York.
Kevin McGonigle had one of the most complete nights in the box. He drove in two runs, scored once and reached base three times with two hits and a walk.
Dillon Dingler added a double, scored twice and drove in a run after hammering a ball to the wall that turned into an error. Hao-Yu Lee chipped in two hits in four at-bats and drove in two runs.
The Tigers did all that without Riley Greene, who got his first full day off of the season in Game 85.
Detroit’s lead shrank a bit after Mize left. Left-hander Drew Sommers came on and ran into trouble, allowing a walk, double and homer that cut the margin to 7-3. Drew Anderson handled the ninth and finished it cleanly with a strikeout, groundout and lineout.
The Tigers and Yankees are right back at it Tuesday night in a matchup that brings some serious firepower to the mound. Tarik Skubal, the reigning two-time American League Cy Young Award winner, will start for Detroit. Cam Schlittler, the 25-year-old who enters as the AL Cy Young favorite with an 8-4 record and a 1.62 ERA, gets the ball for New York.
“He's the best pitcher in the American League right now,” Skubal said. “To do it at his age, you know, I don't know how old he is, but he's young in terms of service in this game.
Seeing his stuff, it's pretty dynamic and electric. He throws a ton of strikes, a lot of high velocity stuff.
… He's a pretty impressive player at that stage in his career.”
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The fit is obvious enough to understand why the Tigers are paying attention, especially with the Giants signaling that most of their roster could be in play aside from Logan Webb. Any deal for Lee would not come cheaply, though, and Detroit would have to decide how far it is willing to push for a player who could bring more than a short-term boost if the price is right. [Read more 🡒]