They don’t get much prettier than that, at least until the 9th. For a team that I’ve had my complaints about, and I do still think that they tend to play messy baseball, tonight was about as buttoned-up a win as you’re going to get against a pretty good team in Milwaukee. Casey Mize set the tone early with another excellent start. As I said in the video, Mize and his stuff tend to go in waves. People forget that he was an All-Star because of a great first half a year ago, only to fall off. At the same time, I can’t recall a time in his career in which his stuff has looked as good as it looks right now. The confidence is radiating off of him right now. Whatever mechanical issue he and Chris Fetter felt like they had to work on during his spring training has clearly been fixed. His stuff has never been better.
AJ Hinch was doing AJ Hinch things throughout this game, and tonight I mean that as a positive. The Brewers tried to get cute by opening with a left-handed starter. They quickly went to a right-hander, and AJ brought out his lefties accordingly. Tonight was just a good night for the number one overall picks because not only did Casey deal on the mound, but Torkelson had his best game of the season so far at the plate. Three hard-hit balls, including his first home run of the season. The star player we hoped Spencer Torkelson would be probably doesn’t exist, but this is a guy with multiple 30-home run seasons under his belt. He might not be a star, but there’s no reason he shouldn’t be a contributor.
This type of performance was more akin to what we’ve seen from the Tigers after that disastrous Minnesota series. Regardless of what your lineup looks like, you can create an edge for yourself with a great starting pitching performance. That’s what Detroit got tonight, and that’s what they’ve gotten in the games that they’ve won this season. As ugly as yesterday was, this isn’t Hogwarts. You don’t lose points for poor performance. It’s just one loss. They did a great job bouncing back today.
Detroit will look to take the series tomorrow with two-time Cy Young winner Tarik Skubal on the mound, pitching against Brandon Sproat.