DETROIT -- The Tigers entered Saturday with a taxed pitching staff and an injury-depleted roster, the latter of which only worsened with the third-inning exit of Gleyber Torres. With a bullpen game looming Sunday night, manager A.J. Hinch needed innings from his starter and early runs from his lineup.
He got exactly what he needed from a pitcher-catcher battery that has been working together since High-A West Michigan.
Dillon Dingler and Keider Montero climbed the Tigers farm system together -- not always in tandem -- but frequently working together from West Michigan to Double-A Erie to Triple-A Toledo. They know and complement each other well. On Saturday, they provided a one-two combination: Dingler powered a three-run home run to give the Tigers the early lead they needed to relax, then Montero provided 6 2/3 innings of one-run ball to not only carry the lead but rest the bullpen.
“I know our bullpen has been taxed recently,” Montero said through translation from Tigers director of Spanish communications Carlos Guillen. “I knew I had to do as much as I could to go as deep in the game as I could.”
In a stretch where something wrong always seems to be lurking around the corner for the Tigers, Saturday’s 5-1 win over the Rangers was the rare game where just about everything they needed went right.
“That was a really good game,” Hinch said, “in all aspects.”
He hasn’t been able to say that for a while.
The Tigers had lost five of their previous seven games while also losing a handful of players to the injured list, most recently reliever Will Vest, starter Casey Mize and shortstop Javier Báez. They lost Torres after three innings on Saturday due to left side tightness, but by then they had the runs they needed thanks to an early outburst against Rangers starter Kumar Rocker.
Rocker was a strike away from leaving the Tigers rueing another missed scoring opportunity, having been spared a run when right fielder Ezequiel Duran threw out Torres at the plate on a Riley Greene single. Rocker put Dingler in a 1-2 hole with sinkers down and in that he could only foul off. Rocker had seemingly set him up for the slider in the same spot, but Dingler was waiting for it.
“Educated guess,” Dingler said wryly. “He loves the slider. It’s a good pitch. He just didn’t execute it. I was looking for it.”
The resulting 443-foot drive to left field, as projected by Statcast, is exactly why Hinch continued to stick with Dingler in the middle of the order, even after Spencer Torkelson’s home run streak last week. Dingler’s sixth homer tied Kerry Carpenter for the team lead, and provided Detroit its first home run of any sort since Wednesday in Atlanta.
“Give me a 3-0 lead in the first, and I will smile every time,” Hinch said. “Especially with two outs, I think that’s the big blow: You go from them thinking they’re getting out of it, or Rocker sort of dancing around the traffic that he had, to going three down. That’s a big change of direction of the game.
“We want to get a mistake and not miss it. That’s exactly what it looks like.”
Rocker never recovered, though the Tigers used well-placed singles and stolen bases to tack on two more runs in the second inning on back-to-back two-out RBI singles from Kevin McGonigle and Torres.
Rocker, who tossed 6 1/3 scoreless innings of one-hit ball against the Tigers last July in Arlington, lasted just two innings on Saturday, allowing five runs on six hits in 43 pitches. By comparison, Montero cruised on a night when the Tigers needed innings.
Montero retired 11 of Texas’ first 13 batters, allowing just a pair of third-inning walks, until Jake Burger sent a first-pitch fastball deep to left for a fourth-inning homer. Montero and Dingler made the adjustment and used the Rangers’ aggressive approach against them.
The Rangers whiffed just six times on 41 swings against Montero, and tallied nine hard-hit balls by Statcast’s definition. But 11 of Montero’s 20 outs came in three pitches or less, including a seven-pitch opening inning and a nine-pitch sixth that included a Josh Jung single.
“I knew they were aggressive, so I did my best to help them get themselves out, knowing I can take advantage of this ballpark,” Montero said. “The ball doesn’t fly as much as in other ballparks.”
Montero might not have many outings like this, at least in hard-hit outs. But he couldn’t have picked a better time for this one.