SAN FRANCISCO – Major League managers dream of their team playing so well they get to respond to a bad game by saying, “It’s one loss and we’re going to lose again. Nobody runs the table from August. … We’re not expected to play perfect. We can’t be held to that bar. But we’re going to keep working.”
So said Tigers manager A.J. Hinch after Friday night’s 5-2 loss to the Giants. A Detroit team that had scored 76 runs in its past eight games and threw shutouts in three of its past four just fell flat.
It happens.
Starter Keider Montero hung a knuckle curve in the first inning that Rafael Devers crushed for a two-out, two-run homer. In the second, Montero walked a pair of hitters to help set up a two-run Jung Hoo Lee single, also with two outs.
The offense, meanwhile, outhit the Giants 11-5 but went 1-for-12 with runners in scoring position and stranded 12 against an opener (JT Brubaker), a starter who had been demoted to the bullpen (Adrian Houser) and three other relievers.
One could pull a positive or two out of the Tigers’ second loss in seven games on their nine-game West Coast swing.
To strand 12, a team has to create opportunities. Spencer Torkelson and Kevin McGonigle did their part with three hits apiece. Equally impressive was Montero’s successful fight to keep the Tigers in the game after putting them in an early 4-2 hole. He finished six innings and held the Giants to two hits over his final four innings, including a Willy Adames home run.
Montero has been Hinch’s Swiss Army knife, moving in and out of the rotation as injuries felled some starters and others returned. Notably, Montero followed 6 1/3 scoreless innings against the Twins on June 11 by pitching the seventh and eighth innings in relief five days later. On June 26, he blanked the Astros over seven innings, only to be asked to throw the 10th and 11th innings at Yankee Stadium on July 1. He was rewarded with a win for that two-inning relief effort.
Now, with Tarik Skubal and Casey Mize traded, Montero is expected to fill one of those spots in the rotation, maybe permanently.
“There’s a lot of love for Keider in this organization from his days in the Minor Leagues all the way through being as strong a mainstay in the rotation as anyone, and he’s earned it,” Hinch said. “I think that opportunity has been a blessing for him, and his performance has certainly held us in a good spot when he’s pitching.”
Hinch noted before the game that many of his young players had not played at Oracle Park and would learn firsthand about its many quirks, including its finicky winds. Montero got a quick lesson on the Devers home run.
“I felt very good today in the first inning,” he said through interpreter Carlos Guillén. “Probably the wind was blowing out, and of course I missed one pitch. When it happened, they made me pay.”
Later in the evening, as the wind shifted and the San Francisco Bay air thickened, Tigers hitters were frustrated with several crushed balls that landed in outfield gloves.
When Devers returned to the plate with the bases loaded and two outs in the second, with a chance to deliver a knockout blow, Montero got the Giants’ cleanup hitter to hit a popup on an elevated fastball to end the inning.
“I just told myself to trust my pitches, go attack the zone and make him get himself out,” Montero said, “and that’s what ended up happening.”