DETROIT -- Kerry Carpenter couldn’t have picked a better week to be back from the injured list if he’d tried.
Carpenter loves hitting at Tropicana Field, where he contributed a home run and three RBIs during the Tigers’ three-game series sweep of the Rays to begin the week. And he loves hitting Mariners pitching, which he did again on Friday night.
The Bryan Woo slider that Carpenter hit wasn’t terrible, right at the bottom of the strike zone. Nor was it really crushed, a Statcast-projected 347-foot drive that would’ve been out in just over half of MLB parks. But the way Carpenter has hit the M’s for his career, it seemed destined to clear the fence.
Carpenter got the Mariners again. And with a go-ahead two-run homer in the third inning, the Tigers seemed set to continue their winning ways, adding on for a 7-3 win at Comerica Park.
The Tigers, who hadn’t won consecutive games in a month until this week, have won four in a row, their longest winning streak since mid-April. And they’ve done it against two of the American League’s division leaders. Their turnaround coincides with the return to health for Carpenter, who sprained his left shoulder crashing into the right-field sidewall in Kansas City in May, and Gleyber Torres, whose left oblique strain cost him about four weeks.
“Our guys have been grinding quite a bit,” Detroit manager A.J. Hinch said before the game. “I don’t know how to accurately describe that energy, but there’s a ton of energy when you get Gleyber back and Carp back.”
“It kind of just feels good to put last month behind us even more,” Carpenter said. “I think we’re just showing that this is the team that we can be when we’re playing at our best. And we’re just going to keep riding it.”
Friday marked the first meeting between the Tigers and M’s since their incredible 15-inning battle in Game 5 of the AL Division Series, in which Carpenter not only accounted for both Detroit runs on a homer, but four of its eight hits.
Add together Carpenter’s ALDS performance and his regular-season work, and he’s batting .318 (21-for-66) with nine home runs and 21 RBIs in 17 career games against Seattle pitching. They’ve struck him out 24 times against just three walks, all three in the ALDS.
“It's weird,” Carpenter said, “because their pitching is so good, and they strike me out a lot. But I happen to get them a little bit. I love playing them here, but I love playing them in Seattle, too.”
The only Mariners starter he seemingly hadn’t figured out was Woo, who had struck Carpenter out three times in as many at-bats during their lone previous meeting on Aug. 14, 2024. Woo fanned him again in his first at-bat Friday, using his slider to get ahead and set him up for a 97-mph fastball.
Woo seemingly had Carpenter thinking first-pitch fastball when he came back up in the third inning. Woo put a slider at the bottom of the zone that Carpenter missed. Woo went back to the slider, seemingly wanting to bury it, but put it right on the inside corner.
“He's got one of the best fastballs in baseball, in my opinion,” Carpenter said, “so I was on that and just trying to pick up the slider as good as I could. A guy like that, I wouldn't want to sit offspeed, just because of how good his fastball is. And I think I do better when I'm on the heater, timing anyways. I think he just maybe missed his spot a little bit.”
That’s when Carpenter is at his most dangerous -- timing the fastball, but still able to adjust to offspeed pitches. It’s the goal of his hitting style, and after a slow start to the season before his injury, he’s getting back into that form.
Woo settled down from there before three consecutive one-out singles from the bottom of Detroit’s lineup chased him in the seventh. Torres, who returned from the injured list to go 4-for-9 at Tampa Bay, greeted Eduard Bazardo with a line drive over Victor Robles and off the right-field wall for a two-run double.
Seattle rallied with single runs off Drew Anderson in the seventh inning and Tyler Holton in the eighth, but Spencer Torkelson’s two-run homer off Alex Hoppe with one out in the bottom of the eighth put the game away.