CHICAGO -- After a few quiet moments following the second question of his postgame chat with the media Tuesday night, Tigers manager A.J. Hinch cut the silence by quipping, “Not that exciting, huh?”
There wasn’t a whole lot for his team to take away from its 8-1 loss to the White Sox at Rate Field. Detroit’s plan to go with a bullpen game worked well for five innings, before Chicago pulled away in the sixth. Sox starter Shane Smith and four relievers held the Tigers to their lone run despite seven hits and four walks, spreading those out enough to keep them off the board.
“We didn't have a great day, bottom line,” Hinch said. “... There's been a couple games this trip and a couple games, really, over the last 10 days where we've just had a hard time putting consistent at-bats together. It's part of the grind.”
In Detroit’s best chance at a rally, with the bases loaded and two outs in the top of the eighth, Dillon Dingler lasered a ball 101.1 mph off the bat toward the right-field corner. At least as it took flight, it seemed it could be the big hit the Tigers were searching for all night.
Though Dingler’s line drive didn’t have the distance to go for a grand slam, it could’ve cleared the bases and potentially gotten his team within two runs of the White Sox. He had driven in Detroit’s only run with a double down the left-field line the previous inning, and it looked like he had a chance to add on even more.
Unfortunately for the Tigers, Dingler’s liner held up long enough for Sox right fielder Mike Tauchman to get under it and make the catch. That put an end to Detroit’s late-inning rally, and Chicago scored twice more in the bottom of the frame to put the game away.
It was a bit surprising to see the Tigers struggle to score like they did Tuesday night, considering their offensive outburst in the series opener Monday night. In that 13-1 win, everyone who batted for Detroit reached base at least once -- only one didn’t get a hit -- and all but one starter either drove in or scored a run (four did both).
That’s not how it went Tuesday, and Smith was one main reason for the Tigers’ issues. After tossing 5 1/3 scoreless innings, the White Sox rookie and 2024 Rule 5 Draft first-overall pick owns a 2.45 ERA 12 starts into his Major League career.
“He was doing a good job,” Dingler said. “He had some funky stuff. I think his timing, his tempo was throwing us off a little bit, but he was also, like, shoving the four-seam on the inner part of the plate, which if you can consistently have that four-seam on the inner part of the plate, the spin's always going to work off of that. So I feel like he did a good job with that.”
“It's a different look, you know?” Hinch said. “I mean, it's a young kid with a quick delivery, and it looked like we had a hard time controlling the strike zone. He was quick, and his ball darts a little bit, moves a little bit. We did not hold the zone as well. Some of that's by his doing, some of it’s by ours. But [he’s an] impressive kid. He's having a nice start to the season.”
Still, as Hinch said, this is part of the grind.
In a 162-game season, teams are bound to just have bad days at the office. Detroit is no exception to that, because even the team carrying MLB’s best record can get beaten by the squad sitting in last place in the division.
But the Tigers have done a good job of turning the page this season. They’ve only lost two-plus games in a row five times, one of the biggest reasons they’re 40-22 with a solid lead in the American League Central.
After a tough game Tuesday, it shouldn’t be too difficult to move on to the next one.
“Tomorrow is another day,” Gleyber Torres said. “It's going to be a long season, so a day like today is just part of the process. … We played really good [Monday] night. We scored many runs, and tonight, we didn't do it much. But tomorrow, we have another opportunity.”