David Price celebrates his complete game win over the White Sox Saturday night. (Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images North America)
During the recent eight-game losing streak of the Detroit Tigers, one thing was standard, the Tigers’ starting pitching was really, really bad.
In seven games prior to the Tigers’ weekend series against the Chicago White Sox, the starting staff had just one quality start, posted a 7.38 earned run average and averaged pitching 5 1/3 innings per start.
In five of the seven losses, the opposing team scored first, putting extra pressure on an offense that was struggling to get hits in key situations and score runs. (The Tigers scored just 19 runs as they were swept in back-to-back series).
Yet things seem to get back on track as the Tigers arrived in Chicago and the starting pitchers started doing their part and waited for the bats to wake up.
It was started by an unlikely player, who ended up setting the tone for the rest of the series.
Making just his second career start and having not pitched in nine days, rookie left-hander Kyle Ryan stepped up and gave the best performance of his life. Ryan surrendered just two runs and three hits, while striking out four and walking one in seven innings. A rare blown save from Joakim Soria cost Ryan the win. His success against Chicago should not be unexpected, Ryan’s only other career start was in Chicago against the White Sox in 2014 in his major league debut, where he pitched six shutout innings.
The Tigers still lost the game in extra innings on the rare “walk-off hit by pitch.”
As the Tigers had fallen back to .500 on the season and with the possibility they might end up in fourth place by the end of Saturday night, David Price stepped up and show why he’s one of the top starting pitchers in the game.
Price pitched his 13th career complete game and second of the season, striking out 11, including a stretch where he struck out seven straight White Sox.
After giving up a scoring double to Alexei Ramirez in the third inning, Price retired 18 of the final 20 hitters he faced, with no member of the White Sox reaching second base after Ramirez’s double. Price’s dominant performance helped snap the Tigers’ longest losing streak in almost 10 years.
Things did not get off to the best start for Alfredo Simon as he took the mound in the series finale.
An error charged to Miguel Cabrera in the first inning on an Adam LaRoche ground ball extended the inning and allowed former Tiger Avisail Garcia to hit a three-run home run (his fourth against his former team). Following a scoring triple by Adam Eaton in the second inning to give the White Sox a 4-1 lead, a different Simon showed up.
Simon retired 19 of the final 22 batters he faced, with just one runner reaching second base after the second inning, For the game, Simon gave up one earned run (four runs total), while striking out seven, giving up five hits in eight innings. Soria closed the door in the ninth and the Tigers won consecutive games for the first time in almost two weeks.
While the offense did finally show up (scoring 16 runs in the three games against the White Sox after scoring 19 runs in the previous seven games), the starting pitching is what kept the team in all three games. Ryan, Price and Simon gave up only four earned runs in 24 combined innings after the starting pitchers had given up 32 earned runs over the previous 39 innings.
Despite a horrendous stretch of baseball, the Tigers are just four games back of first place and with Justin Verlander and Victor Martinez scheduled to return soon, the Tigers might be poised to make a run.
You can follow Joe Martinez on Twitter and view his previous Tigers blogs here. You can e-mail him any questions, comments or concerns to joemartinezoutsidepitchmlb@gmail.com.
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