Sports

/

ArcaMax

Tigers pointed in right direction, sweep White Sox to reach .500

Chris McCosky, The Detroit News on

Published in Baseball

CHICAGO — If we learned anything from Ty Madden’s big-league debut Monday night it’s that he’s not backing down from the fight, no matter how sticky things get.

The 24-year-old right-hander, who struggled mightily at times this season at Triple-A Toledo, had traffic in each of his five innings and came through it with just two runs (one of them unearned) on his ledger.

His night was already over, though, when the Detroit Tigers’ hitters got going, rallying to sweep the four-game series against the cellar-dwelling Chicago White Sox, winning the finale 6-3 at Guaranteed Rate Field.

This was their 28th comeback win and for the first time since June 5, the Tigers are a .500 baseball team (66-66). They are 28-20 since the start of July, tied for the best record in the American League over that span.

After being held in check for five innings by White Sox right-handed started Davis Martin, the Tigers went on a left-on-left assault against lefty reliever Jared Shuster in the seventh.

Lefty-swinging Parker Meadows started it, tying the game at 2-2 with a 415-foot solo homer to right on a 3-2 fastball. The ball left his bat with an exit velocity of 108 mph and sliced through a stiff wind that had knocked down several long fly balls earlier in the game.

Meadows is having a month. He ranks fifth in the American League in average (.338) and eighth in OPS (.965) and his three triples are tied for the most.

Lefty-swinging Colt Keith (who had two hits and an RBI) and Jace Jung (two hits and an RBI) followed with singles, setting the table for the birthday boy.

Spencer Torkelson, celebrating his 25th birthday, slammed a middle-middle slider from right-handed reliever Justin Anderson 439 feet to center. The three-run homer was his sixth this season. He also had a single and double in the game.

It was a big night for Jung, too. He had a pair of hits and made two sterling defensive plays at third base in front of his brother, Texas Rangers’ third baseman Josh Jung, who was able to watch Jace play for the first time as a professional.

The Rangers open a series against the White Sox Tuesday.

 

Manager AJ Hinch talked before the game about the relevance of Madden’s gaudy scoreboard numbers at Toledo (6.98 ERA).

“We have to balance a lot of it,” he said. “But eliminating guys based on a bad half a season or bad first month or pitching with the wind blowing out in Omaha, that’s not development. That’s unfair to the player.

“We are excited about his debut. There have been other players throughout my time in the game who did not have glossy baseball card numbers and have come up and done pretty well.”

The White Sox built a 2-1 lead against Madden but left five runners on base.

Leaning heavily on a 94-mph four-seam fastball and slider combination, Madden put himself in harm’s way with three walks, but he only allowed four singles and got big outs in key spots.

A walk and an error by first baseman Torkelson created a mess in the first inning, but he limited the damage to a run on a sacrifice fly by Andrew Vaughn.

Vaughn singled in a run in the third. And again, it was a walk that set the table. But he stranded runners at second and third by punching out lefty Gavin Sheets, getting two ugly swings with his slider.

Madden only had eight misses on 43 swings (five on 14 swings with the slider) and two strikeouts, but only three balls were hit with exit velocities of 100 mph or harder.

“This is a true development story for us,” Hinch said. “Just with the amount of work that’s gone in and the amount of adjustments Ty has been open to.”

____


©2024 www.detroitnews.com. Visit at detroitnews.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

 

Comments

blog comments powered by Disqus