September 11 – The Detroit Tigers started the week with a bang at home.
Parker Meadows hit a home run to take the lead in the bottom of the first quarter and the Tigers beat the Colorado Rockies 11-0 on Tuesday.
Meadows has 12 points in the past five games. The Tigers (74-71) have won their past three games.
Right-hander Casey Mize will start for Detroit in Game 2 of the series. Yonezawa (2-6, 4.30 ERA) has made two starts in his return after a two-month absence because of a strained left hamstring.
Both outings resulted in no decisions. He gave up three earned runs in six innings against the Boston Red Sox on Aug. 30, then gave up three earned runs in 5 1/3 innings against the San Diego Padres on Thursday.
The runs Mize gave up for the Padres came on home runs — Jurickson Profar’s single and Xander Bogaerts’ two-run blast.
“I made a mistake with Profar; it should have been down and away, but it was up and in,” Mize said. “With Bogaerts, one of the things we talked about was not to leave spin in the zone. So that’s definitely what I did.”
Mize settled down after that, and the Tigers won 4–3 on Meadows’s ninth-inning grand slam.
“In that moment (after the home run), I just reset and told myself to hang in there as long as I could,” he said. “It’s nice to be able to do that. Save a little bit of an outing. But I don’t want to be in that position.”
Mize will be making his 19th start of the season and facing the Rockies for the first time in his career.
Lefty Austin Gomber (5-10, 4.50 ERA) was scheduled to start for Colorado (54-91). Gomber has turned in quality performances in four of his last five starts.
However, Gomber was placed on the paternity test list on Tuesday and will miss the series.
Tanner Gordon has been recalled from 3A Albuquerque and is expected to start in Gumber’s place.
Gordon (0-5, 7.55 ERA) is a rookie right-hander who has made seven major league starts. His most recent appearance for the Rockies was on Aug. 21 against Washington, when he allowed five runs on eight hits in four innings.
His best performance came on August 3, when he held San Diego to one run and one hit over six innings.
The Rockies will hope for a better start than the one Bradley Blalock gave them on Tuesday. He gave up five runs in the first two innings, partly due to control problems. By comparison, the Tigers’ Kedar Montero threw a shutout without a base hit.
“Bradley is the opposite of Montero,” Rockies manager Bud Black said. “He didn’t walk a single batter in nine innings, and Bradley walked five times in four innings and threw more than 80 pitches. You have to get the ball in the strike zone.”
The Rockies’ offense isn’t much better. Colorado State went blank for the fifth time since the All-Star break. The offense was limited to three singles on Tuesday.
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