Kerry Carpenter Finally Weds His Long Time Girlfriend As Team Mates Surprised Him With When the Astros faced Mize a third time, they ultimately responded. After receiving a first pitch slider, Kyle Tucker hit it hard.
Same problems, new outfits. Even though the Tigers were wearing their new City Connect uniforms for the first time and looked stunning, ridiculous, or both, they still played a distinctive kind of baseball. They lost the opening game of three on Friday night despite having carved out an early lead, gotten out to a strong start to retain it, and done nothing more offensively while the bullpen spilled oil.
On paper, this seemed like a very good pitching duel, and that’s exactly how it transpired. Framber Valdez was a tough lefty that Casey Mize faced, and they dominated this one for the majority of the first six innings.
Mize got himself right into a jam, walking the first two hitters of the game, but worked through it without a run coming across. Alex Bregman led off the second with a double, but Mize retired the next three to send them back to the drawing board and he had them in check in the third, fourth, and fifth innings, keeping the ball on the ground quite a bit, though he’s still getting very few whiffs out there, albeit against a good hitting team in the Astros.
In the third, the lefty killers in the Tigers order got something started as Jake Rogers and Andy Ibáñez singled to start the inning. Matt Vierling doubled down the left field line into the corner, scoring both base runners to make it 2-0. But even with no outs, the Tigers couldn’t sustain a rally. Nor would they build on their slim lead.
Valdez really slammed the door on them the rest of the way. It was pretty classic Valdez as he nailed the edges and kept the ball down to get ahead early in counts and collect some quick ground balls, and forcing the Tigers into defend mode despite a relative lack of whiffs. The Tigers did a lot of looking for a perfect pitch in the zone to swing at, and those pitches rarely arrive when Framber Valdez is in form.
