Detroit — Jack Flaherty’s best weapon Tuesday night failed him just one time and that one time ended up being the margin of victory for the San Diego Padres, who evened the series with a 2-0 win at Comerica Park.
Baseball.
“All in all, this game is about execution,” Flaherty said. “And Nick did a better job of that tonight. He was really good. So tip the cap to him.”
Padres’ starter Nick Pivetta, as he has been this whole month, was virtually unhittable, limiting the Tigers to two singles with six strikeouts through seven innings.
“He challenges hitters,” manager AJ Hinch said of Pivetta, who improved to 4-1 and lowed his ERA to 1.20. “He’s emotional. He looks like he’s in the fight and he continued to execute. We had a hard time centering the ball. … We were just a little in between being able to catch up to the heater and then he started to land breaking balls later in the outing.”
Flaherty, coming off a labor-intensive outing in Milwaukee last Tuesday, had the Padres’ hitters in the proverbial rocking chair too, rocking them to sleep by mixing spin and heat. And the knuckle-curveball proved to be the most effective sedative.
For six quality innings, he threw a flurry of knuckle-curveballs at the aggressive-swinging Padres. They spun in with an average velocity of 77 mph, had minus-9 inches of vertical break (drop) and 12 inches of horizontal movement.
He threw 29 of them to the right-handed heavy lineup and induced 10 swings-and-misses on 14 swings. He also got 12 called strikes with his four-seamer, a pitch he threw out of the same arm slot and on the same plane as both the curve and slider.
Crafty stuff.
“Both the curve and the slider felt real good tonight,” Flaherty said. “I threw some good ones on both ends. I threw some non-competitive sliders, but the ones in the zone were good. I got some ground balls and swing and miss.”
With two outs in the second inning, though, one of those pesky curveballs got hit.
With a runner on and two outs, Flaherty got two quick strikes on catcher Elias Diaz, then he threw two non-competitive sliders, well out of the zone, to even the count.
He put the 2-2 knuckle-curve at the bottom rail but up enough for Diaz to get the barrel on it. Diaz knocked it just over the left-field wall, 352 feet. A couple of feet and Riley Greene, who leaped at the wall, might have brought it back.
“He put a good swing on it,” Flaherty said. “It definitely could’ve been in a better spot.”
The home run ended up being the only smudge on Flaherty’s card, as he scattered four other hits and struck out nine with no walks.
“I was able to get into a good rhythm with Ding (catcher Dillon Dingler),” Flaherty said. “Got to clean up the second innings right now. I got off to a good start and then just a longer second inning that runs up my pitch count (24 pitches in the second). But I did the little things a lot better — getting ahead, staying ahead and put some quicker at-bats together.”
Pivetta over his last three starts now has allowed one run in 20 innings with 22 strikeouts.
He essentially bullied the Tigers with his 94-mph four-seam fastball. Fifty-seven percent of his pitches were heaters, and why not. Coming in, he’d limited opposing hitters to a .154 average with it.
“He creates some angles and he pitches right at the top rail (of the strike zone),” Hinch said. “Which is really effective when he’s got the breaking ball working.”
Two-out singles by Dillon Dingler and Justyn-Henry Malloy were the only marks against Pivetta. And there was no push back in the eighth and ninth against Padres’ set-up man Jason Adam or closer Robert Suarez, who posted his 10th save.
In what amounted to the highlight of the night for the home team, the game featured a couple of debuts.
Lefty Bailey Horn, who made his debut with the Red Sox last season, struck out two in 1.1 innings in his Tigers’ debut.
“I was excited to get into the competition,” said Horn, who was throwing wicked sweepers of 95-mph four-seamers. “Maybe not quite the nerves (as he had for his big-league debut), just, there was a job to get done. Just go compete, throw strikes and stay on top of guys.”
It was the Major League debut for 26-year-old side-arming righty Chase Lee.
“I’m not sure you could draw it up any more uniquely,” Hinch said. “That was cool for him.”
Just called up before the game, Lee relieved Horn with one on and one out in the eighth. The first batter he faced was perennial All-Star Manny Machado. He got him to hit a soft liner up the middle that Lee snared and the threw to first to double off Fernando Tatis, Jr.
How’s that for making a memory, though it almost became a nightmare in the ninth. Lee loaded the bases with two walks and a hit-batsman. He escaped, though, getting Mason McCoy to chase a 3,000-rpm slider way out of the zone.
“I was glad not to give up the three runs,” he said, smiling. “Glad not to give up any runs and keep the game close.”
Asked if it was everything he dreamed of, Lee shook his head.
“I tried not to dream about it too much,” he said. “Growing up, this was never reality for me. I didn’t have the opportunity to play collegiate baseball (he walked on at Alabama). This has been free baseball for me since then. I never expected this opportunity. Just tried to take it as it came and not put too much expectation or pressure on it.”
The Tigers (14-10) have a chance to win their sixth series of the season Wednesday afternoon (1:10 p.m.). Reese Olson will duel Padres lefty Kyle Hart.
@cmccosky
