DETROIT — When the Detroit Tigers were in Arizona during the second series of the season, Gleyber Torres invited Kevin McGonigle to the mall. The vet took time to get to know the rookie. And, before McGonigle signed a $150 million contract extension, Torres even treated the new kid to a few big-league purchases. A nice bottle of cologne was among the haul.
“I got to chop up with him, and he hooked me up with some things,” McGonigle said Friday. “Things like that just really mean a lot to me, and it goes a long way.”
On a team with no clear, singular leader among position players, perhaps Torres should get more credit. Although Torres is often a soft-spoken presence, it’s common to see him fronting a conversation when the infield comes to the mound or chatting with another hitter while a reliever warms up. Torres leads through small, subtle actions. But on a club that still has MLB’s eighth-most plate appearances from hitters age 25 or younger, the 29-year-old is an important, experienced presence.
“He took me under his wing, of course, at the beginning of the season and right now,” McGonigle said. “Any questions I have, I go to him, and he always has an answer for me.”
Just as importantly, Torres also happens to be a steady right-handed bat, the type the Tigers desperately missed for the better part of a month. This is a player who has had an on-base percentage of at least .330 in seven of his previous eight MLB seasons.
Torres is recently back from the injured list. And so is Kerry Carpenter, the 28-year-old left-hander who has already made his name with a knack for big hits at the biggest times.
Friday night against the Seattle Mariners, Torres hit leadoff and finished 3-for-4 with two RBIs. Carpenter, who entered with eight career home runs against the Mariners if you count the postseason, added a ninth with his third-inning blast off tough Seattle starter Bryan Woo.
The Tigers — fresh off a 6-22 May that sent their season into a tailspin — beat the first-place Mariners 7-3. After a sweep of the Tampa Bay Rays, Detroit has now won four in a row thanks largely to an awakened offense. The Tigers have scored at least seven runs in all four June victories.
In May, the Tigers had only four games in which they scored more than four runs. They reached seven runs only once.
“It’s something that’s hard to explain, why we were so bad in May,” Carpenter said. “But it’s something that isn’t going to define us this year, and hopefully we can just keep playing well like this.”
Kerry Carpenter’s home run Friday was his second in his last three games. (Lon Horwedel / Imagn Images)
Just as there is no easy explanation for May, it’s difficult to decipher how a team can go from abysmal to fearsome in such quick fashion. Sometimes baseball — particularly Tigers baseball in recent years — is strange like that. But if you want more solid answers, the return of Torres and Carpenter is a good place to start.
They are different hitters, but both are so important to the complexion of the Tigers’ order. Torres is the reliable righty, known for working counts and controlling the strike zone. He played through a hernia at the end of last season and had been on the shelf with an oblique issue since May 2. But now a healthy Torres paired with McGonigle atop the order gives the Tigers a robust one-two punch. Torres is 7-for-13 since getting healthy.
“It feels like we’re always hitting with runners on base, which is awesome,” Carpenter said. “And there’s another thing I feel like gives us confidence. … When you go up there and the first two guys are all over one of the best fastballs in the game, it just gives us confidence when we’re watching from the dugout. Like, ‘All right, we can be all over this guy today.’”
Carpenter is the lefty who entered Friday with a career .863 OPS against right-handed pitching. Although Carpenter struggled at times last season and had only a .299 on-base percentage before he went on the IL with a sprained AC joint in his left shoulder, he is still a game-changing presence at his best, the type of platoon bat who forces tough decisions on opposing managers. He is 5-for-13 with two home runs since his return.
“Maybe I hit for Carp, maybe I don’t,” manager A.J. Hinch said. “The power presence puts Riley (Greene) in an RBI, run-producing environment in the five-hole, which now sends (Spencer Torkelson) down. It just creates a longer lineup. It also creates a more difficult lineup to get through once you roll the lineup again.”
Four good nights does not undo the damage of a dire 4-21 stretch. Realistically, the Tigers will have to chip away at the deficit they have created. Just to finish .500, Detroit would have to go 55-43 from here on out.
But dismal as these times might feel, there are 98 games still to play. Even the trade deadline, which is causing so much uproar, doesn’t come for another 58 days.
More Tigers, including Tarik Skubal, should be back soon.
Just when you think the Tigers are beaten, might they be getting up again?
“I think that’s part of our DNA is that there’s no quit in us and there’s no taking our identity from a certain stretch of games and letting that haunt us for the rest of the year,” Carpenter said. “If we play the next four months of really good baseball, I feel like we’re going to be in it.”