Hinch, Tigers beat Astros 6-2 in ex-manager’s return to Houston.
Worst outing while in Houston comes against one of majors’ weakest lineups
The crowd serenaded him with praise and the team played a pregame tribute video, but A.J. Hinch could not escape his one haunting memory inside this place. Five-hundred and thirty days ago, from the first-base dugout at Minute Maid Park, Hinch made the most fateful walk in Astros history. Zack Greinke gave him the baseball and brutality followed. The Astros allowed a World Series to escape their grasp.
Hinch’s Game 7 decision will stir debate for however long the franchise exists. Baseball
always seems to bring its participants full circle. Scandal uprooted Hinch’s life and legacy after that October night. He returned to manage a different team in a different era at Minute Maid Park on Monday. Greinke got the baseball, a bit of cruel irony in a sport that loves to produce it.
Greinke bemoaned Hinch’s decision last year. He claimed the organization showed no confidence in his ability, but acknowledged the need to “pitch good” to go deeper into games. The Astros’ new regime is affording him that leeway. On a miserable Monday night, Greinke gave it away.
Greinke got shelled by one of baseball’s most brutal offenses. The Tigers awoke on Monday morning hitting .197. Only two major league lineups had a worse batting average. Just two got on base at a lower rate, too. Miguel Cabrera’s strained left bicep left them without one of the greatest righthanded hitters of this generation. They appeared not to miss him during a 6-2 drubbing in Hinch’s ballyhooed return to Houston.
“Just (a) bad thought process going into the game,” Greinke said. “I was expecting them to swing a lot and wasn’t aggressive in the zone and was walking guys and pitching bad partially because of that.”
Greinke allowed a baserunner in every inning he worked. He harnessed no command and it created chaos. Twenty-seven Tigers faced him. Ten struck hits and three more reached on walks. Greinke required 52 pitches to procure his first six outs. Pitching coach Brent Strom sauntered to the mound for a visit during the second inning. It did not abate the avalanche.
Greinke threw only 56 of his 90 pitches for strikes. His slider remained problematic. The Tigers did not chase his changeup, perhaps because he commanded it so poorly. Of Greinke’s 34 four-seam fastballs, just nine were called strikes. Four others elicited a swing and miss.
“I don’t want to ever throw it again after today,” Greinke said of his slider, which the Tigers struck for three hits. “It was bad. Their team’s not a good slider hitting team … I threw it where I wanted to, but they hit it good still. It’s been a big negative to the season — spring training and the season.”
The Tigers tattooed Greinke like few other teams during his Astros tenure. He made his 25th regularseason start with the club on Monday. Detroit delivered 10 hits, matching the most Greinke allowed as an Astro. The six earned runs it scored are more than any in Greinke’s regular-season Astros career. He yielded six in Game 3 of the 2019 American League Division Series, too.
Monday carried no playoff implications. The currently constructed Tigers are dreadful, a club nearing contention but still seasoning some core prospects in the minor leagues. They hired Hinch to guide them to the next step of their rebuild, akin to his task with the Astros upon arriving in 2015.
Few will confuse this Tigers team with Hinch’s first Houston club, one that pushed the eventual World Series champion Kansas City Royals to the brink of elimination in the ALDS. Monday offered a glimpse of Detroit at its best, perhaps a precursor to what Hinch can accomplish when the club reaches what it considers a competitive stage.
Heralded pitching prospect Casey Mize carved up the Astros across seven scoreless innings, the longest outing of his brief major league career. The Tigers selected Mize first overall in the 2018 draft. He made his major league debut after throwing only 123 minor league innings, a rapid ascent for any prospect regardless of rank.
Growing pains are supposed to plague his early progression. Monday showcased the star many believe he can be. Mize muzzled the Astros on every pendulum-swinging pitch, stranding a small army of baserunners in a heinous night for Houston’s offense. Two late-inning home runs from Michael Brantley and Carlos Correa created a respectable margin after the Astros allowed Mize off the hook.
“You can’t take anything away from the kid,” Astros manager Dusty Baker said. “The kid has good stuff. Early, it looked like he was going to be wild, but he got some runs and he settled down. He kept you off balance with that split finger. It kept us off balance and it set up the fastball.”
The Astros left eight baserunners while Mize worked and finished 0for-6 with runners in scoring position against him. Mize walked two of the first three batters he faced. Neither Jose Altuve nor Alex Bregman advanced a base.
The bottom of Houston’s order continued its concerning start to the season, too. Martin Maldonado added two more strikeouts — both with runners in scoring position — and Myles Straw hit into an inning-ending double play to quell a fourth-inning rally. Maldonado now has 15 strikeouts in his first 32 plate appearances.
“We weren’t able to get the job done with runners on base, it’s unfortunate,” first baseman Yuli Gurriel said through an interpreter. “You have to be able to convert in those situations and we weren’t able to tonight. We have to do a better job of that going forward.”
The bottom four hitters in Hinch’s order finished 6-for-11 against Greinke. Three of them struck home runs. Grayson Greiner took Greinke out to the opposite field in the second, smashing a poorly located four-seam fastball into the right field seats.
An inning later, Renato Nunez and Akil Baddoo bashed back-toback solo shots from the seventh and eighth spots in the order, respectively. Nunez hit a slider off the left field foul pole. Baddoo bludgeoned a fastball 450 feet onto the bar that sits in center field and celebrated his exploits while rounding the bases.
Greinke’s excruciating evening ended before he could finish the fifth. Nomar Mazara and Jonathan Schoop stroked consecutive singles. Baddoo chased Mazara in with a sacrifice fly. Greiner supplied a single to score Schoop. Greinke cut off the relay throw home and fired to first base, where Greiner made a wide turn. It arrived a second too late.
Baker bounded up the steps of the dugout and onto the field. He asked Greinke for the baseball. No one will debate that decision.