Mariners and Bryce Miller shut out Tigers to get back in win column

The Mariners halted a brief two-game losing skid today – over which the pitching staff surrendered 14 runs – with a shutout 4-0 win against the Tigers. Bryce Miller made his first non-piggyback start of the year and delivered six strong innings against the Tigers, one-hitting Detroit over six innings while striking out a season-high nine batters.

The lone hit Miller gave up could have been Detroit’s first scoring chance of the day, when Colt Keith led off the third inning with a triple. But Miller buckled down and stranded Keith at third, getting Matt Vierling to pop out, striking out Wenceel Pérez looking (and eliciting a failed challenge from Pérez to wipe out Detroit’s challenges for the game, something that would benefit the Mariners later), and handing Gleyber Torres his second of four strikeouts on the day to end the inning. Miller racked up nine strikeouts over his outing and sixteen whiffs, currently good for best in MLB today (a lead he’ll certainly surrender when Yamamoto faces the Angels tonight).

The Tigers did make Miller work; in the fourth, Kerry Carpenter battled him for 12 pitches before earning the second walk of the inning, putting runners on at first and second with just one out and creating Detroit’s best scoring opportunity of the day. But Riley Greene went after the first pitch he saw, a splitter at the bottom of the zone, for an inning-ending double play.

Miller’s velocity held well over his outing, as he was still touching 96-97 in the fifth inning before tailing off a little in the sixth, when he said he “got a little tired” and lost some of his velo and command. It didn’t help that Pérez led off the inning with another long at-bat, this time one Miller won with a ten-pitch strikeout (he was later helped out by some very generous strike calls against Gleyber Torres—but with the Tigers out of challenges, Torres had no recourse). The bullpen helped Miller’s shutout hold over the back three innings: José Ferrer overcame some early inning jangles and a leadoff walk to hang a zero, ending on a filthy strikeout of Spencer Torkelson on a 98.8 mph sinker; Matt Brash overcame a walk of his own, getting Torres looking at a sinker on the outer edge for the platinum sombrero; and Gabe Speier worked around a leadoff double and a walk of his own to complete the shutout, thanks – once again – to a Riley Greene game-ending double play.

But even if the Tigers had been able to push across one or two runs, it wouldn’t have been enough to overcome the Mariners offense, which stacked four runs in the early innings of this game. The first run came in the second inning courtesy of a Dominic Canzone double which came off the bat at 105.5 mph, traveled 417 feet, and would have been a home run at 24 other MLB parks. Dom had to settle for a double, scoring Randy Arozarena, who had walked.

The Mariners stacked on another two runs in the next inning with back-to-back singles from Julio Rodríguez and Josh Naylor followed by yet another double from Arozarena, who cannot be stopped. Julio scored easily, and then encouraged Naylor to follow him home, making for a close play at the plate where Naylor was luckily ruled safe. With not enough evidence to overturn, the Tigers lost their challenge and final opportunity to argue about anything in this game.

If you can look you can see Naylor toss in his sliding glove as he slides into home, which I assumed was so he had all his fingers available to touch home plate but could also serve as a distraction to the catcher. Maybe that’s part of the reason why the Tigers aren’t very happy with Josh Naylor, who got hit…somewhat obviously in his next at-bat (they’re also mad about this play last night, which seems much more dubious to read for ill intent).

But the Tigers can only complain so much in a game where they were thoroughly shut out; meanwhile, Canzone stretched the lead to 4-0, finally getting revenge on the outfield walls in Detroit with this 451-foot no-doubter, the longest hit homer by a Mariner this season.

That’s all the scoring the Mariners would do on the day, but all they would need thanks to the pitching, bouncing back after back-to-back shaky outings. Tomorrow Luis Castillo aims to prove he too deserves to be freed from the confines of the piggyback, taking the ball in the series finale against another starter with something to prove: Jack Flaherty, fighting for his place in Detroit’s rotation as the Tigers pitching is getting healthier.