Tigers keep good times rolling with 7-3 win over Mariners in opener
Detroit — Something happens to Kerry Carpenter when the opposing pitcher is wearing a Seattle Mariners’ uniform.
He goes into beast mode.
His two-run home run off Bryan Woo in the third inning sent the Tigers to a 7-3 win over the Mariners on a rainy Friday night at Comerica Park.
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It was their fourth straight win in June and for Carpenter, it was his ninth career homer against the Mariners, including the two he hit in the American League Division Series last October.
Woo possesses one of the nastiest four-seam fastballs in the game (plus-9 run value per Statcast), but he seemed committed to throwing his slider to Carpenter. Not a horrible idea, since hitters were 5 for 24 against it with no homers.
Woo threw him four straight sliders in the first inning before striking him out chasing a 97-mph heater. Second time up, Carpenter whiffed on a first-pitch slider but stayed on the next one, lofting it just over the yellow line atop the wall in right field.
It was his eighth homer of the season and second since coming off the injured list earlier this week.
BOX SCORE: Tigers 7, Mariners 3
The Tigers scattered nine hits off Woo in six-plus innings, finally putting him away in the seventh.
With one out, Colt Keith, Zach McKinstry and Zach Short singled. Keith probably should have scored on Short’s single but he didn’t read it well and had to stop at third.
Right-hander Eduard Bazardo replaced Woo and Gleyber Torres greeted him with a two-run double over the head of right fielder Victor Robles. Torres had three hits and is 7 for 13 since coming back off the injured list.
The Mariners, first place in the American League West, did not go quietly, even though they lost their shortstop, J.P. Crawford in the third inning after he was hit by a pitch in his wrist or hand.
Down 5-2 in the eighth, lefty-swinging Josh Naylor doubled on a two-strike pitch from lefty Tyler Holton. He went to third on a ground out and scored when Carpenter lost a shallow fly ball to right in the lights.
They still had two on and one out when right-hander Kyle Finnegan entered. Finnegan struck out lefty pinch-hitter Luke Raley and got Colt Emerson, who had hit an opposite-field homer in the seventh off Drew Anderson, to bounce out to first.
Spencer Torkelson threw the knockout punch, blasting a two-run homer (his ninth) into the seats in left field in the bottom of the eighth inning. The Tigers, after hitting 18 homers in May, have 12 in the first four games of June.
Tigers starter Framber Valdez was not perfect. He needed 102 pitches just to get through five innings. But he never stopped competing. He faced eight hitters with at least one runner in scoring position and allowed just one hit.
That one hit came in the first inning. After the first two batters of the game singled, Valdez struck out Randy Arozarena and Naylor. But light-hitting Rob Refsnyder, who came in hitting .114, punched an RBI single to right.
The first two hitters reached in the fourth inning, too, but Valdez left them right there. Then in the fifth, he walked Julio Rodriguez and Aronzarena, throwing nine balls in a 10-pitch stretch as his pitch count got close to 100.
That set up a left-on-left battle with Naylor. Rodriguez and Arozarena pulled off a double steal, putting the tying run on second.
But in a six-pitch at-bat, Valdez got Naylor to ground out to second and left a 3-1 lead to the bullpen.
Valdez came into the game with a 48% ground-ball rate, by far the lowest of his career. But the six ground-ball outs he induced against the Mariners came at key times.
This story will be updated.
@cmccosky
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Detroit Tigers win fourth straight, beat Seattle Mariners in opener
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