Detroit – There’s only one thing you can do with something this stinky.
Flush it.
The Central Division-leading Twins battered lefty starter Joey Wentz literally from the first pitch of the game and put the Tigers to rout, 9-3, Monday night at Comerica Park.
“It’s a bad morale day from the get-go and you’ve got to fight through it,” manager AJ Hinch said. “We have to get away from this one because it was ugly from the beginning.”
Donovan Solano hit Wentz’s first pitch for a double and when the dust settled two batters into the third inning, the Twins had accumulated eight runs and 10 hits, including three doubles and two three-run home runs.
Ryan Jeffers and Carlos Correa smacked the homers. Correa also had an RBI double. Solano had a double, single and scored two runs in the first two innings.
“The zone percentage on his off-speed was well below average,” Hinch said of Wentz. “If you don’t have a pitch to go to outside of the fastball, it doesn’t matter where you miss, they can do damage. He really didn’t get into good counts and he didn’t have a pitch to go to and they let him have it.”
With the bullpen taxed, Hinch had to ride Wentz the full three innings. It’s a cruel game sometimes.
“There is a competitive component where you are trying to do anything positive to give yourself a run at it,” Hinch said. “And then you are managing the innings, trying to get through. We basically went through our entire bullpen that was available.”
The Twins put 17 balls in play against Wentz with an average exit velocity of 91 mph. They hit six balls with an exit velocity of 100 mph or harder.
“Pretty bad game for me personally,” Wentz said. “I put the team in a hole…I didn’t feel good. I didn’t feel comfortable and they hit the ball hard. I couldn’t right the ship.”
Early innings have tormented Wentz throughout this season.
Ten days ago, Hinch used him as a bulk reliever in Miami after Beau Brieske pitched the first two innings. He pitched 4.2 scoreless innings and struck out six.
But when he’s pitched innings one, two and three in his other starts, he’s allowed 45 runs. From innings four through six, he’s allowed just 15.
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Idiosyncrasies.
But it put Hinch in a bind. Long reliever Brendan White and lefty Chasen Shreve had both worked two of the last three games. Same for Brieske, though Hinch leaned on him again and he collected six straight outs.
From the sixth inning on, Hinch used his high-leverage relievers – Tyler Holton, Jason Foley and Alex Lange.
The Tigers were looking for a low-leverage situation for Lange to work through his command issues. This was it, but it didn’t go well. Lange had walked six of the previous 10 hitters he faced covering his last two outings. And he walked three more in the eighth inning of this game. He also hit Max Kepler in the foot, forcing in a run.
The positive: He struck out three.
“We know he’s going to miss bats and obviously it was important for him to finish his inning,” Hinch said. “As good as it was to punch out those hitters, giving free base runners just isn’t a path for success that you can sustain. I’m going to continue to root for him and continue to push him.
“But it was one step forward within the inning and one step backward.”
For the second time in four games, infielder Zack Short pitched a scoreless ninth, ending the inning by punching out Michael A. Taylor with a 71 mph fastball. He’s allowed a run in five innings this season.
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Hinch indicated after the game that it was likely a fresh arm or two will be summoned from Triple-A Toledo in time for the game Tuesday.
“We will have all options on the table,” he said.
The Tigers’ hitters were muzzled by right-hander Pablo Lopez. They mustered five well-spaced singles off him in seven innings. Lopez struck out eight.
With two outs and two on in the ninth, Nick Maton hit a first-pitch fastball from lefty reliever Brent Headrick over the wall in right-center, his eighth homer of the season, to break the shutout.
“It’s baseball,” Maton said. “You have to have a short-term memory. We’re going to flush today and be ready to go tomorrow. Anything you can use to build on is big, even a three-run homer at the end of the game. Build that into tomorrow. Use anything you can.”
As the Twins continue to secure their hold on the division title, winning their season-high fifth straight, the Tigers are plummeting. They’ve lost nine of their last 12 and are a season-worst 14 games under .500 (49-63).
chris.mccosky@detroitnews.com
Twitter: @cmccosky