Cleveland — It got lost in the Tigers’ power show Wednesday in Minnesota, but the deciding run was created by the wheels of Akil Baddoo.
Celebrating his 25th birthday, Baddoo walked to lead off the top of the ninth. It was his third walk of the game and the fourth time he’d been on base. He promptly stole second base and continued to third when the catcher’s throw went into center field.
From there, he tagged and scored the eighth run of the game on Riley Greene’s sacrifice fly. The Tigers won the game, 8-7, and to cap his own birthday party, Baddoo made an excellent running catch at the wall, robbing Matt Wallner of a potential game-tying double.
Don’t look now, but we’ve been watching the best version of Akil Baddoo, Akil Prime, for about a month now.
“He’s a good player,” manager AJ Hinch said. “He’s a disruptive player, but in a good way. When he has these stretches of peak performance, it’s fun to watch.”
Entering the doubleheader Friday, Baddoo was slashing .290/.357/.500 with an OPS of .857 this month. Also, impressively, he’s grown into a very competent left fielder with a plus-5 defensive runs saved and plus-4 outs above average.
Is he perfectly formed as a baseball player? Absolutely not, and he’d be the first person to tell you that. Has he come further faster than anyone had a right to expect? A case could absolutely be made for that.
“He was robbed of the full development track,” Hinch said. “And nobody is at fault for that.”
It’s easy to forget, three years into his big-league career, how broken Baddoo’s development path was. He played a full season of A-ball in the Twins organization in 2018 but an elbow injury limited him to 29 games in 2019.
He didn’t play in 2020 because of the pandemic and then in 2021 he found himself in big league camp with the Tigers, who had taken him in the Rule 5 draft.
“It’s not as if he’s had a full run of at-bats in a row without disruption,” Hinch said. “I would argue losing time to the COVID year or to major injury in the A-ball or the Double-A timeline is incredibly critical.”
After a magical rookie season where he posted a 112 OPS-plus with 13 homers and 55 RBIs, he struggled mightily last season, spending a large chunk of the season in Triple-A. And, despite a solid spring, he didn’t make the club out of spring training this season.
He’s essentially had to learn all the tough lessons on the biggest stage. Not that Baddoo would do it any other way.
“When I got that Rule 5 call to the Tigers, it was a blessing,” he said. “Also, it was a wake-up call. I had to develop quicker than I thought I would. That whole offseason I spent my time maturing, making sure I was ready.
“Most of my development time has come in the big leagues. Which is different, but it was a challenge I was willing to accept.”
And who’s to say it would have been any easier or faster had he gone through the normal minor-league progression? Not Baddoo.
“No, I’m blessed where I am right now,” he said. “My dream is to play in the big leagues and play in the big leagues for a long time. To have that opportunity is truly a blessing.”
It’s probably testament to Baddoo’s mental toughness that he completely dismisses the notion that it would have been better to struggle on the smaller stages of the minors. To him, struggle and failure leave the same sized scar no matter where it happens.
“Yeah, I feel like there is no real difference,” he said. “I don’t try to make it bigger than it really is. It’s baseball. You’re going to have failures. It doesn’t really matter if it’s in a ballpark with five people or a ballpark with 20,000 people.
“You just have to have that mindset that this is a game of failure.”
Players who get cast aside can’t process that failure. Players who stick around use the failure as fuel.
“We see him now kind of rounding into a well-rounded baseball player,” Hinch said. “Making an impact on defense. Getting the feel for how to get himself through those mini-slides — those 0-for-8s, 0-for-12s, 1-for-16s — and continue to refine his game plan.
“I’m very proud of Akil for the mental toughness he’s shown, trying to be the part that everybody wants him to be. He has every excuse in the book, which he doesn’t use, for why he’s not perfectly formed right now.
“He hasn’t had a perfect journey.”
And yet, here he is, at the top of Hinch’s lineup against right-handed starters, being the offensive catalyst the club had dreamed he might be.
“There’s always going to be room to grow in all aspects of your game,” Baddoo said. “I’m just trying to stay consistent with my routine and continue to build on that. Just be consistent, continue to have fun and play my game.”
Rotation alteration
As Hinch said before Game 1 on Friday, giving young starters an extra day of rest is never a bad idea.
To that end, the club called up lefty Joey Wentz as the 27th man and installed him as the starter for Game 2. The domino effect of that pushes Matt Manning’s start to Saturday, Eduardo Rodriguez to Sunday and Alex Faedo to Monday in Detroit.
The Tigers are closely monitoring the workloads of Faedo and rookie Reese Olson.
Wentz was optioned back to Toledo on Aug. 7 after he was tagged for eight runs and 10 hits in three innings against the Twins. He made one start at Toledo and struck out six and allowed two runs in 5⅔ innings.
Around the horn
Javier Báez was still in transit from Puerto Rico on Friday morning. He arrived in time to be in the starting lineup for Game 2. To make room for Baez, infielder Isan Diaz was optioned to Triple-A Toledo.
chris.mccosky@detroitnews.com
Twitter: @cmccosky
Tigers at Guardians
▶ First pitch: 7:10 p.m. Saturday, Progressive Field, Cleveland
▶ TV/radio: BSD/97.1
SCOUTING REPORT
▶ RHP Matt Manning (4-4, 4.60), Tigers: Because of the rainout Thursday and the activation of Joey Wentz for Game 2 on Friday, Manning is getting a couple extra days between his starts. He’s coming off a strong outing in Boston where he bullied the lefty-heavy Red Sox lineup with fastballs and allowed one run and two hits in 5⅓ innings.
▶ RHP Tanner Bibee (9-2, 2.90), Guardians: This will be his 20th start. Over his last eight going back to July 1, all quality starts, he’s posted a 1.82 ERA and .221 opponent average. He throws a 2,800-rpm slider and elite changeup off a 95-mph four-seam fastball. The changeup has neutralized left-handed hitters (.208, .262 slugging). Overall, hitters are hitting .173 with a 41% whiff rate against his changeup.