HOUSTON — This was the vision. This is what it was supposed to look like.
Spencer Torkelson and Riley Greene, two highly-touted, first-round picks, driving balls, producing runs, leading the Tigers’ offense.
There it all was Tuesday night as the Tigers beat the defending World Series champion Astros for the second straight night, 6-3.
The duo combined for six hits and four of the runs. Torkelson finished with an RBI double, a single and his first home run – a two-run, 424-foot missile (106 mph off his bat) that landed over the balcony seats in left-center.
The homer was off right-handed reliever Ryne Stanek in the eighth inning, but the other damage came at the expense of Astros’ lefty ace Framber Valdez.
Torkelson hit a bullet off the left-field wall in the first inning, scoring Javier Báez from first base. The ball left Torkelson’s bat with an exit velocity of 102 mph and caromed some 100 feet back toward the infield.
With Matt Vierling on second and two outs in the third inning, Greene hit an opposite-field single to left. Third base coach Gary Jones decided to test Alvarez’s arm. Never a great idea. Alvarez threw a perfect strike to catcher Martin Maldonado. Vierling slid right into his glove and was out.
With the game tied 2-2 in the sixth – the second run courtesy of an RBI single by Jake Rogers in the fifth – Greene and Torkelson both singled and advanced to second and third on a passed ball. Greene scored the go-ahead run on a ground out by Eric Haase.
Greene, who hit a 414-foot, opposite-field home run here Monday night, is hitting .316 on the young season. Torkelson, who had a 50% hard-hit rate and a 90-mph average exit velocity coming into the game, is hitting .263.
The other part of the story was right-hander Matt Manning.
After making just 12 starts last season and being on a slow ramp up in spring training, nobody was quite sure what to expect from him in his first start of the 2023 season.
All things considered, he was pretty darn good.
Manning left the game with two outs in the sixth inning – the Tigers up 3-2 − limiting the Astros to a pair of runs on six hits and two walks with four strikeouts.
He didn’t command the strike zone as well as he’d like, throwing just 10 first-pitch strikes to the 23 batters he faced. Of his 89 pitches, 55 were strikes.
It was the spotty command that led to both runs and ended his night one out short of quality start.
He walked Alex Bregman, who eventually scored on a two-out, opposite-field single by Kyle Tucker in the first inning.
Then leading off the fourth inning, Manning fell behind Tucker 3-0 and fed him a juicy, center-cut, 91-mph fastball. Tucker sent it into the seats in right field.
In the sixth, after Greene made a superman-style diving catch in center field to rob Yordan Alvarez of a leadoff hit, Manning struck out Jose Abreu and got ahead of Tucker 0-2 before walking him.
Right-hander Jason Foley got the final out in the sixth and pitched a scoreless seventh.
Manager AJ Hinch smartly summoned lefty Chasen Shreve for the eighth inning, with left-handed hitters Alvarez and Tucker due up. Alvarez blooped a single but Shreve, with his evil splitter, struck out Tucker to end the inning.
Right-hander Trey Wingenter, who earned the win Monday night, gave up a run in the ninth but locked it down with minimal stress.
Manning pitched effectively off his fastball. He threw 47 of them ranging in velocity from 91 mph to 96 mph. The last two fastballs he threw were his firmest. But even his 93 mph fastballs, which is where he sat most of the night, seemed to be playing up to the Astros’ hitters.
The spin rate on it was up 131 rpms above his norm.
He was also throwing a slower slider (80 mph, down 3 mph off his norm) and landing his curveball.
The Tigers, for the second straight night, played crisp defense. Báez made a couple of deft plays at shortstop, as did second baseman Ryan Kreidler. Kreidler also had a pair of hits and scored a run.
Haase, making his first start in left field, threw out Bregman at second base for the final out of the fifth.
Bregman hit the ball off the top of the wall in left center. Haase played the carom perfectly and threw out Bregman by several feet. The umpires reviewed the play but the ball clearly hit below the yellow line and was in play.
The Tigers had lost seven straight games to the Astros before taking the first two in this series.
