Detroit — The Tigers had Kenta Maeda’s back Tuesday night.
"You just want to pick your boy up," said rookie Justyn-Henry Malloy, whose solo home run capped a four-run sixth inning that tied the game 7-7 and took the struggling veteran off the hook. "That was definitely my mindset and I think I can speak for everyone on that. We wanted to go out and put together professional at-bats and pick our boy up."
Maeda didn't survive the third inning and put the Tigers in a 6-0 hole but a two-run home run by Colt Keith and a three-run blast by Gio Urshela that preceded Malloy's home run helped send the game into extra innings.
In the end, the Central Division-leading Cleveland Guardians prevailed. Josh Naylor, who had homered and singled in a run off Maeda earlier, dropped a single to center in the 10th to break the tie and help the Guardians snap the Tigers' four-game win streak, 9-8, at Comerica Park.
"You've got to have resolve in this game," manager AJ Hinch said. "That's a good sign for us. But this is a tough loss. It's an expensive loss with as much pitching as we had to use. But you can't doubt the effort or the opportunity to pull it out."
Jhonkensy Noel followed Naylor's hit with a sacrifice fly off reliever Will Vest.
BOX SCORE: Guardians 9, Tigers 8 (10)
The Tigers mounted one more comeback. This one against Cleveland closer Emmanual Clase. Carson Kelly's sacrifice fly scored the free runner in the bottom of the 10th to make it a one-run game. Urshela, who had a three-hit night, and Wenceel Perez singled, putting runners on the corners with two outs.
But Clase ended it right there, getting Malloy to fly to center.
"It's a privilege to be in that spot and you want to come through," Malloy said. "Tonight I didn't. I thought (it might fall), maybe, if I was lucky. I'll pray a little bit more tonight. Hopefully tomorrow it falls."
The comeback was impressive, but in the end futile. The bigger issue is Maeda. The Tigers have now lost eight straight games that he's started.
"It's a tough stretch, no doubt," Hinch said. "He just wasn't his best. It looked like execution was an issue for him again. We've got to find a way to get him right because that's a tough every-five-days."
After Maeda struck out Guardians catcher Austin Hedges to end the second inning, his only clean inning, it was announced that it was his 1,000th career strikeout.
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The juxtaposition was inescapable.
On the day he became just the third Japanese-born pitcher to record 1,000 strikeouts in the Major Leagues, joining Hideo Nomo and Yu Darvish and issuing a reminder of the pitcher he’s been throughout his career, he left the field to a chorus of boos, unable to get through three innings.
He seemed defenseless against the Guardians' hitters.
"There is definitely frustration," Maeda said through interpreter Daichi Sekizaki. "Nothing is really going right at this point and I am causing too much trouble for the team. I feel sorry about that."
He didn’t survive the fourth inning in his previous start at Minnesota, allowing nine runs in 3.2 innings. This time, he allowed six in 2.2 innings. He faced 14 hitters and seven of them got hits. The 12 balls the Guardians put in play against him had an average exit velocity of 95 mph.
"It's hard to narrow down to one problem," Maeda said when asked what he thought his primary issues were. "Hard to pinpoint one thing. My pitching overall hasn't been effective. I hope I can find a solution."
A 7.26 ERA after 16 starts certainly isn’t what club president Scott Harris had in mind when he signed the 36-year-old this winter for two years and $24 million. Maeda is on the books for $14 million this season and $10 million in 2025.
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"Reflecting on my baseball career, I don't think I've struggled this bad in my career," Maeda said. "And not finding a solution is leading to these results. It's not that I'm not trying. I'm doing my best and trying my hardest to bounce back. Things aren't happening. I just have to keep working hard to find the solution."
He’s put the Tigers in a bind. They’re not likely to buy out his contract this soon and he would have to agree to a demotion to Triple-A.
Putting him in the bullpen is problematic, too. That’s not the best environment for him to work through the multitude of issues he’s battling right now (command, sharpness of his secondary pitches) with the limited usage and it would effectively leave the bullpen one man short.
To move Maeda to the bullpen would mean one of the current eight relievers would have to go, and that most likely would be Joey Wentz, who ate 2.1 innings Tuesday and helped keep the Tigers in striking range. And Wentz, being out of minor-league options, would have to be designated for assignment and exposed to the waiver wire.
There are no easy answers.
"The break is coming at a good time," Hinch said. "Our number one goal is to get him right and we have to unlock the things he needs to do to be more effective. It's pretty fresh after the game right now, so we haven't talked about it. But regardless of anything we do, we have to get him right."
It was a little poetic that it was Naylor who delivered the tie-breaking hit in the 10th. After all, Hinch intentionally walked Guardians' star and long-time Tiger nemesis Jose Ramirez three times ahead of him.
"That tells you what I think of Ramirez," Hinch said. "That has nothing to do with Naylor. But the combo of Naylor and whoever is going to be better than facing Ramirez."
It was the first time Hinch has ever walked the same player three times in a game. He'd only issued two free passes to that point all season. But Ramirez had already had three hits in the game. And twice, the free passes helped get the Tigers out of innings.
Reliever Beau Brieske, who pitched 2.2 scoreless innings, got Naylor to ground out with a runner at third after the first free pass to Ramirez. Hinch put up four fingers again in the eighth with a runner at second, two outs and the game tied.
Brieske had just took a 96-mph comebacker off his leg hit by Angel Martinez. Third baseman Zach McKinstry fielded the carom and threw out Martinez but Steven Kwan, who reached on an infield single, moved to second.
Hinch brought in lefty Andrew Chafin, already alerting Chafin about walking Ramirez. The strategy got compromised when Chafin walked Naylor, too, to load the bases. But he was able to defuse the situation, getting Noel to fly to left.
"I wasn't just going to walk (Ramirez) for the sake of walking him," Hinch said. "If there were runners at first and second or first and third, I wouldn't have walked him...But it was pretty clear I didn't want Ramirez to factor in there."
There have been two players since 1955 who have gotten three hits and been walked intentionally three times in the same game — Paul Goldschmidt and Ramirez.
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