The Tigers were leading the Angels 2-1 in the third inning Wednesday night at Comerica Park, and here came Mike Trout with runners on second and third and one out.
High-leverage situation? Open base at first? Best player on the planet at the plate? Conventional wisdom says you walk him.
And had it been later in the game, maybe Ron Gardenhire would have. But not in this instance.
Gardenhire decided to go after Trout, and Matthew Boyd promptly struck him out swinging. Then Boyd retired Shohei Ohtani to end the inning.
The manager's gamble worked, a gamble made out of respect for the few thousand fans in attendance.
"I learned this from my old manager, Tom Kelly, back in the day," Gardenhire told the Jamie and Stoney Show on 97.1 The Ticket. "Matter of fact, we'd come into Detroit and (Cecil) Fielder would be up at the plate and Tom would always say, 'Gardy, these people paid a lot of money to come and see what this guy's going to do today -- get a hit or hit a home run -- and sometimes you owe it to them to let them see what's going to happen.'"
Gardenhire coached under Kelly, the longtime Twins skipper, from 1991-2001, his first job in the big leagues. He took over for Kelly in 2002 and recently passed him on the all-time wins list, and said he would have been just as happy remaining tied.
Kelly, it's safe to safe, would have pitched to Trout, too.
"Now, if it's late in the game and it's a win-or-lose situation, obviously you put him on," Gardenhire said. "But early in the game you have to let your pitchers try to figure out a way to get him out. We stood there, and if we'd gotten to a 3-0 count we might have just said, put him on and go from there. But I agree with that -- people do pay good money to come see Mike Trout play, even if it's here in Detroit, and sometimes you have to go at these guys. ... If you just walk him every time, that's no fun."
The decision was made easier for Gardenhire by the fact that his best pitcher was on the mound.
"No doubt. And the first thing you do is look at the catcher and say, 'Be smart here.' And that's exactly what we did," Gardenhire said. "But we talked about that before the game. We have to be smart in situational parts of the game, and that was one of them. 'Be smart here, don't give into him.' You saw that we bounced a ball, we tried a backdoor breaking ball, we came inside. It was about not pitching like you normally would, just see if he'll chase. Boyd's pretty good and he got him out, which was a big deal."
The strikeout pitch was a 93 mph fastball beneath Trout's hands, one of Boyd's best offerings of the game. The Tigers would strike out Trout two more times. He entered the game with just 16 strikeouts on the season.
Other highlights from Gardenhire's interview on 97.1 The Ticket:
On the sustainability of Ronny Rodriguez's hot streak: "Well, he's swinging, and (pitchers) are around the plate here more than they are in Triple-A. The guy can swing the bat, we've always said that. He just has to be more consistent defensively. He missed a routine play yesterday, and those are the parts of the game you have to fix. He can hit and he can stay in the big leagues and play every day, but you have to catch the ball, especially when you're in the infield. That's what we talked about about when we sent him down; he had a rough spring training catching the ball, but he hit. We need the offense right now and we've got him in there and he's doing a great job. He's a fun kid to be around, he's full of life."
On Miguel Cabrera's controversial comments about his lack of protection in the lineup: "He's not wrong in saying that back in the day when he was protected by all those guys, yeah, that's true. But it's a tough statement in the clubhouse, and Miggy meant no harm by it. He loves his teammates. But it was just in casual conversation talking about something. And he's right. There's not a lot of experience in our lineup, so he's going to have to learn to deal with it. When he gets his pitch he can't miss it. That's probably the biggest difference. Back in the day, he didn't have to be so fine with everything. He had plenty of pitches to hit. It's just a little different now. ... And talking with (Niko) Goodrum, nobody took offense to it. It's Miggy. He's one of our leaders and he can say what he wants to say and say what he needs to say."
On the cause for Cabrera's declining power: "He's 36 years old. That's an age where things start falling apart a little bit in your body, and he's adjusted to it. He had a serious injury last year. When you do something like that, you pop that tendon in your arm and they have to reattach it, it changes your swing. This guy's still a great hitter. Believe me, he's killing the baseball. He's been hitting it really, really hard. There's a lot of intangibles involved in all this stuff, his age, that big injury he had last year and he missed the whole year basically. I'm just sitting back and waiting and watching and enjoying watching him on the field, and I hope everybody else can do the same thing."
