Struggles continue for Zimmermann vs. Sox

DETROIT -- Art Houtteman picked up the nickname “Hard Luck” for his 2-16 season as a 20-year-old with the 1948 Tigers. One of the native Detroiter’s wins that year was a relief appearance in which he drove in the go-ahead run in the 10th inning. Five days later, he threw an 11-inning complete game to win a pitchers' duel, his only victory as a starter all year. He went winless the rest of the season.

Houtteman is the only Tiger, at least since 1908, to win two games or fewer in a season with at least 20 starts, according to Baseball Reference. Unless Jordan Zimmermann picks up a win in his season finale next week, he will finish with one win in 23 starts this year, sending Hard Luck Houtteman’s season into obscurity.

As Eloy Jiménez’s grand slam Friday night tucked inside the foul pole down Comerica Park’s right-field line, bringing Tigers manager Ron Gardenhire out of the dugout to grab the ball from Zimmermann in the fourth inning with nine runs allowed, about the only thing Zimmermann had going for him was his health. Though the Tigers committed three errors behind him in Friday’s 10-1 loss to the White Sox, none impacted the damage; all of his runs were earned.

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“I know we're young,” Gardenhire said. “But it was not good out there.”

Though Mike Maroth and Jeremy Bonderman lost 21 and 19 games, respectively, on the 2003 Tigers team that set an American League record with 119 losses, Maroth won nine games, Bonderman seven. Adam Bernero went 1-12, but made just 17 starts and a relief appearance before being traded to the Rockies at midseason. Nearly half of that team’s 43 wins were concentrated among Maroth, Jeremy Bonderman and fellow starter Nate Cornejo.

That might be one rare area in which the 2003 Tigers had good fortunes, while Zimmermann (1-12) clearly has not.

His two-seam fastball, a pitch he had developed with success this summer to induce soft contact, was responsible for two balls with exit velocities over 100 mph Friday. It did little to throw White Sox hitters off his four-seam fastball, which was hit for both White Sox home runs, including Yoán Moncada’s 411-foot drive over the out-of-town scoreboard in right-center. Zimmermann’s workhorse slider was good for seven swings and misses, but also Zach Collins’ RBI double off the scoreboard.

With nine runs on 11 hits over 3 2/3 innings, it was a night when nothing seemed to work for Zimmermann, who has struggled in each of his last three starts. On Friday, he became the first Tigers pitcher since Brian Moehler in 2000 to yield nine runs and 11 hits without finishing the fourth inning.

“You're going to have outings like this,” Zimmermann said. “You try to limit the damage as best you can, but it didn't matter what I threw up there tonight. It was going to get hit hard or find a hole. I tried to battle as best I could, but honestly I didn't have anything that was working.”

Like Houtteman, Zimmermann had his share of hard luck early in the season. He tossed 13 2/3 innings of one-run ball in his first two starts, but took no-decisions in each of them. He lost his next four starts, giving up five runs in each, then spent two months on the injured list with a right forearm strain. He has tossed three quality starts in 16 outings since his return, taking no-decisions in all three. His lone win is a July 29 victory against the Angels with 5 1/3 innings of two-run ball to earn Detroit what remains its last series triumph.

“It's been a rough year for me, obviously,” he said. “I had the forearm thing and then I had shots in my back, so I missed a lot of time. I'm trying to get everything synced up and the curveball will be good for an inning and all of a sudden the slider will be good the next inning, and I'll never really have both of them together. It's just been a battle all year.

“I'm excited about the sinker. Going into the offseason, it's something that I'm going to really work on and be able to throw to both sides of the plate, and I think it's going to be a big pitch for me next year.”

Zimmermann is one of just two Tigers under long-term contracts for next year. The other, Miguel Cabrera, drove in Detroit’s lone run Friday by poking a broken-bat, opposite-field single into right, scoring Travis Demeritte after his third-inning leadoff walk. That hit moved Cabrera into a tie with George Sisler for 51st on MLB’s all-time hit list with 2,812.

While Cabrera has four years left on his deal, Zimmermann will head to Spring Training next February in the final year of his contract. With the Tigers’ crop of highly-touted pitching prospects not expected to be ready until at least next summer, and Gardenhire looking for veterans to eat innings, Zimmermann should get every chance to find his game one more time next spring, when he’ll still be 33.

If Zimmermann struggles once more, however, it would not be a shock if the Tigers dropped him from their rotation to make way for one of their young arms to try to accelerate the rebuild.

“I've been throwing the sinker for about a month, and for me to have a whole offseason to work on it and fine-tune it a little bit, I think it's going to be big,” Zimmermann said.

If Zimmermann needs another reason for hope, Houtteman rebounded from his 2-16 season to win 34 games over his next two seasons and an All-Star selection in 1950.