Tigers voice frustration after walk-off loss

ARLINGTON -- Rougned Odor walked it off. But the pitch before his 10th-inning home run, he went around.

That’s the way the Tigers saw it. And as the visiting clubhouse in Globe Field Park opened following their 5-4 loss to the Rangers, they had it on monitors for anyone who wanted to look, a still shot showing Odor’s bat crossing the plate on Nick Ramirez’s 2-2 breaking ball.

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“He swung at the ball,” Tigers manager Ron Gardenhire said. “His bat was all the way out in front of home plate. The home-plate umpire didn't call it. He checked, and obviously it's a missed call. It's plain as day.”

The 74th loss of this Tigers season could’ve blended in with many others, if not for that penultimate pitch.

“It's disappointing because we played really hard tonight," Gardenhire said. "We battled our tails off. We were still battling our tails off, and for it to end like that is disappointing. And it does happen in this game. Everybody's human in it, and we understand that. But that's pretty disappointing right there. Two guys had a chance to get that call right and didn't get it.”

The initial call from plate umpire Eric Cooper drew an appeal from catcher Jake Rogers. Third-base umpire David Rackley confirmed the call. Instead of recording a strikeout to send the game to an 11th inning, Ramirez faced a full count.

“I was upset when it happened,” Ramirez said. “When you're on the mound, it's hard to tell, but you can tell when you see a full barrel. …

“After that happens, you still have to make a pitch. But when you make a pitch and you get the guy out, and now you have to make another pitch, that's when [something] happens.”

Ramirez didn’t want to put the winning run on base with a walk, so he threw a sinker over the plate. Odor connected, sending a fly ball to left-center that carried out.

“It was lefty on lefty,” Ramirez said. “I challenged him, and he hit it.”

Thus ended a contentious game for the Tigers that included a staredown between Odor and Matthew Boyd, with Odor taking umbrage at being hit by a 3-2 pitch in Boyd’s sixth and final inning.

"It was a 3-2 count, and we were both battling,” Boyd said. “He just looked at me, so I asked him what he was looking at. I'm not trying to hit a guy like that, that was an average off me of like .192 or something like that. He's not a guy you really want to give a free pass by any means."

At that point, Odor was 3-for-16 for his career off Boyd, having singled in the fourth inning.

“He was telling me he was not trying to hit me, that it was a 3-2 count,” Odor said. “That’s all.”

It was a snapshot of Boyd at his best, adding a competitive edge to a team that can feed off of it down the stretch of a long season. Though Boyd allowed two runs on six hits over 5 2/3 innings, he faced potential disaster in the third inning after the first three batters reached safely.

With a big inning looming, Boyd struck out the middle of the Rangers lineup in order, all swinging, to strand two runners. Danny Santana and Elvis Andrus fanned on sliders in the dirt, Andrus on a particularly nasty one. Hunter Pence chased a fastball up at the letters to end the threat.

Boyd struck out seven of his first 13 batters, and nine for the game. He pleaded to stay in to finish the sixth when Gardenhire walked out of the dugout to pull him with two outs, but Gardenhire didn’t want to risk having him face a third meeting with Isiah Kiner-Falefa, who doubled off the left-field wall and flied out to the track in his previous two at-bats.

“We talked about it,” Gardenhire said. “They battled him. They really made him work hard. They fouled off a ton of pitches and his pitch count got up. Those are good hitters over there, and they fight the ball off. We talked about that. He looked like he was pretty worn out. Boyd is always going to say, ‘I’m good,’ but right at 100 pitches, that’s a lot of pitches.”