Turnbull digs in as Tigers top Yankees

DETROIT -- The more Spencer Turnbull pitches, the more his no-hitter from last week looks like a stepping stone in his development. It’s not that he's had unhittable stuff in his two outings since, but he's shown the ability to succeed when his pitches are less than that quality.

A year ago, maybe even a month ago, Turnbull would’ve been set up for disaster with the three-walk inning he endured Saturday. He had the bases loaded with nobody out in the second against a Yankees team that piled on runs in similar circumstances four weeks ago.

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Turnbull was searching.

“It’s hard. There’s just like this mental boundary,” Turnbull described the process. “It’s like you’re so frustrated at yourself. Obviously you’re not getting beat by them, you’re beating yourself. But at the same time, you don’t really know what to do. You’re trying to find it, and sometimes it’s harder to find than others. Sometimes it might be one pitch, where you lose it and find it right away. Today, that was not the case, and it almost cost me that whole inning.”

To escape that jam with one run was big. To make that his only run of the afternoon in a 6-1 win over the Bronx Bombers was a relative feat. The victory clinched the Tigers’ first series win over the Yankees at Comerica Park since 2014. After being outscored by an 18-4 margin over three games four weeks ago at Yankee Stadium, the Tigers have a 9-3 advantage through two games at home.

Turnbull, who won three games all season in 2019, has won three consecutive decisions for the first time in his career. He came within an out of his fourth straight quality start. Most importantly, he looks more like a confident pitcher. He hasn’t found the ability to stay locked-in for an entire game again since that no-hitter, but he has figured out ways to get back in form when he falls out.

“I had a really high chance of that [second] inning spiraling out of control there,” Turnbull said. “So I’m kind of proud of myself for battling through that. I think that is another testament to some of the growth over the last couple years. Glad it happened, wish I didn’t give up the one run, but one run is way better than three.”

After retiring the dangerous top third of the Yankees’ order in his opening inning, Turnbull quickly worked his way into trouble in the second with a four-pitch walk of Gleyber Torres, a Gary Sánchez single and a full-count walk of Mike Ford. Turnbull threw four strikes in 15 pitches, including a first-pitch ball to Miguel Andújar.

“I think he was just fighting his body mechanics and the way his body was firing,” manager A.J. Hinch said. “It just looked like he lost his feel for what he was doing consistently, you know, as a pitcher, as an athlete. And he corralled himself.”

Or, as Turnbull put it, “Just completely lost my release point and could not find the strike zone at all.”

Pitching coach Chris Fetter visited the mound. Turnbull described it as a chance to catch his breath and slow things down. They talked about the game plan to Andújar, about Turnbull’s pace.

Ironically, after a first-pitch ball, it was another pitch out of the zone that helped Turnbull regroup. He threw a nasty slider that dove off the plate as Andújar chased.

“I kind of found it on the slider,” Turnbull said. “He chased that one, and it had some good snap on it.”

Turnbull came back with the same pitch for a double-play grounder that gave up a run but opened some bases. Clint Frazier’s walk put Turnbull back in trouble, but Turnbull attacked Brett Gardner with back-to-back fastballs before inducing a weak grounder on a changeup off the plate.

That started Turnbull on a roll of 10 consecutive outs that looked nothing like his previous eight batters. The stretch included five 0-2 counts, four strikeouts and one ball hit out of the infield. He took the mound for the third with a 2-1 lead after a Willi Castro two-out infield single that second baseman Rougned Odor threw away for a run-scoring error.

While the Tigers pulled away on Yankees starter Deivi García and reliever Albert Abreu, Turnbull locked in. He finished with 5 2/3 innings, three walks and six strikeouts. Seven of his 13 swings-and-misses came off his fastball, as did eight of his 17 called strikes.

“To be able to lock it in after that was definitely the turning point,” Turnbull said. “And then after that, I felt really good.”