Tigers' hitters halted by Tribe's ace in finale

Less than 10 days after the Tigers relished the euphoria of Spencer Turnbull’s no-hitter against the Seattle Mariners, Detroit had its back against the wall with Cleveland right-hander Shane Bieber toying with no-hit stuff. In the bottom of the seventh inning, that fate was halted by Jonathan Schoop and a 402-foot leadoff homer.

Prior to that inning, Detroit hitters had no remedy for Bieber’s arsenal and couldn’t materialize any runs from the three walks they worked out of him leading up to the seventh. But on one pitch in his third at-bat, Schoop ended Bieber’s no-hit bid and provided one of two runs for Detroit as the Tigers dropped the series finale in a 5-2 loss on Thursday afternoon at Comerica Park.

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"I just know he threw me sliders all day, I didn't see a fastball,” Schoop said of his approach against Bieber. “Well, he wasn't getting me out of there, so why not. He left one right there and I put a good swing on it."

Schoop has been a great addition to the Tigers since 2020, both defensively and offensively. After he slashed .278/.324/.475 in 44 games with eight home runs last season, Detroit brought the infielder back this year. While Schoop hasn’t shown the same production 40 games into 2021, he may have reached a turning point Thursday against Bieber.

When Schoop is ahead in the count this season, he has an impressive .381 batting average and a .571 slugging percentage. The Tigers saw their luck change when Bieber’s slider was left over the plate in Schoop’s preferred count, and the homer left the bat at a Statcast-projected 115.3 mph.

Schoop's third homer off a right-hander this season helped prevent the Tigers from being on the wrong side of a no-hitter for the 15th time in Detroit’s history. Despite the baseball world zeroing in on Bieber’s no-no efforts, the Tigers weren’t fazed by what he was doing on the mound.

"Our mood's always gonna be fine. We understand we got to find a way to scratch and claw and stay in the game,” manager A.J. Hinch said. “Sometimes these games feel, maybe a lot worse from the outside looking in. We're still only a couple swings away, we got the tying run up to the plate in the eighth inning. There was a lot of belief that we were going to be able to put a couple hits together and bring the tying run to the plate.”

The Tigers saw 45 knuckle-curves from Bieber, and they swung through it 13 times. His offspeed pitches accounted for more than half of his pitch count, according to Statcast, but Schoop’s homer was the only swing of Detroit’s 47 attempts against the right-hander that resulted in a hit.

"Adjustment-wise, you can look for it and know what's coming and still he can entice some swinging misses and some soft contact,” Hinch said. “We didn't have a lot of answers for him, [but] Schoop got us in the scoring column and the hit column at the same time.”

There was sensible excitement headed into the afternoon matchup between Tigers left-hander Matthew Boyd and Bieber. The two pitchers battled it out in an Opening Day showdown as Miguel Cabrera helped power Boyd’s first win of the season with a two-run homer off Bieber in the midst of snow flurries.

Round 2 of the matchup was a similar pitchers' duel with a couple of long balls sprinkled in. This time around, Boyd was tagged for the loss as he gave up four runs in five-plus innings with five strikeouts and two walks. The southpaw was unable to record an out in the sixth inning as José Ramírez, Harold Ramirez and Eddie Rosario each recorded a hit and scored a run to put Detroit in a four-run deficit that it was unable to overcome.