Dixon pitches in for Tigers' depleted bullpen

DETROIT -- Brandon Dixon's workhorse pitch, a curveball, wouldn’t be fast enough to keep up with traffic on most of the freeways around Comerica Park. Yet he would’ve had a perfect ninth inning if not for a 60-mph offering that hit Ryan Cordell in the shoulder.

“Really slow,” manager Ron Gardenhire said. “It's not a knuckler or anything like that. It doesn't have a high spin rate. But he got them out, and that's all we needed.”

It was one of Detroit’s cleanest innings in Wednesday’s 8-1 loss to the White Sox. It was also Dixon’s second pitching performance of the season for a manager whose dislike of using position players to pitch is well-known.

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The Tigers do not have a two-way player, nor do they make a regular occurrence out of position players pitching. Dixon’s inning May 16 was the first by a Detroit position player since Gardenhire took over as manager last season. But after four games in 48 hours, Gardenhire had little choice. His starter was ineffective, his bullpen was taxed, and with four more games coming up before their off-day Monday, they needed to get through Wednesday.

It’s the same reason why they pulled the plug on the Trevor Rosenthal project, designating the hard-throwing former All-Star for assignment.

“He's worked his way through,” Gardenhire said. “He's gotten better and better. His arm's there. He's just got to continue working on it. We think he's on the right path coming back from Tommy John [surgery], and eventually he'll get there. That's a power arm that can really throw the ball. The big thing with him is just [going] one inning at a time, and we just have a hard time keeping it one inning at a time. We need multiple-inning guys.”

A confluence of problems brought the Tigers to this point -- with Dixon, with Rosenthal, and with their pitching staff in general:

Quick exits from starters

While the Tigers played four games in 48 hours, none of their starters finished the sixth inning. Even in Detroit’s win Tuesday night, starter Drew VerHagen delivered five innings of one-run ball over 79 pitches before Gardenhire went to his bullpen, looking to protect the lead for a badly-needed victory.

The only Tigers starter to complete six innings since the start of last week was Jordan Zimmermann, who went six innings last Sunday at Texas. On Wednesday, the White Sox taxed Tyler Alexander for 102 pitches over 4 1/3 innings. Though he only walked one batter, his pitch count soared thanks to nine hits and 25 foul balls.

“The kid was out there doing everything he could,” Gardenhire said. “They were fouling off pitches, tons of pitches. He ended up throwing 100 pitches in five innings. He didn't quite make it.”

According to research on baseball-reference, Alexander became the first Tiger to throw 100 pitches without completing five innings since Matthew Boyd on May 26, 2017. He’s the first Tiger to do so without multiple walks since Drew Smyly on May 31, 2014.

“I felt like I threw the ball well today, actually, which is kind of sad,” Alexander said. “But a lot of the hits in the first couple innings were ground balls. They just found holes. Some of them were hit hard. And then, [after] 100 pitches through four innings, I got a little tired there at the end.”

Which brings up the next point …

Defensive issues extend innings

While Alexander surrendered five balls in play with exit velocities over 100 mph, capped by Cordell’s 450-foot home run to left-center, he also didn’t get much help from his defense, a recurring theme for the Tigers this summer.

“We didn't play great defense in this series,” Gardenhire said. “We did make some really good plays, but consistently, we've got to get better defensively behind them.”

While Jordy Mercer barely missed a diving stop up the middle on former Tiger James McCann’s first-inning RBI double, he also couldn’t convert a Tim Anderson infield single leading off the third, a ball that had a .250 expected batting average according to Statcast. His error on a McCann grounder three batters later, a ball that carried a .290 expected batting average, extended the inning for Welington Castillo’s RBI double off the left-field fence.

Mercer’s error was his fourth in his last six games after playing relatively solid shortstop for most of July. His Defensive Runs Saved for the season dropped over the past week to negative-6; his career low is minus-9, set in 2016 and matched last year.

The Tigers signed Mercer to a one-year contract last offseason to help stabilize their middle infield while buying time for shortstop prospect Willi Castro to develop at this season Triple-A Toledo. Castro, a Triple-A All-Star earlier this season, is in line for a callup when rosters expand in September, if not sooner.

Relief struggles

The Tigers’ negative-220 run differential is lowest in the Majors. More than a third of that has come in the seventh (minus-39) and eighth (minus-44) innings. Their bullpen was thin on experience even before Shane Greene’s trade to Atlanta last week. With Greene gone and Joe Jimenez closing, the Tigers have a mash-up of relievers before the ninth. With Rosenthal now gone, only Buck Farmer and Blaine Hardy have a full season in the Majors besides Jimenez, and the inexperience shows.

“We just have to find innings. We need innings-eaters,” Gardenhire said. “We can't keep [going] one inning here, one inning there right now, and I think you guys see that. We're stretching people out probably as much as he possibly can. We just have to have innings right now.”

The result of the three factors is a domino effect that leaves Gardenhire making decisions just to get through some games at times in hopes of a better chance to win tomorrow. But lately, the struggles are compounding.