DETROIT — In the fifth inning Wednesday, Justyn-Henry Malloy was due up, and Kerry Carpenter lurked on the bench.
Dating to the start of 2024, only Aaron Judge, Shohei Ohtani and Kyle Tucker have higher slugging percentages than Carpenter. Detroit Tigers manager A.J. Hinch often talks of the decision point Carpenter’s presence creates for other managers. Here was one of those moments.
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San Diego Padres skipper Mike Shildt could have pulled left-handed starter Kyle Hart in favor of a right-handed reliever. Shildt surely knew Hinch would have inserted Carpenter in place of Malloy. So Shildt had to pick his poison. Carpenter brings such prodigious power from the left side that his teammates call him “Kerry Bonds.” Malloy hits right-handed with such sure plate discipline that they call him the human version of baseball’s ABS system.
Preferring to keep Carpenter on the bench, Shildt stuck with his starter. Malloy, it should be noted, had been mired in a 2-for-20 slump. That changed when Hart hung a 1-1 slider and Malloy finally found the sweet spot. The baseball left Malloy’s bat at 111 mph and sailed into the visiting bullpen. The Tigers took a 2-0 lead.
And in the dugout after the home-run trot, Carpenter and Malloy shared a hug. Hinch stood near them, smiling.
“I told (Malloy) he owed Carp dinner,” Hinch said, “because Carp got part of that home run.”
That was only one moment in Wednesday’s eventual 6-0 victory that typified why the Tigers are off to a 15-10 start, why they are 10-3 at home and why they have largely continued the success they found in last year’s frantic playoff run.
The Tigers just took two of three from the Padres, who entered as perhaps baseball’s hottest team. After getting swept to open the season against the Dodgers, the Tigers have won six of their past seven series. It is early, and the standings now may hardly resemble what they will look like in September. But the Tigers keep proving there is a method to their madness. What they do keeps working, and they might not be going away anytime soon.
“I think knowing that we can do it and that last two-month stretch was pretty special, maybe it just opened our eyes that we can go out there and compete for the division this year,” Carpenter said this week. “We got to take Cleveland off the throne. We got a lot of competition. But yeah, the confidence we have after last year is pretty special.”
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The Tigers do not win in the most conventional of fashions. Even with young hitters such as Carpenter and Riley Greene emerging as names to know, their lineup is not laden with stars. This team remains greater than the sum of its parts.
Zach McKinstry, traded from the Cubs for spare parts before the 2023 season, has played five positions for the Tigers this season and has an .895 OPS. With double-digit players on the injured list, the much-maligned Javier Báez is even joining in on the beautiful mayhem. The shortstop on a $140 million contract is now playing center field for the first time in his MLB career. Wednesday, Báez sprinted 116 feet and made a basket-style catch at the wall, securing an out on a ball with a .950 expected batting average.
“Contributing to a win is something that we talk about all the time,” Hinch said. “My joke with him was, ‘You’re gonna get so good I’m gonna leave you out there.’”
As a whole, the Tigers are far from speed demons. They entered the day tied for last with only eight stolen bases in 2025. But what they lack in pure sprint speed they make up for with relentless aggression. The Tigers take the extra base — advancing more than one bag on singles or more than two bags on doubles— at a 56 percent clip, the best rate of any team in the American League.
J-Hen tacks on another! pic.twitter.com/fC79MZTemO
— Detroit Tigers (@tigers) April 23, 2025
Their breakneck style was put into evidence again Wednesday, when Malloy hit a single down the right-field line with Trey Sweeney on first. As Sweeney rounded second, Padres right-fielder Oscar Gonzalez stumbled and fell while corralling the ball. Sweeney was running with his back toward the play. He had no way of knowing Gonzalez hit the ground. But Tigers third-base coach Joey Cora is so aggressive it has turned into a running gag. Greene has joked about being so used to getting waved home he rarely even looks at Cora. On the rare occasions Cora gives a runner a stop sign, it becomes a topic for the next 24 hours. So Sweeney came across second without breaking stride. Cora waved his warm like a windmill. Sweeney hurried across third, cutting across the inner corner of the bag, and blazed toward home, sliding in with on-deck batter Gleyber Torres directing him toward the outside of the plate.
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“When they redirected the ball to second, it gave us an opportunity to — what felt like — steal a run,” Hinch said. “But it all starts with the effort level of Trey Sweeney.”
Even with regulars such as Matt Vierling and Parker Meadows on the IL, and even with the likes of Greene and Colt Keith yet to hit their strides at the plate, the Tigers’ lineup has exceeded expectations, ranking ninth in overall offensive production entering Wednesday’s game. The team is loaded with likable stories, with McKinstry’s unexpected rise and Spencer Torkelson’s against-the-odds reclamation leading the charge.
More than anything, pitching has been the catalyst that got the Tigers back into the playoffs last year and has them pushing toward serious contention again this season. Back in August and September, it was the patented “pitching chaos” approach leading the way. The Tigers used Tarik Skubal and a patchwork bullpen to mix and match and fluster opposing lineups into the ground. This season, the Tigers are operating with a more traditional rotation. So far, Tigers starters — Skubal, Jack Flaherty, Reese Olson, Jackson Jobe, Casey Mize and Keider Montero — entered play with the third-ranked rotation ERA in baseball. Wednesday, it was Olson’s turn, and the underrated baby-faced assassin spun 7 1/3 scoreless innings, dotting his slider and changeup at the bottom of the strike zone and punching out nine hitters along the way.
“Our staff is probably the nastiest in the league, I would say,” Olson said. “When the hitters and the pitchers come together and we’re all playing really well right now, it’s fun to watch.”
Amid a stretch where they are playing 23 games in 24 days, the Tigers have held together despite a taxed bullpen, calling upon unheralded arms such as Bailey Horn and Chase Lee to keep their homestand in order. At the plate, hitters have grinded out at-bats. The Tigers see more pitches in the first inning of games than any other AL team. Their plus-30 run differential serves as early evidence that this strong start could be for real.
“It’s a groove,” Malloy said. “It’s just the guys clicking on a lot of different cylinders. We’re playing the small game, we’re hitting the long ball, we’re running the bases really, really, really aggressively.”
Wednesday, the Tigers celebrated their latest series victory in a clubhouse filled with upbeat country tunes. Thursday, the Tigers get a needed off day, and several players plan to attend the Detroit Pistons’ playoff game across the street.
As for who’s buying dinner?
“Honestly, it started with a big hug,” Malloy said. “We’ll figure out dinner plans later.”
(Photo of Justyn-Henry Malloy: Junfu Han / USA Today Network)
