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Who is River Hamilton? LSU commit picked by Detroit Tigers in 2025 MLB Draft
MLB draft skilled Tyler Jennings from Just Baseball breaks down what followers have to learn about pitcher River Hamilton.
You wanna know what was so cool in regards to the previous few days for the Detroit Tigers?
Not solely did right-hander Jack Flaherty win the opener of a crucial three-game collection towards the American League West-leading Houston Astros – Flaherty tossed seven innings for the primary time as a Tiger in a 10-0 win, on Monday, Aug.18.
Not solely did the Tigers win a 10-inning nailbiter within the second sport towards Houston, a 1-0 thriller on Tuesday, August 19 – Gleyber Torres picked up his five hundredth profession RBI on a walk-off stroll, of all issues.
Not solely did they end off the sweep with a 7-2 victory on Wednesday, Aug. 20 – successful the season collection towards Houston and clinching a tiebreaker for the AL’s first-round bye if wanted.
But past all that, there was one thing else, one thing behind the scenes, one thing heartwarming smack dab in the midst of all these epic video games – Tigers first baseman Spencer Torkelson performed catch with Grant Harper, a 14-year-old from Southfield with Down syndrome.
It was a part of a Miracle League occasion on Tuesday afternoon in Southfield. Maybe, in case your coronary heart is ice-cold, you’ll say: Big deal, so the Tigers did some group service.
But take into consideration that and put it into context. Just a few hours earlier than that insanely dramatic sport on Tuesday night time – an exhausting sport that appeared to final endlessly, full of all types of motion and depth – Torkelson, Zach McKinstry and Parker Meadows (who’s on the injured record however rehabbing with the Tigers) took time to hang around with children with bodily and psychological disabilities on a moist, soggy afternoon.
“It was incredible,” Meadows stated. “I had a smile on my face the whole time.”
Meadows pitched whiffle balls to children: “I almost got hit, like, three times in the face by some of the comebacks,” he stated, smiling laborious. “Some of those kids go through everyday struggles and for them to just be out there with a smile on their face means a lot to me.”
Meant rather a lot to the youngsters, too.
“It was awesome,” stated Jeff Harper, whose son Grant performed in a gaggle with Torkelson. “The players looked like they really wanted to be there, like they really enjoyed playing with all the kids.”
Torkelson confirmed a particular persistence with Grant, who’s going to be a freshman at Birmingham Groves.
“We’re used to my son sometimes acting out,” Jeff Harper stated. “We weren’t sure how Torkelson would react to that but he actually dealt with it very well. He was wonderful.”
Torkelson has been great on the sector, too. At that second of the Miracle League occasion, Torkelson had a career-long on-base streak of 15 video games, slashing .308/.419/.500 over that span.
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“It just shows you that baseball is more than a game,” McKinstry stated.
Later Tuesday night time, after the Miracle occasion, McKinstry tripled within the fifth inning, becoming a member of Boston’s Jarren Duran as the one different participant this season to document at the least 9 triples, 10 residence runs and 19 stolen bases. He is the primary Tigers participant since Austin Jackson in 2011 to succeed in these totals in a single season.
“It was fun,” McKinstry stated in regards to the occasion with the youngsters.
But he might have been speaking in regards to the collection towards the Astros, too.
And that’s the purpose – all of this blends collectively.
Good, sincere dudes
Make no mistake, the Tigers are full of a bunch of excellent dudes. Good people.
To some folks, that doesn’t matter on a baseball discipline. There have been loads of jerks who’ve performed – and succeeded in – skilled baseball.
But perhaps it does matter when a staff is scuffling.
Maybe it issues in how a staff responds to failure and wrestle, just like the Tigers’ skid in July that featured 12 losses in 13 video games.
“After the second half, we sucked for two weeks and it was painful,” Javier Báez stated on Tuesday’s Tigers broadcast.
Yes, there’s a brutal honesty on this staff. No sugarcoating something. Which is a part of the staff tradition.
Maybe a staff full of jerks crumbles and by no means recovers from that dropping skid, if there’s dishonesty and finger-pointing and blaming as a substitute of resolve and cohesion.
And whereas many followers freaked out when the Tigers didn’t usher in an enormous identify on the commerce deadline, perhaps it was simply as vital the kind of participant they did usher in. The kind of human.
They didn’t mess with the chemistry.
Charlie Morton, the 41-year-old right-hander obtained on the deadline to bolster the rotation, is a superb dude. No query. He’s a grown man with children. But he may nonetheless pitch. He has struck out at the least eight in two of his first 4 begins with the Tigers and has thrown at the least six innings with two runs or much less allowed in three.
And right-handed reliever Kyle Finnegan suits the tradition completely – he’s prepared to take any position within the bullpen. All he desires to do is win.
That issues.
Because each participant who joins the Tigers talks in regards to the tradition within the clubhouse.
What we realized about Tigers
You know the opposite large takeaway from this three-game sweep?
Almost each single participant on the roster made some type of contribution to those three wins.
“It’s the depth of this team,” McKinstry stated. “We do a great job of just implementing everybody in the game.”
I do know the Tigers may need caught the Astros on the excellent time – they got here in scuffling and are actually 7-9 in August. But contemplate this: The Tigers simply put collectively a streak of 26 shutout innings. From the fifth inning on Sunday, Aug. 17, at Minnesota till Wednesday’s fourth inning on August 20, no opponent crossed the plate towards Tigers pitching. That is tied for the Tigers’ longest such streak – with the 1973 (May 24-26) and 1990 (Sept. 8-11) squads – up to now 70 years, based on Elias.
That’s not only a reflection of nice pitching. That occurs due to nice protection and nice preparation and nice game-calling by the catchers and nice positioning by the defensive coaches and so many tiny issues that change into large issues.
At the identical time, the Tigers scored 18 runs over three full video games – though they scored simply as soon as within the center 10 innings.
“It just tells you what a winning team has to be,” Tigers supervisor A.J. Hinch stated after Wednesday’s win. “One part of your game is always going to be sort of brought along by the other parts. When you sync it all up together, I see a really good team. We continue to play winning baseball. We make good plays. The (Andy) Ibáñez error is picked up by two punchouts. It’s a team game that you need to pick up each other. You also need to create some innings by by doing good things in a row.”
The collection sweep put the Tigers (76-53) again atop the American League. They entered Thursday, Aug. 21, with a 99.7% likelihood to make the postseason and a 9.3% likelihood to win the World Series, based on Baseball Reference.
“It’s only going to get more exciting,” Hinch stated. “It’s only going to get more intense. It doesn’t matter what the lead is. We keep stacking wins and playing good baseball, wer’e going to be a problem for somebody. We got to earn it and we still have not been declared anything other than a team that just swept a first place team.”
It’s a staff with a bunch of excellent dudes taking part in successful baseball.
And within the midst of this pressure-packed collection, they discovered time for some Miracle baseball, too.
Contact Jeff Seidel: [email protected]. Follow him @seideljeff. To learn his latest columns, go to freep.com/sports activities/jeff-seidel.
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