Tigers' bats prove they 'can do it all' during unreal power surge

ANAHEIM -- The Tigers have turned aggressive baserunning, outfield gap-slashing and tenacious at-bats into their offensive brand, a fitting style for spacious Comerica Park. But in the right situations, they can slug the ball.

Their current road trip, covering 10 games across three different time zones, is that situation. They’re flying everywhere, and so are their hits.

“We can do it all,” said Kerry Carpenter, who fell a triple shy of a cycle in a four-hit, five-RBI performance as the Tigers took three of four from the Angels with a 13-1 win Sunday afternoon. “And I think there’s a lot of guys that are coming into their own.”

Carpenter, alongside Spencer Torkelson and Riley Greene, is the face of the power-hitting side of this team. He punishes right-handed pitching to such a degree that Angels manager Ron Washington leaned on left-handed relief late in Thursday’s series opener to deny Carpenter a pinch-hitting opportunity. The Tigers won that game anyway with an eight-run eighth inning.

But the past four games at Angel Stadium, and three before that at Houston’s Daikin Park, have shown the Tigers have more power threats. While Carpenter’s three-run home run to straightaway center was Sunday’s highlight, Sweeney had his own three-run homer, his second home run in three days, as part of a four-hit, six-RBI performance. Colt Keith’s two-run homer was his third homer in five days.

Greene’s MLB record-setting two-homer ninth inning Friday followed a two-homer game Monday in Houston. Javier Báez homered in three consecutive games from Wednesday through Friday. Spencer Torkelson hit a pair of home runs at Angel Stadium. Dillon Dingler hit Thursday's go-ahead homer off lefty Reid Detmers.

Add it up, and the Tigers’ 20 home runs on this trip are their most over any seven-game stretch since Sept. 14-20, 2004.

Yes, Houston’s home park is homer-friendly. Angel Stadium, not as much, especially in night games. Yet the Tigers’ 34 runs in four games off Angels pitching marks Detroit’s highest-scoring series since posting 37 runs over four games in Houston from May 2-5, 2013. That Tigers lineup included Miguel Cabrera, Prince Fielder, Victor Martinez, Torii Hunter, Jhonny Peralta and current Tigers broadcaster Andy Dirks.

“I think as an offense, we hit fastballs really well,” said Keith, who was homerless for the season until this week. “This team threw a lot of fastballs, and it’s a good park to hit in. We were just putting the barrel on the ball. You don’t have to do too much here, and balls will carry out. It flies a lot better in the daytime.”

With three games against the Rockies at Coors Field beginning Tuesday night to close out this trip, they’ll have more opportunities. It’s a tremendous lift amidst the toughest travel stretch the Tigers will face in the regular season. Detroit will play four consecutive series in four different time zones for the first time in franchise history.

“We have a pretty good offense, and it comes from different places,” manager A.J. Hinch said. “Today it was a little bit of everybody. We don’t care who’s going to get the biggest at-bat, or who’s going to get the biggest hit. It feels like this type of offense that we have, it can come from anywhere.”

Carpenter’s output included hits with exit velocities of 103.0, 104.9 and 106.8 mph. He hit the first pitch of the afternoon from Angels starter Jack Kochanowicz on a line into left field for an opposite-field leadoff single, then turned on a sweeper down and in for a line drive that deflected off right fielder Jo Adell’s glove and bounced off the right-field wall for a two-run double as part of a three-run second inning.

After flying out in the fourth inning, Carpenter struck again in the sixth, this time off reliever Michael Darrell-Hicks, whose 1-0 sinker that was meant for the outside corner wandered over the middle of the plate. Carpenter crushed it 413 feet to the shrubbery beyond the center-field fence for his eighth home run of the year and his third of the road trip.

Carpenter stepped to the plate in the seventh with a shot at the Tigers’ first cycle since Carlos Guillen on Aug. 1, 2006. Angels rookie reliever José Fermín denied him by spotting a slider for a called third strike. A final attempt came in the ninth, but Carpenter instead knocked his second single.

“He was hitting everything,” Washington said. “We threw him some offspeed pitches off the plate, he laid the bat out there and got a base hit. We tried to sink balls on him, he got under them. He just was on today.”