DETROIT -- If there’s an image to summarize how things have flipped between the Tigers and Twins in the American League Central from last summer to this, it’s the sight of Bailey Ober on the mound on Saturday, looking to the ground after Riley Greene had crushed a sweeper 415 feet to right field.
Ober had Greene set up for the strikeout, putting him in a 1-2 count. Ober’s sweeper had a 42.6 percent whiff rate entering Saturday, according to Statcast, but a .391 batting average allowed. Ober spotted it perfectly, flipping the ball toward the bottom inside corner, but Greene was on it.
“I saw it pop out of the hand and just went, to be honest,” Greene said.
Greene’s 18th home run of the season was the third of four Tigers homers off Ober in Saturday’s 10-5 victory at Comerica Park. Ober had allowed two home runs over 37 innings at Comerica Park for his career previously.
The last time the Tigers hit four home runs in a game off a pitcher, Alex Avila, Miguel Cabrera, J.D. Martinez and Nick Castellenos went deep off Texas’ A.J. Griffin on May 20, 2017. It takes a good lineup to get that many good swings off a pitcher, but also a good pitcher to stay in long enough to give them up.
Ober finished June with 14 homers allowed. But he also hadn’t lost to the Tigers since Aug. 9, 2023. He went 3-0 in four starts against Detroit last season, allowing just two earned runs on 13 hits in 26 innings, with a 28-to-3 strikeout-to-walk ratio.
“That guy's been hard on us,” manager A.J. Hinch said. “We've faced him a lot over the years, and I know he's battled some inconsistencies this year, but when I see him out there, I know that he can do a lot of different things to disrupt timing.”
When Ober tossed eight innings of one-run ball with 11 strikeouts in their last meeting last July 28 at Comerica Park, the Tigers looked done. They were sellers at the Trade Deadline two days later. Two weeks later, they started on their incredible late-season run to eventually pass the Twins for a Wild Card spot.
They haven’t looked back. On Saturday, Ober was left to look back as the home runs left the park.
“We know him,” Greene said. “We've faced him a bunch, just hadn't been able to get to him a lot. Today was huge. It's a good win.”
For an inning, Ober seemed to pick up where he’d left off last season, striking out Torres and Greene after Colt Keith’s single to lead off the first. Spencer Torkelson’s double off the fence in left-center led off the second inning and set up a Matt Vierling sacrifice fly in his return from the injured list.
It was a harbinger of swings to come. Kerry Carpenter, who caught a potential Trevor Larnach home run at the left-field fence in the second inning, crushed a 3-2 hanging slider from Ober for a game-tying homer in the bottom of the third, joining Greene and Torkelson in the 15-homer club for the season. Gleyber Torres followed Jake Rogers’ sacrifice bunt and Keith’s go-ahead sacrifice fly by ambushing Ober’s first-pitch fastball for a two-run homer in the fourth.
Ober barely had a chance to catch his breath. Tigers starter Casey Mize ensured that, following Detroit’s go-ahead rally by retiring the Twins in order on just four pitches in the fifth.
“I’m surprised they were swinging that much after a long inning there,” Mize said, “but I’ll take it. I’m sure their starter didn’t love that.”
The Tigers led off the next two innings with homers -- first from Greene, then from Zach McKinstry, who turned on an Ober changeup and sent it down the right-field line for his fifth home run of the season to lead off the sixth.
“We look up and we did a lot of damage against him,” Hinch said. “That felt good for us, for our offense, coming off of last night, to break out.”
Mize (8-2) avenged an April 15 loss at Target Field and improved to 5-0 with a 2.00 ERA at home this season, retiring 13 of his final 15 batters after Byron Buxton’s third-inning homer gave Minnesota a short-lived 2-1 lead. With five hits, one walk and five strikeouts over 6 2/3 innings, Mize beat the Twins for just the second time in nine career meetings.