Tigers swept by A's; Mize struggles, offense held to two hits

Chris McCosky, The Detroit News on Aug 28, 2025

Published in Baseball

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Maybe it’s best to edit this entire series out of the Tigers’ year-end review. Just delete the footage. Flush the memory. Forget any of this ever happened.

If it were only that simple.

They ran into a young, enthusiastic and talented Athletics team playing its best baseball of the season and countered with three subpar performances rife with physical and mental misplays.

Predictably, the Tigers were swept out of Sacramento, losing the finale to the Athletics Wednesday, 7-0 at Sutter Health Park.

It’s four straight losses overall and their lead over the Royals in the Central Division is down to 8.5, with a three-game series set this weekend at Kauffman Stadium.

The first two games of the series were close. They were never in contention Wednesday.

Casey Mize, for the second straight start, struggled to lock in his command early. He needed 31 pitches to get through the first and did well to limit the damage to a run.

But with one out in the second, he gave up an infield single to No. 8 hitter Brett Harris and light-hitting Zack Gelof ambushed a first-pitch slider and launching it over the wall in left center.

Gelof came into the game hitting .063 and had just been recalled from Triple-A on Monday. The homer was his first hit of the series.

He got his second hit of the series in the eighth, a two-run, two-out double off lefty reliever Drew Sommers, raising his RBI total on the year from one to five.

That kind of series.

Mize ended up going 3.1 innings and was charged with five runs on seven hits. His ERA over his last seven starts has swelled from 3.15 to 3.95. And, insult to injury, he made a throwing error in the fourth inning. It was first error since 2021 and just the second of his career.

The Tigers were unable to muster much of a pushback against Cuban-born rookie Luis Morales.

In just his fourth big-league start, he stymied the Tigers on two hits over seven innings, bullying hitters with an electric four-seam fastball (97 to 99 mph) early and then cleverly mixing sweepers, sliders and changeups the second and third time through the order.

He finished with seven strikeouts.

Morales did give up some hard contact. Spencer Torkelson, who had been hitless in the series, drove a triple off the wall in left-center in the second inning, but ended up stranded when second baseman Gelof made a leaping stab of Zach McKinstry’s two-out liner.

First baseman Nick Kurtz took extra bases away from Kerry Carpenter in the first inning with a diving play on a ball ripped down the line. Centerfielder Lawrence Butler made a long running catch on a drive to the wall by Riley Greene in the fourth.

Butler took a hit away from McKinstry with a diving catch in the seventh.

Only once, though, did the Tigers have multiple base runners in an inning.

On the bright side, veteran right-hander Rafael Montero continues to state his case for a bigger role out of the bullpen. He quieted the pesky Athletics bats allowing only a walk in 2.2 innings with four strikeouts.

The Athletics, who are 21-10 since July 24, have actually had the Tigers’ number for a while now. They haven’t lost a series to them since 2016, posting a 40-13 record since the start of 2017.

The Tigers opted to spend Wednesday night in Sacramento and fly to Kansas City on the off day Thursday. In retrospect, after these three games, the decision seems punitive.