Tigers tab rookie Troy Melton for abbreviated start in Game 1 of ALDS

Chris McCosky, The Detroit News on Oct 3, 2025

Published in Baseball

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SEATTLE — Troy Melton was on the plane with his teammates late Thursday night, trying to relax after the Tigers’ clinched the wild-card series and celebrated like rock stars at Progressive Field, when his phone buzzed.

“You’re going Game 1,” read the text from manager AJ Hinch.

“Let’s go!” Melton said.

Hinch announced Friday that Melton, the rookie right-hander with 46 big league innings under his belt, will get the ball first in Game 1 of the ALDS Saturday against the Seattle Mariners.

“Honestly, if I could have drawn it up, that's what I would be doing,” Melton told reporters after the Tigers’ worked out at T-Mobile Park Friday. “But it's kind of cool to look back on it, how fast it has happened. When I started the year in (Double-A) Erie, I didn't want to finish the year in Erie.

“Obviously much better to be here in Seattle starting a playoff game than whatever I would be doing right now.”

How long the start lasts will depend on Melton’s efficiency.

“We're excited to hand him the ball,” Hinch said. “Plus stuff, great demeanor, the ability to handle what's probably going to be the most excitable outing for him in a couple months' worth of major league outings.

“It's going to be somewhat abbreviated, just given how we've used him over the last couple of months. But we have a plan after him, as well.”

Funny thing about Melton. His definition of abbreviated is a bit different. He made what was meant to be a short-innings start against the White Sox in August and ended up pitching five, one-hit shutout innings.

He was meant to open the game in Cleveland on Sept. 25 and he covered 3 2/3 innings in 49 pitches.

“Number one, we see this guy as a starting pitcher,” Hinch said. “I don't want the back of the baseball card in his major league experience to take anything away from what we see. This is a guy with multiple plus pitches, high-end velo. He can throw strikes in all quadrants of the strike zone. He can attack lefties. He can attack righties.

“He is a starter.”

But with the way the pitching staff was constructed after the trade deadline — also to limit his workload after a long season in Double-A and Triple-A — Melton was moved into a quasi-leverage, multi-inning part of Hinch’s path-to-victory bullpen.

“We've limited his innings and limited a little bit of his exposure just out of the length of the season and what we've needed to get to this point, but he has all the starter attributes that you would expect,” Hinch said. “Had we gone a different path in the back half of this season or if he was in a different point in his career, maybe he would just continue to be in the rotation.”

Melton has pitched well in the bullpen role, though he got nicked for four runs in the Game 2 loss in the wild-card series.

“I love that he's adaptable,” Hinch said. “And I think that he can handle the moment. The excitement, telling his family that he's starting a playoff game, getting to what's going to be a rowdy environment in a big series.”

Melton hasn’t been awed or overwhelmed by anything that he’s experienced, good and bad.

“I think it's just who I am,” he said. “I'm pretty even-keeled as it is. Once you get out on the mound, the job is exactly the same. You want to get outs as fast as you can, as much as you can. Kind of makes it easy when that mentality doesn't change for me at all.

“It hasn't been too big of an adjustment. Whatever they need from me, I'm ready to go for whatever they want.”

Whether this turns into more of a bullpen game or not, Hinch said, will be determined by how the early innings shake out.

“We try not to script it out too much, because I don't know how the game's going to go,” he said. “I'm going to read the game. I have an idea where his limitations are, but I hate to even put that on him going into this start because of the outing like he had where it was 50 pitches, five innings. I'm going to keep rolling with him.

“Other times he's been in some duress and had to work a little harder and I've had to get him out. It’s not a traditional start, but not necessarily a limited one either.”