DETROIT — How many times does it seem like a hitter crushing a long drive barely foul, just missing a home run, sets up a strikeout?
It’s not just you. Hitters think it, too.
“Almost every time,” Colt Keith said.
It’s as if the foul ball lingers in the hitter’s head.
“Or it’s just a curse,” Keith said.
Wenceel Pérez wasn’t buying it. On a night when the Tigers crushed four homers in a 10-0 win over the Astros at Comerica Park, his refusal to give in to Spencer Arrighetti was arguably the key at-bat. It was certainly the breakthrough, the first of the homers.
Pérez had been on Arrighetti’s full arsenal after falling into an 0-2 count. He crushed a curveball into the seats down the right-field line on the sixth pitch of his fourth-inning at-bat, then got another curveball over the plate the very next pitch. Pérez got all of it, but he didn’t know if he’d kept it inside the foul pole.
“I thought it had a chance,” he said, “but I saw at the end that it was just going that way. I just said, ‘Oh, my God.’”
Arrighetti had to have thought of the curse, counting on Pérez to swing big, which is why he put the next curveball well off the plate on the eighth pitch of the at-bat. But Pérez knew what he was doing.
“I was seeing him pretty well,” Pérez said. “I knew that he was just trying to land the curve or make me swing at the curveball, so I was just trying to see it up and battle.”
He wasn’t thinking about the near-homer.
“I just cleared my mind,” he said. “It was just a foul ball. You have to reset to hit the ball again.”
With the count full, Arrighetti tried to sneak a cutter past him. Again, it was over the plate. Pérez, having seen the cutter for strike two seven pitches earlier, just missed it, fouling it back.
He wasn’t necessarily expecting Arrighetti to go back to the cutter for the 10th pitch, but he wanted to be ready if he did.
“I was just trying to get a good pitch,” Pérez said. “I knew that he loves his cutter, so I was trying to be ready.”
The 10th-pitch cutter was in nearly the same spot, but slightly more over the middle. Pérez’s swing left no doubt. It was fair, and it was gone.
“Twice in the rough, once in the fairway,” Jason Benetti proclaimed on the Tigers’ television broadcast.
The fourth-inning solo homer was the first of 10 Tigers runs, but it was the biggest.
“That was kind of the turning point of the game, I feel like,” Keith said. “After he hit that, we had more and more good at-bats, and we got to him.”
The Tigers have piled up long, productive at-bats in recent days, including nine walks on Saturday in Minnesota. Dillon Dingler had a 12-pitch walk in that game and saw 28 pitches over three plate appearances. Even in Sunday’s loss, the Tigers drew three walks in their first 12 batters against Twins starter Thomas Hatch before their final 20 outs came in order.
“We’ve been putting together pretty good at-bats here now for a week or so,” Dingler said. “Anytime you get to a 10-pitch at-bat, it’s pretty special. It means the guy’s really locked in, fighting for his team. And to finish it off [with a home run] to start it, awesome.”
Pérez has been particularly productive lately, batting .340 (16-for-47) with three homers, six RBIs, eight walks and 11 strikeouts in August. But he had never had a home run in as long of an at-bat as Monday’s duel with Arrighetti. He’d never even homered in a full count.
“Wenceel’s at-bat was incredible,” manager A.J. Hinch said, “just really, really in the at-bat. We preach it: When we control the strike zone, look how good the at-bats get.”
Pérez has been taking it to heart lately, knowing how pitchers are approaching him.
“I’m just trying to get my pitch, try to be patient, try to know when the pitcher’s going to attack you,” he said. “I like to swing a lot. They know that I like to swing. So they’ll throw me a lot of balls to make me swing at pitches out of the zone, so I’ve been trying to be more patient and try to swing at pitches that are in the zone.”
All six of Pérez’s swings in that at-bat came on pitches in the zone. He did not swing out at any of the three pitches out of the zone.
