Spencer Torkelson blasts first home run in Tigers' win over Brewers

He lowered his ERA to 2.51 ERA through five starts.

More notably, Mize has featured a 0.98 ERA in his past three starts with a swing-and-miss splitter.

The lone run off Mize came with two outs in the third inning, when Brice Turang walked, stole second base and scored on William Contreras' single.

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Aside from that, Mize shut down the Brewers despite runners on base in five of his seven innings.

Mize departed after a leadoff walk to Garrett Mitchell in the seventh. Right-handed reliever Kyle Finnegan cleaned up by retiring the next three batters in a row.

The Tigers supported Mize with two runs in the fourth inning and two runs in the fifth inning.

In the fourth, Torkelson launched a two-run home run (after Riley Greene's double) for a 2-1 lead.

Patrick threw a fourth-pitch 95.1 mph sinker to Torkelson.

The pitch ran middle-in and Torkelson didn't miss it, driving the ball 400 feet to left-center field with a 106.4 mph exit velocity.

In the fifth, the Tigers extended their lead to 4-1 with Kevin McGonigle's RBI double and Colt Keith's RBI single, both against Patrick.

The inning began with a leadoff single from Javier Báez.

But the big moment belonged to McGonigle, who battled for 10 pitches – including five foul balls, with four of them in a row – before hitting a down-and-in 93.1 mph fastball that ricocheted off the wall in right field for an RBI double.

It was an epic plate appearance.

To complete the play, Báez scored from first base with a head-first slide.

With two outs, Keith ripped Patrick's sixth-pitch cutter in a full count for an RBI single. For that one, McGonigle scored standing up from third base.

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To get to the finish line, the Tigers relied on three right-handed relievers for the final three innings: Finnegan in the seventh, Will Vest in the eighth and Kenley Jansen in the ninth.

Vest surrendered one run in the eighth on Jake Bauers' RBI single with two outs.

That cut the Tigers' lead to 4-2.

The other two relievers tossed scoreless innings, including Jansen stranding the bases loaded in the ninth to secure the 482nd save of his 17-year MLB career. He has a 1.35 ERA over 6⅔ innings in eight games, all while inching closer to the 500 saves milestone.

Torkelson finished 1-for-4 in four plate appearances.

He is hitting .189 with a .603 OPS in 24 games.

In the eighth, Kerry Carpenter pushed the Tigers' lead back to three runs, at 5-2. He pulled a seventh-pitch changeup at the bottom of the strike zone from right-handed reliever Carlos Rodriguez for a solo home run with two outs.

It was his fifth homer in 22 games.

Contact Evan Petzold at epetzold@freepress.com or follow him @EvanPetzold.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Detroit Tigers' Spencer Torkelson homers in win over Milwaukee Brewers