This story was originally published by Dead Spin
Madden 24 is coming to Major League Baseball.
That’s 24-year-old right-hander Ty Madden, and he will be the 10th player to make his major league debut for the Detroit Tigers this season when he starts Monday night’s series finale against the host Chicago White Sox, who hit an unenviable round number of their own with Sunday’s 9-4 loss to the Tigers.
Madden’s debut has the potential to serve dual purposes. The No. 32 overall pick in the 2021 MLB Draft, he needed to be added to Detroit’s 40-man roster before mid-November, or he would have been exposed to other teams via MLB’s Rule V draft.
More immediately, the Tigers have won 10 of their past 13 games, including the first three games of this series. Their surge has them within one game of .500, and they’re clinging to the fringe of the American League wild-card race, 7 1/2 games out of the final berth, although they would have to climb over four teams to pull it off.
Madden’s numbers this season, covering 22 starts combined in Double-A and Triple-A, are scary at first sight: 3-5 with a 6.98 ERA.
One of his catchers in the minors, Dillon Dingler, is another of the Tigers’ newbies this season and is familiar with Madden’s struggles.
“He was just having some trouble locating some secondary pitches, and then that overexposed his fastball. … Fastball is really good location-wise, and then he’s able to drive his other pitches to the optimal locations, whether it be cutters up and in, sliders down and away, splitter down,” Dingler told the Detroit Free Press.
While Madden has 43 walks and 124 strikeouts this season, he has made notable progress in his past four starts. In 24 innings, he has only five walks while striking out 37.
“A lot of it with Ty is being able to use his pitches correctly,” Detroit manager A.J. Hinch said. “The split has come along. The breaking ball has come along. The fastball is a continued work in progress. … It’s making adjustments from delivery to usage to a combination of those two.”
The free-falling White Sox know all about scary numbers. Their loss to the Tigers on Sunday was their 100th of the season, marking back-to-back years of triple-digit futility.
They’re also historically bad — the second team in the modern era to lose at least 100 games over the first 131 games of a season. The other was the 1916 Philadelphia A’s, who finished 36-117-1.
“Everyone in that locker room is aware of the record and how frustrating it is. Absolutely,” interim manager Grady Sizemore said.
In its latest round of woes, Chicago has lost seven of eight games.
Starter Jonathan Cannon, a rookie who took the loss on Sunday, said the White Sox are “a bunch of guys that come in here every single day and work as hard as we can. Obviously no one wants to lose 100 games, especially with still a month to go. But we’re going to keep coming here every day, getting our work in, and keep just going out there and trying to win some ballgames.”
Right-hander Davis Martin (0-2, 3.22 ERA) will start for Chicago on Monday. He will be making his fourth straight start and fifth appearance overall this season.
Martin struggled against the host San Francisco Giants on Tuesday, surrendering three runs (two earned) on four hits and two walks in 4 1/3 innings. He struck out five and took the 4-1 loss.
In his two previous starts, however — at Oakland and at home against the New York Yankees — he dodged a combined six hits, four walks and a hit batter in allowing just one run in a pair of no-decisions.
In three appearances against the Tigers, including two starts, Martin is 1-1 with a 2.08 ERA in 17 1/3 innings. All of those outings came in 2022.
–Field Level Media
