Young Tigers giving a flash of the future -- in the present

SEATTLE -- According to Detroit manager A.J. Hinch, the Tigers have 14 players on their 26-man roster who had never set foot inside T-Mobile Park prior to Tuesday’s series opener against the American League West-leading Mariners.

One of those youngsters, 24-year-old right-hander Keider Montero, entered Tuesday's start with a 6.18 ERA and emerged with one of his strongest performances thus far.

Detroit has one of the youngest teams in the sport and a pitching staff decimated by injuries. It’s not exactly the recipe for a division contender. And yet, the Tigers continue to play hard and act like they belong, regardless of their age and the fact that they dealt away key veterans at the recently passed Trade Deadline.

Their future is bright, but their present has been better than expected -- and that continued in a 4-2 victory over Seattle that removed a bit of the sting of their recently completed 2-7 homestand and improved their season record to 54-60.

"It’s a young core we have here,” said rookie center fielder Parker Meadows, who went 2-for-4 with a home run and two RBIs. “It’s fun chemistry and the staff is playing into it as well. We’re just going in every day like it’s a new day and having fun with it."

It’s a lot of fun when the starting pitching clicks. That’s what happened with Montero, who turned in one of the best starts of his brief career, going six innings and giving up one run on four hits while striking out a career-high eight.

Montero, Detroit's No. 7 prospect per MLB Pipeline who made his Major League debut just this past May 29, didn’t allow himself to succumb to stressful moments as he did in previous starts. For example, in the sixth inning, he gave up a leadoff single to Josh Rojas and hit Victor Robles with a pitch, but quickly collected himself and threw a two-seam fastball to Randy Arozarena that led to a shattered bat, a double play and all the momentum Detroit needed to escape that situation unscathed.

"We were trying to get him to do exactly what he did,” said catcher Dillon Dingler, also a rookie. “That was probably the turning point of the game, getting that huge two-ball."

For Hinch, it was another sign of Montero's maturation.

"He made really big pitches in really important times to keep their innings at bay,” Hinch said. “He didn’t create his own messes, he came through with some really timely three-ball pitches, he got below the zone, he got up top. I think the offspeed was really good, so it was one of his better outings.

"He’s had some pretty good ones that show us exactly why we’re excited about him at the big league level.”

Montero said Tuesday’s results provided more evidence that his mental approach is starting to pay off.

"One of the things I’ve been doing is to calm myself down and put the emotions down on the mound,” he said through an interpreter. “I like to impose my rhythm on the mound, so it’s one of the things we’ve been working on and we’ve been making progress with it, so I’m very proud of what we’ve been doing."

The Tigers, meanwhile, took advantage of opportunities against a perennial Cy Young Award contender in Seattle starter Luis Castillo.

They started the scoring in the fourth inning when Wenceel Pérez led off with a single and moved to third on two groundouts. Meadows came through with an RBI single to give Detroit a 1-0 lead, and the Tigers extended that advantage to 3-0 in the fifth when Colt Keith and Pérez hit back-to-back RBI singles.

Meadows gave the Tigers insurance with a home run to right field in the eighth inning off Trent Thornton, his fourth long ball of the year. Tigers relievers Will Vest, Jason Foley, Beau Brieske and Tyler Holton held the Mariners to one run through the last three innings to close it out.

Once again, the Tigers refused to do anything but grind and work toward becoming the young, aggressive, winning team they’d like to become.

"The first-to-thirds, I thought, were really good,” Hinch said. “Putting pressure on them was key, and bunching some good at-bats together proved to be important."