When the Cleveland Guardians needed Triston McKenzie most, he delivered on Thursday night.
The 24-year-old right-hander took the mound in hopes of helping the Guardians stop their two-game losing streak and get them back into the win column.
And McKenzie completely dominated the Detroit Tigers, pitching eight scoreless innings and striking out a career-high 12 batters as the Guardians won by a final of 4-0.
He also did not walk a batter, improved his record to 7-6, and lowered his ERA on the season to 3.20.
Guardians insider Zack Meisel posted a tweet featuring all of McKenzie’s stats from last night’s game, showing just how dominant he was against the Tigers.
Triston McKenzie tonight:
8 innings (ties career high)
5 hits
0 runs
0 walks
12 strikeouts (career high)
109 pitches (career high)
1 standing ovation
95.6 mph max fastball velocitySeason ERA down to 3.20.
— Zack Meisel (@ZackMeisel) July 15, 2022
McKenzie Dominates The Tigers
McKenzie is a young stud in the Guardians rotation, and a dominant performance like that was needed badly, especially with the recent injury to Aaron Civale.
The Guardians had also just lost two out of three to the struggling Chicago White Sox.
McKenzie only allowed five hits and threw a career-high 109 pitches over his eight innings of work last night, prompting a nice standing ovation from the crowd at Progressive Field.
The win got the Guardians back to the .500 mark and got them to within 3.5 games of the first-place Minnesota Twins.
But with McKenzie dominating the way he did and other starters in the rotation pitching well such as Shane Bieber, Zach Plesac, and Cal Quantrill, the Guardians could find themselves on a run here shortly.
Pitching carried them to a win last night.
McKenzie went out and dominated the Tigers, giving the Guardians a much-needed eight innings in Thursday’s game.
We’ll see if that can help get the Guardians going again and put them in a better position to try and challenge the Twins in the AL Central.
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