DETROIT — Rookie Keider Montero pitched Detroit’s first shutout in three seasons and the Tigers beat the Colorado Rockies 11-0 Tuesday night.
Montero (5-6) was making his 14th major league start and became the first Tigers pitcher with nine shutout innings since Spencer Turnbull‘s no-hitter in Seattle on May 18, 2021.
“I was just trying to put every pitch in the strike zone and (catcher Jake Rogers) called a great game,” Montero said through a translator. “Regardless of the score, I was attacking hitters. I knew I had the guys behind me who would make the plays.”
The 24-year-old right-hander needed 96 pitchers while facing the minimum 27 batters. He allowed three singles and struck out five without walking a batter.
“Obviously, this is a huge night for Keider and a huge night for us,” Tigers manager A.J. Hinch said.
Montero expected to pitch to Dillon Dingler, who has caught him regularly in Triple-A Toledo and Detroit, but a late lineup change meant he was working with Rogers for only the second time this season.
“We ambushed him with a new catcher about 90 minutes before the game, which isn’t the plan, but he and Jake did a great job,” Hinch said.
All of Colorado’s singles — Ryan McMahon in the second, Ezequiel Tovar in the seventh and Aaron Schunk in the eighth — were followed by double plays by the Tigers’ infield.
“He’s just got a really solid four-pitch mix – a lively fastball, two different breaking balls and a good changeup — and he throws a ton of strikes,” Rockies manager Bud Black said. “A game like that is rare in this era — a complete game with a low pitch count.
“But it shows what you can do if you change speeds, move the ball on both sides of the plate and keep it down.”
Parker Meadows hit a solo homer in the first inning, his seventh, and drove in three runs.
Rockies starter Bradley Blalock (1-3) allowed five runs on five hits with five walks in four innings.
“Bradley was the opposite of Montero,” Black said. “He didn’t walk a batter in nine innings and Bradley had five walks and 80-plus pitches in four innings. You’ve got to get the ball in the strike zone.”
Colorado pitchers retired the final 23 batters in Sunday’s 4-1 win in Milwaukee, but that streak ended when Meadows hit Blalock’s second pitch into the right-field stands. It was the first time Meadows and Blalock — high school teammates at Grayson High School in Georgia — had faced each other in the majors.
The Tigers loaded the bases in the second on two walks and an error, and Riley Greene tripled into the right-field corner to make it 4-0. Matt Vierling followed with an RBI single to put Detroit up by five.
Meadows had a two-run single off Anthony Molina in the sixth, making it 7-0, and he scored the eighth run on Vierling’s sacrifice fly. Andy Ibanez had a two-run single later in what became a six-run inning for the Tigers.
The last Tigers pitcher to achieve a “Maddux” — a shutout in fewer than 100 pitches named after Hall of Fame pitcher Greg Maddux — was David Price against Cleveland on June 12, 2015.
According to STATS, Montero is the first MLB rookie to have a 27-batter “Maddux” since it began tracking pitch counts in 1988.