Troy Melton Is Pitching Like the Tigers’ Next Cy Young Winner
· Yahoo Sports
Just over a week after trading away their ace and reigning two-time Cy Young winner, Tarik Skubal, it looks as if the Tigers may have already replaced him with a younger, newer model.
In place of Skubal atop the Tigers’ rotation is Troy Melton.
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Melton currently sits with a 7-1 record and a jaw-dropping 1.58 ERA through 13 starts on the season. Since making his season debut on May 24, Melton has posted a 1.58 ERA across 74 innings. Only Jacob Misiorowski (1.41) has a lower ERA among qualified starters in that span.
Melton would have been eligible for that statistical lead and potentially the Cy Young Award conversation if he had been pitching during the first couple months of the season. However, he missed some time to start the year with elbow inflammation.
Melton returned on May 24 and allowed eight runs over four games. Good, but not great.
That’s when Melton again went to the injured list for a couple of weeks. Since his second return, however, he has allowed just five earned runs over his past nine games.
In his past three games, Melton has pitched 20 straight innings without allowing an earned run. The only run allowed during that stretch came in Sunday’s contest, when the Tigers committed three straight errors to allow the first run with Melton on the mound.
Since July 1, Troy Melton has allowed just three earned runs in 42.1 innings pitched. That equates to a ridiculous 0.64 ERA over that span.
He has also pitched five or more innings while allowing two or fewer runs in each of his last nine starts, which is the longest active streak of its kind in the majors.
In Troy Melton’s last nine starts dating back to June 20, his numbers are insane:
54.1 IP | 5 ER | 0.83 ERA | 0.85 WHIP | 18 BB | 55 K
All of this is coming after a rookie season in which Melton started just four games. Though he did pitch in 12 games, he was only allotted four starts. Yet every time he took the mound, whether as a starter or out of the bullpen, you could tell there was something almost robotically beautiful about the way he pitched.
Melton goes for the quickest speed from receiving the ball to delivering the pitch, making it a game where blinking becomes a nuisance because it means you may miss a pitch or two.
It’s must-see TV every time Melton is pitching.
It seems he follows in Skubal’s ideology of pitching right at opposing hitters, regardless of who is standing in the box. He fires off first-pitch strikes and then throws very few pitches outside of the strike zone.
That was something that was affecting Melton a little four or five starts ago, when he walked a combined eight batters in two games, followed by four more combined walks over his next two starts.
That isn’t something Melton is used to, and he seemed to work his way out of the funk in Sunday’s game, when he walked just one batter across six innings.
Still, Melton does an unbelievable job of compacting things down when runners get on base. His ability to limit damage has been a major contributing factor to the Tigers having the lowest combined starter ERA in baseball at 3.38 so far this season.
Melton has been improving at everything he does, and it has been showcased at its highest level so far this season.
The Tigers remain in a heated race with nearly every other American League team for a playoff spot, while also battling the White Sox, Guardians and Twins in a divisional race that seems inevitably destined to come down to the final few weeks of the season.
For Detroit to hold its position, the Tigers will be relying on Melton, not just as another middle-of-the-rotation pitcher, but as the guy who can hold opposing teams at bay when they send out their own ace to try to control the Tigers’ bats.
And if Melton continues pitching the way he has over the past several weeks, Detroit may have found more than just a replacement for Skubal.
They may have found their next ace.