DETROIT — These are the sorts of things that just aren’t supposed to happen. Not in the modern, binary world of Major League Baseball. You’re not supposed to have a 6.44 ERA in Triple-A Toledo, like Brant Hurter did on July 21, and less than two months later headline a no-hit bid in the majors.
But here we are in the Tigers’ enchanted run, where a young team has the best record in the American League since the start of July, where pitchers like Hurter just keep doing incredible things, where we’re reminded that no amount of numbers or spreadsheets can fully predict this sport’s wonderful randomness.
Back on that July 21 day, Hurter got blasted for nine earned runs in only 3 2/3 innings. The ERA kept rising. Grisly stuff. Hurter came into the year as a 6-foot-6 lefty with a deceptive arm motion. He was one of the darlings of spring training. But now he was one of several upper-level pitching prospects whose gears seemed stuck.
That’s when Toledo Mud Hens pitching coach Doug Bochtler wanted to make a change. Hurter had long been known as a strike-thrower, a lefty sinkerballer who could pound the zone and induce ground balls. But now his mechanics had gotten out of whack. He was struggling to repeat his delivery. He had no rhythm, his pitch counts were getting bloated and opposing hitters were feasting — he surrendered three homers and recorded only two outs during his July 12 start in Omaha.
So Bochtler suggested Hurter implement a small rocking motion at the beginning of his delivery. It’s a slight movement that starts with his front leg, then goes to his arms, rocking as if he’s cradling a baby, before he gets loaded on his back leg.
Hurter took the motion into his next bullpen session. The results came in an instant.
“My first pen I threw was the best pen I’ve ever thrown,” he said.
With his mechanics more in sync, he began feeling whenever something was off. If a slider flew out of his hand or a changeup faded off to either side, he was able to notice what went wrong and make the adjustment.
“I still look at video from that pen to try to recreate that,” Hurter said.
Brant Hurter. Unhittable.
The @tigers‘ No. 12 prospect opened his outing by retiring 17 consecutive batters and struck out a MLB-high 8 over 5 2/3 hitless frames out of the bullpen. pic.twitter.com/XK23nF74Eg
— MLB Pipeline (@MLBPipeline) September 14, 2024
On July 26, Hurter threw seven scoreless innings in Toledo. It ended up being his final outing in Triple A.
In part because of the improvement but more out of necessity, the Tigers called Hurter up to the majors. He has since been an integral part of Detroit’s second-half pitching renaissance. Working mostly as a bulk reliever, Hurter has a 2.56 ERA through his first 38 2/3 innings in the majors.
Friday night against the Orioles, Hurter took all this to another level. Beau Brieske opened the game and sat down the first four Baltimore batters. Then Hurter entered to face a pocket of left-handed batters. He induced his trademark grounders and dispatched the first two batters he faced. As the evening went on, Hurter’s stuff kept looking better and better. All his pitches moved more than their norm — his sweeper averaged two more inches of both vertical and horizontal break compared to his previous outings. Hurter kept firing first-pitch strikes, getting up 0-1 to each of his first 14 batters faced.
“The fact he can control contact is his calling card,” manager A.J. Hinch would later say. “He’s gonna miss bats because he throws so many strikes and gets into two-strike counts.”
By the end of the sixth inning, teammates were avoiding Hurter in the dugout. The Orioles had yet to record a single base runner. With a combined perfect game bid bubbling, catcher Dillon Dingler — a fellow rookie — did his best to create normalcy.
“He was trying to not, not talk to me,” Hurter said, “so it was obvious when he was sitting right next to me. I was like, ‘You never do this. What are you doing?’”
Hurter kept carving the Orioles in the seventh. His sweeper got five whiffs on the evening. His sinker was on point. His changeup and four-seam served as complementary weapons.
“I can’t see movement from the side, but I can see mix,” Hinch said. “He was in such good counts he could really dictate speed and space and tempo. All those things, he pretty much locked it. It felt like every time you looked up he was ahead in the count. Every time you looked up he could throw a different pitch.”
Hurter came out for the eighth and walked Adley Rutschman before Hinch went out for a pitching change, bringing in Brenan Hanifee to face right-handed pinch-hitter Austin Slater.
Hurter walked off the field to a standing ovation. Really, a moment of validation. The pitcher who just a year ago was helping the Double-A Erie Seawolves to an Eastern League championship — and who still gets teased for an emotional speech to the crowd there that featured the line “I don’t know what’s going on, but I love Erie, Pennsylvania” — was now in the training room doing his shoulder program, peeking up at the TV for each pitch, on the cusp of headlining a combined no-hitter in the big leagues.
Fate had other things in store. Gunnar Henderson tripled off Tyler Holton with two outs in the ninth to nix the no-no. In the training room, Hurter merely laughed and shrugged. “Of course,” he said after the game. But the Tigers held on for a 1-0 victory. As the Twins faltered against the Reds, Detroit is now only 2 1/2 games back in the wild-card race. Highlights from the Twins’ game flashed on the clubhouse TVs, and multiple players walked by and inquired about the score. The sense of possibility is building, and the Tigers would not be here without contributions from pitchers such as Hurter, largely unknown names and faces who have helped Detroit stake claim to baseball’s best ERA since Aug. 1.
Hanifee is another one of those pitchers, and he had a 5.17 ERA before he was promoted at the start of August. Hanifee said Ryan Garko, the Tigers’ vice president of player development, joked: “Toledo must be the hardest place to pitch.”
But coaching both in Toledo and Detroit has paid off. The past two months have been strange and sweet for the Tigers, with heroes emerging from the woodwork on what seems like a nightly basis.
Friday it was Hurter, throwing the best game of his young career. The Tigers narrowly missed history but earned another energizing win.
When it was all over, the big lefty summed it up well. “It’s just one of those perfect nights,” he said.
(Top photo: Duane Burleson/Getty Images)
