Detroit — Disappointing, for sure.
The Tigers, beaten 9-4 on Wednesday, lost two out of three against a Minnesota Twins team that was decimated at the trade deadline, losing 11 players.
Disappointing to waste a three-homer rally. Disappointing to see Jack Flaherty have a clunker on the heels of two stellar outings. Disappointing to watch the Twins slug three homers of their own.
Disappointing to watch Riley Greene grind through a 1-for-21 skid with nine strikeouts. Disappointing to watch veteran relievers Tyler Holton and Tommy Kahnle struggle uncharacteristically.
Disappointing to hear the home fans booing, though no jury would convict.
“It doesn’t sound great, does it, when you put it that way,” manager AJ Hinch said. “We didn’t do enough to win this game or win this series. We’ve got a lot of work to do and a lot of things to address. Right now we’re taking it on the chin.”
The key now, with the Los Angeles Angels coming to Comerica Park this weekend, is to channel the disappointment into renewed determination and focus, not despair.
Because with their lead in the Central Division down to six games very suddenly, this is not the time to pout or panic.
“We better just worry about ourselves,” Hinch said. “That’s something this group has been pretty good at. We haven’t had one talk about anything external. I don’t care if you have a one-game lead or a 20-game lead, if we don’t play good baseball, I’m going to sit up here and say we’ve got to do better.
“I’ve been very consistent that you’ve got to play your 162 (games) and we haven’t yet. We are going to get tested. So we need to play better.”
It wouldn’t hurt to jump on somebody at the start of a game. For the third straight game, the Tigers had to play uphill, falling into a 3-0 hole this time after two innings.
“There’s no real concern,” Flaherty said. “We just have to do a better job coming out of the gates, whether that’s starting pitching or what. We come out of the chute down 2-0 right away. We need to do a better job of that. I need to do a better job of that.”
Flaherty, who struggled to locate his slider and get ahead in counts, gave up two soft singles to start the game, He made perfect pitches to strike out Ryan Jeffers and Kody Clemens, both looking at dotted third strikes.
But red-hot rookie Luke Keaschall rescued the inning with a two-run double to left that eluded the diving attempt by Greene.
The first two hitters singled against Flaherty again in the second inning, with Brooks Lee scoring on a wild pitch.
“We couldn’t control damage, which is a problem,” Hinch said. “I looked up at one point and it was 40% first-pitch strikes and that’s not a good recipe. And then he made mistakes.”
If Flaherty righted the ship there, the ending of this story might’ve been different. Because for a couple of innings the Tigers started knocking baseballs out of the park.
Against rookie right-hander Pierson Ohl, Spencer Torkelson hit his 24th, a solo homer leading off the second inning. Zach McKinstry hit his 10th, leading off the third.
Clemens, the former Tiger, nearly stole it, though. He had the ball in his glove but it fell out as he reached over the left-center-field fence.
Kerry Carperter, later in the third, put the Tigers ahead with his 20th homer. With a runner on, he hit a 2-2 changeup on the seventh pitch of the at-bat, sending it 414 feet to right with an exit velocity of 106.5 mph and a launch angle of 41 degrees.
It was majestic, his sixth bomb in his last 11 games, and it was the last bit of fun the Tigers would have on this day. Neither Flaherty nor the bullpen could stop the Twins from scoring.
“I couldn’t get strike one, I couldn’t get ahead, I couldn’t land my slider and I barely landed my curveball,” Flaherty said. “Look at it all together, nothing was really good today. But when the team goes out and gets you a lead, you need to put up a zero and make that stand up; put up a shutdown (inning).
“I wasn’t able to do that.”
Lee homered off Flaherty to tie the game in the fourth. An error by second baseman Gleyber Torres set the table for RBI doubles by Jeffers and Keaschall in the fifth.
It was the second straight three-RBI game for Keaschall, who is 11 for 28 in his young career.
Flaherty, with eighth hits and six runs (five earned) on his ledger, didn’t finish the fifth.
“I just felt completely out of sync,” he said.
The Twins hit two more homers, both off lefty Holton in the sixth. Austin Martin led off with a pinch-hit homer, his first this year and first ever pinch-hit home run. Two batters later, left-handed hitting Alan Roden sent one out, 406 feet to left.
Holton has allowed 13 homers in 56 innings this season. That’s three fewer than he’d allowed in 179.2 innings over 2023 and 2024 combined.
Kahnle finished the sixth, but he walked three straight hitters and got only one out in the seventh. Kahnle has walked 11 and allowed 17 earned runs in 8.2 innings since July 1.
“We need to start putting together some good first innings like we had been doing earlier,” catcher Dillon Dingler said. “I feel like we won doing that early in the season. We were taking the starter, driving up his pitch count and getting to the pen early and exposing their pen.
“That should be a good focus for us right now.”
The Tigers (66-50) are 7-14 in their last 21 games. Dingler was asked if he sensed any growing tension or sense of urgency.
“Yes and no,” he said. “Obviously we’re not playing up to our capability and everybody knows that. We’ve been going through it last week and the week before. Still, nobody is really pressing, but it’s going to come up quick here.
“So we’ve got to make sure we take care of it the rest of this month and into September.”
The Tigers, Dingler said, aren’t looking behind to see who is chasing them.
“You just have to make sure you are taking care of your stuff within the team,” he said. “Once you get caught up in looking at the standings — obviously people are doing that — but the most important thing is making sure you are taking care of your own business. That’s how you put yourself in the right position.”
chris.mccosky@detroitnews.com
@cmccosky
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