Detroit ― Tigers fans came to the ballpark plenty ready and eager to boo the heck out of Juan Soto, baseball’s $754-million man. And that’s what Tigers fans did, early and often and loud ― before Soto had even done anything to them.
Then, Soto did something to them. Actually, multiple somethings. And big somethings.
Soto crushed a two-out grand slam in the fourth inning to give the Mets the lead, then cracked a two-run triple in the sixth inning to give the Mets the lead back as the Tigers dropped the opening game of the series between probable postseason participants, 10-8, on a sunny Labor Day Monday at Comerica Park.
Soto finished with six RBIs, matching a career high he set Sept. 17, 2023, with the San Diego Padres, at Oakland.
“They’re good. I mean, they’re a winning team for a reason,” Tigers manager AJ Hinch said of the Mets, who are chasing the Philadelphia Phillies in the National League East. “Soto is such a hard guy to navigate.”
The Tigers, meanwhile, saw an odd streak continue ― they now have lost eight straight games on Labor Day, despite multiple comebacks in this game. They last won a game on Labor Day in 2016.
In this latest one, it was Tigers starter Charlie Morton who labored more than most, escaping a two-on, no-out jam in the first inning, but not in the second, as the Mets took a 2-1 lead.
Then, he loaded the bases with nobody out in the fourth on a double, walk and bloop single. He struck out the next two batters, and then got ahead in the count on Soto, too.
But Soto then put the Mets back ahead, teeing off an 82-mph curveball and sending it 410 feet, high over the high wall in right-center field, as the Comerica Park day-game crowd of 38,912 booed again. Morton struggled with his fastball command in this game, and hence the curveball. He wasn’t second-guessing the pitch call.
He was second-guessing the pitch quality.
“My breaking ball got me to that situation and saved me … just like it’s done hundreds of times,” Morton said. “It just kind of came out of my hand weird, like it didn’t really spin great, didn’t really move great.
“It wasn’t like I wasn’t trying to throw a good pitch. I just didn’t throw a good pitch.
“And he just put a great swing on it.”
And down came the jeers.
At least this time, Soto, who posed at home plate, had given Tigers fans something to boo about, having made it 6-3 Mets. It was the second grand slam of Soto’s eight-year big-league career, and his 36th homer this season to go with 90 RBIs. Just the other day, he was telling New York beat writers he could do more. On Monday, he certainly did more.
“He’s one of the better ones I’ve ever faced,” said Morton, 41, who’s faced over 1,200 hitters in his 18-year major-league career. “I don’t know what more you can really want to be as a hitter.”
The grand slam capped another rough day for Morton, who allowed six runs on five hits while walking four and hitting a batter. It was his shortest start in his brief Tigers tenure.
Morton’s ERA is 5.81 in six starts with the Tigers.
The Tigers rallied to tie the game, starting with two runs in the bottom of the fourth, on an RBI triple by Zach McKinstry (his 11th triple of the season, the first time a Tiger has reached that total since Rajai Davis in 2015; seven of his tripes have come left-on-left). That was followed by a two-out RBI single by Jahmai Jones to cut the Mets’ lead to 6-5.
And that helped spell the end of the afternoon for Mets lefty starter Sean Manaea. Combined, Morton and Manaea allowed 11 runs on 12 hits in 7.1 innings.
The Tigers tied it at 6 in the fifth, after Mets reliever Ryne Stanek (3-6) unleased a wild pitch on his second pitch of the game, allowing Spencer Torkelson to trot home. Torkelson singled to start the inning off former Tiger Gregory Soto, and went to third on a one-out single by Andy Ibanez, barely beating the throw from Soto in right field.
But again, the Mets answered, specifically Juan Soto, who was on base four times, including twice by walk.
Off Tigers reliever Drew Sommers (0-1), Luis Torrens hit a bloop single to start the sixth, and Sommers hit Francisco Lindor with one out, to put two on with one out for the left-on-left matchup with Soto ― no question, the biggest spot of Sommers’ young career. After a visit from pitching coach Chris Fetter, Soto tucked a grounder inside the bag at first ― Torkelson was playing well off of it ― for a two-run triple to make it 8-6.
“I feel for him on that one, because he got the ball in the ground against Soto, which is what he wanted,” Hinch said of Sommers, the lefty who made just his fourth major-league appearance. “You know, credit to Soto for hanging in there on the first look at a guy he’s never seen.”
Brandon Nimmo followed with a grounder to third off Ibanez’s glove to score Soto; that was scored a hit.
An unearned run off Tigers reliever Troy Melton in the seventh then made it 10-6.
McKinstry’s two-out RBI single in the seventh made it 10-7, and Wenceel Perez’s groundout in the eighth drove in Jones, who led off the inning with a double, to make it a two-run game. But that was it.
Edwin Diaz worked the last 1.1 innings for the Mets, earning his 25th save.
“It’s just baseball,” Jones said. “I mean, we had a lot of guys come up today and barrel baseballs, and unfortunately they got caught. So on any given day, it just falls your way some days, and some days it doesn’t.
“Unfortunately, we just fell on the short end of the stick today.”
The Tigers actually out-hit the Mets, 14-8 ― and several of the Mets’ base hits weren’t hit all that hard, while several of the Tigers’ outs were crushed, including pinch-hitter Kerry Carpenter’s screaming line drive with two strikes that went right to Soto in right with two on and two out of a 6-6 game in the fifth.
But several Tigers pitchers helped the Mets’ cause, by walking seven and hitting two batters. And there was that one error by second baseman Gleyber Torres at second base, giving the Mets the leadoff man on in the seventh inning. That run eventually came around to score, thanks in part to a sacrifice bunt (one of two by the Mets on Monday).
“It was a little bit of a sloppier game,” said Tigers catcher Dillon Dingler, 2-for-4 at the plate. “We didn’t take care of business in all facets of the game. … Our offense had great run support, so we never felt out of it.”
The Tigers actually drew first blood in this one, when Jones, making his first start in over a week, hit a home run on the very first pitch of the bottom of the first inning, a 429-foot shot to left off Manaea’s 92-mph fastball. (He joined Torres as the only Tigers to homer on the first pitch of a game this season.) It was the fifth home run of the season for Jones, who finished with a career-best four hits, including a nifty bunt single ― it was, amazingly, the Tigers’ first bunt hit of the season. They were the last team in the majors without a bunt hit in 2025.
Torrens (three hits) tagged Morton for a two-run double in the second inning as the Mets took a 2-1 lead, before the Tigers made it 3-2 in the third, on a two-run homer by Perez, his 12th homer of the season.
Both the Jones and Perez home runs came off 92-mph fastballs by Manaea.
The Tigers (five) and Mets (seven) combined to use 12 pitchers, six of whom gave up earned runs ― in a game that lasted 3 hours, 7 minutes, Detroit’s fifth-longest time for a nine-inning game this season.
With the loss, the Tigers’ lead in the American League Central sits at nine games over the Kansas City Royals, who were off Monday, with 23 games remaining in the regular season. The Tigers haven’t won a division title since 2014.
“We’ve got a lot of tough games ahead, and we’ve got to continue to stay grounded with where we’re at,” Hinch said of a final-month slate that includes two more games against the Mets, plus series against the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox. “We know where we are on the calendar, we know where we are in the standings, we know what the situation is, and none of that helps us win tomorrow. So we’ll show up ready to play and continue to do this one day (at a time), while everybody else around us wonders what’s next.”
Game 2 of the Tigers-Mets series is set for 6:40 Tuesday night.
tpaul@detroitnews.com
@tonypaul1984
Want to comment on this story? Become a subscriber today. Click here.