Keith Dunlap
| Special to The Detroit News
Detroit — Anyone who has lamented Jack Flaherty’s inconsistency of late didn’t have much reason to stop following Sunday.
After a great start on Monday against Houston, the Tigers’ right-hander gave up eight earned runs in five innings on Sunday against the Kansas City Royals, who salvaged the finale of a three-game series at Comerica Park with a 10-8 victory in front of 31,538 fans.
Flaherty has given up at least five earned runs in three of his last four starts.
“I think the other side is doing a good job of getting him in the air,” Tigers manager AJ Hinch said of Flaherty. “Some of that is with his pitches, some of that might be location. Everybody knows that the pitcher is trying to get the ball on the ground or miss. The hitters are trying to get the ball elevated to the pull side. That’s generally where the game has gone. Obviously we’ll look at start by start. But we are just trying to focus on outs. We don’t care where they are coming from.”
BOX SCORE: Royals 10, Tigers 8
Of course, the ultimate solace for the Tigers (78-54) was that they did what they had to do over the weekend against the Royals (67-64), their closest pursuer in the American League Central at the moment.
The Tigers took two out of three to go up 10½ games against a Kansas City team that’s running out of head-to-head opportunities to catch up.
Next weekend’s three-game series at Kansas City will be it for the season series between the teams, so not losing ground at home and actually gaining a game on the Royals was a boon for the Tigers.
But going forward as a likely playoff appearance nears, making sure the good Jack Flaherty shows up more than the bad one will be a big priority for the Tigers.
The roof really caved in for Flaherty with two outs in the third inning and the Tigers up 1-0 following a solo home run by Riley Greene in the second.
All seemed great for Flaherty after he retired the first eight batters, but the Royals mounted a swift and stunning two-out rally, collecting seven straight hits and scoring six runs to grab a 6-1 lead.
Kansas City No. 9 hitter Luke Maile started it all with a hard single to right, and then scored on an RBI double to the gap in left-center by Mike Yastrzemski that tied the game at 1.
Following an RBI single by Bobby Witt Jr., Kansas City took a 4-1 lead on a two-run home run to right-center by Vinnie Pasquantino.
The rally continued, with Salvador Perez and Adam Frazier each hitting RBI doubles to give Kansas City a five-run advantage.
Flaherty settled down a bit after that and gave the Tigers a chance to climb back in it, which they did.
The Tigers cut Kansas City’s lead to 6-4 in the fourth on a bases-clearing double to the gap in left-center by Jahmai Jones, who was a late addition to the lineup after Colt Keith had to be scratched due to an illness.
Zach McKinstry raced around from first base on the play and just managed to beat the relay throw home.
The Tigers then scored three runs in the fifth to grab a 7-6 lead on a solo home run to right by Wenceel Pérez, a two-out RBI double to the gap in left-center by Dillon Dingler and an RBI bloop single to left by McKinstry.
Staked once again to a one-run lead, Flaherty came back out for the sixth, but left after allowing a single to Frazier and a double down the right-field line by Jonathan India that just eluded the glove of Jones.
The Tigers brought in Tyler Holton to relieve Flaherty and also brought the infield in with no outs, but a grounder off the bat of Kyle Isbel bounced just over the glove of McKinstry into left, scoring two to give the Royals an 8-7 lead.
Hinch said he brought Flaherty back out for the sixth because he felt he had settled down after the third and he wanted to preserve as much of the bullpen as possible.
“He had retired six of seven after (the third),” Hinch said. “He got a little unlucky at the end. I thought we executed early, then didn’t execute, then did a good job of settling back in, and then he got a little unlucky in the end. They did a good job of ball in play.”
Flaherty said he’ll assess things and what went wrong as the week progresses before his next start, but that he should have done better to help out the offense.
“The boys picked me up,” Flaherty said. “We score eight runs, it should be a win. That’s how I thought about it. They picked me up, we score eight runs and it should be a win every time.”
Kansas City added another run in the sixth inning when Isbel scored from third on a Holton wild pitch, and then took a 10-7 lead in the seventh on a solo home run by Maikel Garcia off of Tigers reliever Brenan Hanifee.
The Tigers cut the deficit to 10-8 in the seventh on a solo home run to right by Spencer Torkelson, but that would be all the scoring.
Jonathan Bowlan pitched a 1-2-3 eighth and Carlos Estevez a 1-2-3 ninth to preserve the win for the Royals.
Despite the loss, the Tigers could boast about a 5-1 homestand and adding to their division lead.
“I think we have been playing some good baseball,” Jones said. “We ran into a very good Astros team and a good Kansas City team that had been playing well coming into this series. We had two teams coming in here that were playing some really good baseball. For us, it’s another check of when we do our job, we’re a really hard team to beat.”
Keith Dunlap is a freelance writer.
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