Detroit — It’s never nothing with these Tigers.
On a day when Casey Mize gave his most encouraging performance in a month, reliever Tommy Kahnle, entrusted again with leverage work, got some clutch outs and the Tigers salvaged the finale of a rough series against the Mets with a 6-2 win at Comerica Park, they will still go into the off day Thursday with some serious worry.
While warming up in the top of the seventh inning, late-inning reliever Kyle Finnegan felt tightness in his right groin. FanDuel Sports cameras showed him go into a crouch because of the pain and bullpen coach Juan Nieves told him to stop throwing.
Finnegan, who hasn’t allowed a run in 14.1 innings since being acquired by the Tigers, walked back through the dugout and down the tunnel to the clubhouse. Afterward, manager AJ Hinch had no updates on his condition and Finnegan was already out getting tests and wasn’t available to the media.
Kyle Finnegan appears to have injured himself while warming up in the bullpen
He hasn’t allowed a single run in 12 appearances with the Tigers since they traded for him at the deadline pic.twitter.com/9nfFAEUvCp
— Talkin’ Baseball (@TalkinBaseball_) September 3, 2025
“It just shows how prepared everybody is down there (in the Tigers’ bullpen),” said Kerry Carpenter, who distressed the situation by lining a three-run home run in the bottom of the seventh to turn a one-run lead into a fast four-run cushion. “When people are called upon to do jobs that maybe they aren’t used to doing, we’re prepared.
“And everybody down there has the stuff to get those guys out.”
The bullpen, minus Finnegan, ended up covering four leverage innings.
“Obviously we needed a lot of guys to get some outs,” Hinch said. “The way we mapped it out, the only hiccup was Finnegan having the tightness. We quickly had to audible.”
Kahnle was the audible.
With the Tigers up 3-1 in the sixth, Kahnle inherited runners at first and third and one out. That was his intended pocket of hitters. He gave up an RBI single to Mark Vientos and walked Jeff McNeil to load the bases with one out.
But he quickly extricated the Tigers from the mess by getting Starling Marte to bang into a 5-4-3 double-play. And that was supposed to the end of his day. Until Finnegan went down.
Kahnle had to rev it back up and go out for the eighth.
“Tommy is a real key part of this to allow us to spread this out a little bit and be aggressive,” Hinch said. “With him being able to pitch under pressure, he’s a key part of this team. But you are going to need them all to put together this sprint we want to do for three or four weeks and get to where we want to go.
“It’s got to be more than just a two-man pen.”
Kahnle, who has not allowed a run in his last six outings, got the first two outs in the seventh before walking Francisco Lindor.
Hinch called on Will Vest to face the ever-dangerous Juan Soto. After Lindor stole second to get into scoring position, Vest got him to rollover softly to Spencer Torkelson at first base.
Vest pitched a scoreless eighth and, without Finnegan, Rafael Montero, another trade deadline acquisition, got the ball in the ninth and secured the final three outs.
“It sucks for Finnegan not to be able to go today,” said catcher Jake Rogers, whose clutch two-out single got the Tigers on the board first in the second inning. “But we’ve got some other guys out there. Tom, Vest did a really good job and Montero shut it down at the end.
“These guys are going to be put to the test this month and into the postseason. Who knows who is going to come out at any time?”
This wasn’t an audition for Mize, mind you. His place in the Tigers’ rotation has not been questioned through 23 starts this season.
That said, after a rough eight-start stretch (7.20 ERA), it seemed vitally important, for the team and his own potential postseason role, for him to take a positive step Wednesday.
He took several.
“Casey expects to do well and so do I; I expect him to be good,” Hinch said. “When you have the kind of fastball he had today — I know he felt good because I could see how many (fastballs) he was throwing. When he has a more balanced pitch usage, it means he believes in a lot of his stuff.”
With more life and command on his fastball than he’s shown maybe since before the All-Star break, Mize allowed a run in five solid innings of work against a Mets offense that has been battering Tigers’ pitching in this series.
It started with the command. Mize threw 17 first-pitch strikes to the 19 batters he faced. He established both his four-seam fastball and sinker early. After the first two innings, the velocity range on his four-seam was 95 to 97 mph, 96 to 98 with the sinker.
Also, the spin rates on both were significantly higher — 215 rpms over norm with the sinker and 146 rpms over norm with the four-seam.
“It was coming out pretty good,” Mize said. “I was able to get ahead in counts with it. I had a few misfires here and there but overall, the command was much improved over the last little bit.”
In the second inning, he got called third strikes on both Marte (98 mph sinker) and Brett Baty (97 mph four-seamer). He held the velocity for five innings and the rpms stayed well above norm (197 rpms on the sinker, 123 on the four-seamer).
“I don’t know,” Mize said when he was asked what might’ve cause the spike in his velocity. “I was feeling really good today. Maybe the extra day of rest helped. But I was reviewing some things with (pitching coaches) Chris Fetter and Robin Lund and my body was moving well today. If I’m moving well, the ball is going to come out better.”
He did give up some loud contact (88.6 mph average exit velocity on 16 balls in play) and didn’t get a lot of swing-and-miss (six whiffs on 37 swings) or punch outs (three), but he was in control of most of the at-bats and only once worked with a runner in scoring position.
That happened in the third inning when Lindor and Pete Alonso both doubled.
Mize had thrown only 69 pitches after he finished the fifth, but Hinch went to lefty Tyler Holton with two lefties and Alonso coming up for the third time in the game.
“I understood going into the game that with the off day (Thursday) and it being September and we have the extra arm, I understood I was going to be on a shorter leash than on a normal day,” he said. “Disappointed? Sure. I want to go as deep as I can. But I certainly understand the decision and I didn’t fight back against that at all.”
Mize was asked if he needed that type of performance, just for his own peace of mind, after the long rough patch.
“We needed it,” he said, meaning the team. “I view my season and my starts just one at a time. Does it feel good to have a good one? Yes. But honestly, I wake up the day after my starts, good ones and bad ones, and I move forward.”
The Tigers put Mize in position to get his 13th win with a couple of clutch swings. Riley Greene broke a 1-1 tie in the the fifth inning with a two-out, two-strike, two-run single off lefty and former Tiger Gregory Soto.
And the Carpenter unloaded on a 100-mph heater by Ryan Helsley in the seventh.
“That was a blessing,” Carpenter said. “Against a team like the Mets, their lineup is so deep, getting some more extra runs was amazing.”
Hinch agreed.
“We talk all the time about capitalizing on big moments,” he said. “That made everybody feel better about the game going into those last six outs.”
chris.mccosky@detroitnews.com
@cmccosky
Want to comment on this story? Become a subscriber today. Click here.