The Tigers opened their three-game series against the Mets with a rough night at Citi Field, falling 10-2 on Tuesday night in a game that turned on a bizarre fifth-inning play and another short outing from Jack Flaherty.
Detroit trailed 3-2 in the fifth when Colt Keith singled with two outs and moved to third on Riley Greene’s hit to right. Carson Benge’s throw sailed past Brett Baty, and Keith broke for the plate after getting back to his feet at third. Third base umpire Rob Drake was in his path, and Keith pushed him to the ground while trying to get around him before Freddie Peralta backed up the play, gathered the ball off the fence and threw him out at home.
“I had a great view,” Keith said after the game. He said he slid into third, saw the ball go past and watched it head toward the fence, then got up to score before running into someone near the plate. “I just pushed him out of the way and kept going trying to score,” he said. Keith added that he believed he would have been safe without the collision.
Manager A.J. Hinch said there was nothing the Tigers could do about the sequence. He said he was not sure why Drake was there, calling it a weird play, and noted that the ball bounced back with the pitcher in position to make the throw. The moment ended Detroit’s best chance to change the game before New York pulled away.
Dillon Dingler provided the Tigers’ other early lift, sending his team-leading seventh home run over the short wall in left field. It was his second miss on a catcher challenge before he came up empty again in the first inning, but the homer gave Detroit a brief spark. Gage Workman later doubled and Spencer Torkelson followed with a sacrifice fly to left, but that was about the extent of the offense.
Flaherty never settled in. He lasted only 3.2 innings, threw 97 pitches and walked three batters before leaving with the game still within reach. The Mets put 15 balls in play against him at an average exit velocity of 94.3 mph, a sign of how often they were finding hard contact. Hinch said both pitchers had to throw a lot of pitches in the early innings, but New York got more out of its work. “They got more out of their pitches than we did,” he said. “He was getting himself out of trouble by getting above some barrels and beating us to the spot.”
Flaherty said the problem was the length of the at-bats. He said he has to find a way to shorten them, get quicker outs and get Detroit back into the dugout. Hinch agreed, saying the right-hander had a hard time finishing at-bats and that the Mets kept working counts and taking advantage of a few pitches. That mattered even more with the Tigers already trying to manage injuries and uneven play, and with Peralta settling in after the early innings and blanking Detroit through the sixth.
The loss was the kind that can linger because it arrived in pieces: a promising start from Dingler, a scoring chance that ended in chaos, and a starter who could not get through four innings. The Tigers will need a cleaner night quickly if they want to avoid letting the series slip away before it really starts.
