The Detroit Tigers open their final series before the All-Star break on Friday with Jack Flaherty on the mound against Aaron Nola. It is Game 94, a late-summer checkpoint wrapped into a single night at Comerica Park in Detroit, Michigan.
The Tigers arrive with some momentum after beating the Athletics 4-1 on Thursday night to finish a sweep and claim six victories in seven tries in July. Eduardo Valencia helped fuel that surge with a home run in his first MLB plate appearance, while Jake Rogers also went deep and Framber Valdez worked seven innings and allowed one run. That is the form Philadelphia is walking into, and it gives the Phillies vs Tigers matchup a sharper edge than a routine midsummer series opener.
Flaherty has been the steadier arm of late. Over his last five starts, he has a 2.50 ERA and a 1.73 FIP across 18 frames, signs that his command and contact management have improved since the start of June. The catch is that he still has not been able to get past six innings in those recent outings, which keeps the Tigers from fully cashing in on the outings he is already turning in. In baseball terms, the shape of the start looks better than the length of it.
Nola is coming in with a different kind of recent reset. Since the start of June, he has a 6.11 ERA and a 5.30 FIP over seven games and 35 1/3 innings, numbers that still sit well below what Philadelphia needs from him. Yet his last outing against the Kansas City Royals was his cleanest in a while: three runs on seven hits, zero walks and seven strikeouts over seven innings, with no home runs allowed after he had given up two in each of his previous four games. That gives him a narrow path into Friday, but it does not erase the larger run of trouble behind him.
So the opener carries a simple question with real weight: whether Flaherty can finally stretch his recent improvement past six innings, and whether Nola’s one good outing can become more than a brief correction. The answer starts Friday at 6:40 p.m. ET, when the Tigers and Phillies meet at Comerica Park and the final series before the break begins to reveal which pitcher has actually found something.
