Tigers bats struggle again as Blue Jays take series

Chris McCosky, The Detroit News on May 17, 2026

Published in Baseball

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DETROIT — We will get to Jack Flaherty’s day in a minute. He was good. But unless he was darn-near perfect, the Tigers weren’t going to win this game. He wasn’t and they didn’t.

The Toronto Blue Jays took the rubber match, 4-1, Sunday at Comerica Park, handing the Tigers their 10th loss in 12 games and their second home series loss of the year.

The mission right now, as they fall seven games under .500 (20-27), is to stay connected in the American League Central Division while their injured players work their way back. They started the day 4½ games behind the Cleveland Guardians, who come to town Monday for four games, and a half-step out of last place.

But while a lot of attention has been paid to the injuries on the pitching side of things, it’s the offense that has dried up since injuries to Gleyber Torres, Javier Báez , Kerry Carpenter and before that Parker Meadows.

During this 12-game stretch, they’ve scored four runs or fewer in 11 of them, two or fewer in six.

Blue Jays veteran right-hander Kevin Gausman did not throw a pitch with a runner in scoring position during his six innings. The Tigers had four singles, none of them hit particularly hard. The Tigers put 17 balls in play against him with an average exit velocity of 84.4 mph.

The only gust of offense came in the eighth. With one out, Wenceel Perez rolled a broken-bat single past reliever Yariel Rodriguez. Blue Jays manager John Schneider brought in lefty Joe Mantiply and the Tigers proceeded to load the bases.

Kevin McGonigle singled and Dillon Dingler walked. But it only produced one run, on a fielder’s choice ground out by pinch-hitter Jahmai Jones.

Mantiply ended the inning getting Riley Greene to bounce out, ending Greene’s 11-game hit streak and 26-game on-base streak in the process.

The Tigers did not threaten in the ninth against Tyler Rogers.

This was Flaherty’s 200 th career game in the big leagues, his 194 th start. He rode in on an 11-game losing streak dating to last September in which he got the third lowest run support of any pitcher in baseball over that stretch, 2.64 runs.

In this one, he essentially ran afoul of two hitters at the top of the Blue Jays’ batting order. Vladimir Guerrero, Jr., hadn’t homered since April 20. But he lashed a two-strike, 91-mph four-seam fastball that was in and off the plate on a clothesline into the Tigers’ bullpen in left.

The ball left his bat at 105 mph with a 16-degree launch angle. Had left fielder Riley Greene been playing at the fence, he might’ve caught the ball, that’s how low it flew.

Guerrero, Jr., ended up with two hits and two runs scored. No. 3 hitter Daulton Varsho doubled and tripled in his first two at-bats and scored twice.

The top four hitters in the Toronto lineup went 5 for 11 against Flaherty. The bottom five, 0 for 12.

Flaherty set down 11 of the last 12 batters he faced and the one reached on an error by third baseman Gage Workman.

Good outing, just good enough to lose.

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