Valdez starts hot but gets little support as Tigers lose to Nationals

Chris McCosky, The Detroit News on Sep 23, 2026

Published in Baseball

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DETROIT — Framber Valdez, for all the turbulence early in the season, got it right at the end. Well, mostly right.

Valdez, the workhorse lefty, finished his first season in Detroit by setting down the first 11 hitters of the game and allowing two runs in 5 1/3 innings in the Tigers’ 4-2 loss to the Washington Nationals at Comerica Park Wednesday.

For the fourth time in five seasons, Valdez posted exactly 31 times, the type of stability and reliability the Tigers hoped for when they signed him for three years and $115 million. Only Kevin Gausman, Aaron Nola and Logan Gilbert have made at least 31 starts four times in the last five years.

But it was a bumpy ride, as the season-ending 4.03 ERA would suggest. It was also transitional for Valdez. At age 32 and after spending the first eight years in Houston, he had to make two major adjustments.

One was adapting to a new city, a new batch of teammates and entirely different clubhouse culture.

Secondly, and more significantly, he had to adjust to the new ABS strike zone, which effectively forced him to raise the site line of his most important pitch, the sinker. And he gave up more damage with that pitch (.315 average, .427 slug) than in any full season of his career.

He made a pivotal adjustment late in the season, incorporating four-seam fastballs to set up his curveball and changeup. In his last five starts before Wednesday, he’d posted a 2.70 ERA while holding hitters to a .239 average and .306 on-base percentage and getting a 65% ground ball rate.

That was the pitcher the Tigers expected to see all season.

His final start ended up being a bit emblematic of both ends of his spectrum; a lot of good that dissolved into a so-so result.

He had his whole mix working early, retiring 11 straight Nationals hitters with five strikeouts. But his command started to wane in a 23-pitch fifth inning. He gave up a two-out single to Brady House and he walked CJ Abrams. He got out of it by inducing a rollover groundout by Dylan Crews.

He was at 80 pitches when he started the sixth inning. Three straight singles by Andres Chaparro, House and Abrams led to a run. Abrams got hung up between first and second and was the last out Valdez recorded.

Yahandy Morales slugged a two-out, two-run homer off reliever Tyler Kinley to make a 3-0 deficit.

For the second straight game, there weren’t many offensive highlights for the Tigers.

Rookie right fielder Ben Malgeri provided one. He slugged his fifth homer, a 404-foot blast over the bullpens in left-center. He also singled in a run in the ninth inning.

Rookie Kevin McGonigle provided the other. With three more hits, he broke Harvey Kuenn’s 73-year-old franchise rookie record by reaching base safely 262 times. Kuenn set his mark of 260 in 155 games in 1953. McGonigle broke it in 153 games.

Since 1990, McGonigle is just the fifth rookie to reach that mark: Aaron Judge (286 in 2017), Ichiro Suzuki (280 in 2001), Albert Pujols (272 in 2001) and Ben Grieve (262 in 1998). All of those players won rookie of the year in those years.

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