Detroit — These moments are keeping Jack Flaherty up at night.
He’s had conferences with his pitching coach, his catchers, and his manager. They’re all working diligently to address the problem that is plaguing Flaherty across his last three starts: Losing the zone for a stretch and walking bunches of batters.
“You just lose it for three hitters and it’s just like, agonizing, it’s frustrating,” Flaherty said. “It probably pisses you off, because it’s — I’m losing sleep over it every single day, trying to figure out what goes on in that little bit right there where we end up walking three guys in a row.”
That stretch of batters reared its head in the third inning on Friday night after a home run followed by three-straight walks helped put Flaherty and the Tigers in a hole too deep to climb out of. A middle-innings rally wasn’t enough as the Tigers bullpen held up but surrendered the game-winning run in the eighth inning, and Detroit dropped a series opener, 5-4, to Texas on Friday evening at Comerica Park.
Flaherty lasted 3.2 innings with four runs allowed, three walks and five hits to four strikeouts.
“He lost the zone,” manager AJ Hinch said. “And it’s really obviously hard for him, hard for us.”
Once Flaherty lost the zone, the Rangers made the Tigers pay to the tune of two more runs, hanging a three-spot for the inning. Hinch and Co. acknowledged just getting out of a bases-loaded, no-outs jam giving up two runs is a pretty decent outcome, while noting the Tigers need Flaherty to be better.
Hinch also said the Tigers are behind the pitcher, who was visibly and vocally frustrated with his performance as he spoke briefly to the media. These recent struggles with commanding the zone, and more specifically losing it, have been the most frustrating turn of Flaherty’s career, he said.
“Just giving guys free passes and walking guys, that’s where it gets frustrating, especially, you know, I, I mean, I’ve … a little while, like, I never walked guys like this in my career, so it’s just, it’s, it’s one of those things that is, like, is gonna be frustrating, to really figure it out.”
BOX SCORE: Rangers 5, Tigers 4
And what’s doubly frustrating for Flaherty is the seeming lack of identifiable causes and lack of solutions. Flaherty sounded at a loss explaining the issue and what might solve it.
“I don’t know if it’s about what’s going right, it’s about figuring out what’s going on in those 15 to 20 pitches,” Flaherty said. “That’s what AJ and I are talking about.”
Another factor in the frustrations are that the issue seemingly comes out of nowhere. Flaherty didn’t feel like the preceding home run he gave up rattled him, and the loss of the zone has come up in other situations recently.
On Friday, Flaherty started strong enough, recovering well from a pair of two-strike singles that pushed across a run in the first inning, opening the second inning with a pair of strikeouts looking, freezing Jake Berger and then Alejandro Osuna with fastballs before a foul pop up to Dillon Dingler for the third out put the Rangers down in order.
But when it all unraveled, it was hard to get back.
“You just try to get him back on his own,” Dingler said. “Obviously, you can’t just throw cookies in there to a good hitting team. So you’re just battling that, trying to find the right avenues to get back into good counts.”
For Flaherty, it’s now seven-straight starts to open 2026 walking multiple batters, with six of those featuring three or more free passes.
And Friday’s performance marks a particularly brutal three-start span. Across his last three starts, Flaherty has thrown nine combined innings, walked 11, struck out 11 and has given up 12 runs.
The Tigers were 0-2 in the first two outings of this stretch of starts. And while a comeback to tie the game on Friday offered hope that things would turn out different, Detroit is now 0-3 in Flaherty’s last three starts, though he’s only been credited for one of those losses. Burch Smith took the loss for Detroit on Friday night against Texas.
“So, we’re gonna keep searching and finding ways to challenge if he’s gonna get the ball again in 5 or 6 days or whatever, because we believe in him, we trust him,” Hinch said. “We need the adjustments because he wants to be better for us, and we obviously need him to be better for us.”
Detroit’s bullpen, which entered Friday in rough shape, came through admirably in Hinch’s estimation. They go the final 16 outs of the game giving up just one run, and gave the offense a chance to rally from the 4-0 hole that Detroit got into.
“Just gave us a chance to win the game,” Hinch said. “Each guy came in and it became a little bit of a bullpen game at that point.”
But all it took was two sharp hits into left field, a double off the bat of Berger, who then scored when Osuna rocketed another double, this one past a diving Hao-Yu Lee at third base.
Lee stood at the edge of the infield grass as received the ball from the outfield, shaking off the discomfort of a dive into the dirt and perhaps frustration at seeing the comeback efforts of recent innings come undone.
“We’re not gonna pack it in,” Hinch said. “And this group, you know, fought back to have a chance to win a game.”
Detroit started its rally in the fourth inning with a leadoff double from Jahmai Jones, poking a ball off the protruding left field fence. He’d hold at second base as Riley Greene reached two batters later on a single that probably should’ve been caught by a retreating infielder for an out, but instead hit the outfield fringe as the Comerica Park crowd erupted.
They got even louder when, after Spencer Torkelson walked to load the bases, Wenceel Perez smacked a single through a hole in the infield to plate two runs with two outs.
Rookie third baseman Lee followed that up with a bloop single into right field that scored Torkelson from second base with two outs.
Detroit completed the rally the next inning, as Kerry Carpenter pinch hit for Jones and worked a walk. He’d advance to second base on a wild pitch and scoot to third when Dillon Dingler dropped a single into the gap between the left and center fielders.
And luck must’ve been on Greene’s side, because after his gift of an earlier single, he shattered his bat in a fortuitous manner.
The excess lumber and ball both reached the right side of the infield, and Carpenter scored easily from third, tying the game, 4-4, as the lack of pace on the ball helped Greene beat a double play turn at first base.
And while the comeback tied the game, a lead never materialized for Detroit, nor have the answers that have proven so elusive for Flaherty and the Tigers when it comes to his recent struggles.
Andrew Graham is a freelance writer.
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Tigers’ Flaherty ‘losing sleep’ as struggles continue in loss to Rangers
Reporting by Andrew Graham, Special to The Detroit News / The Detroit News
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