Los Angeles — This isn’t a try-hard league. AJ Hinch has made that point repeatedly. You don’t get trophies and rings for coming close.
Still, going toe-to-toe with the defending champions like the Tigers have done these last two nights is not nothing. Even if all they have to show for it is a couple of tough losses.
“If they haven’t proved to themselves that they can play with anybody, these last two days have shown it,” said Jack Flaherty, who pitched 5.2 strong innings in what ended up being an 8-5 loss to the Dodgers in 10 innings Friday. “You play these guys as tough as we have and it’s a pitch away here and a swing away there — I mean, they put together big hits and clutch homers.
“A couple little things here and there and we walk away with a couple of wins. But they are a tough team to beat.”
The Tigers, after losing 5-4 on Thursday, took a 5-3 lead in the top of the 10th on a clutch, two-out, two-run triple by catcher Dillon Dingler. But in the span of five hitters in the bottom half of the inning, they were watching the Dodgers celebrate.
“I love the way we battled and stayed in the game,” Hinch said. “We just need one more extra thing to happen our way, for something to happen our way and the entire series would look different.”
Right-hander Beau Brieske was tasked with closing the Dodgers out in the 10th. He got two strikes on lefty lead-off hitter Michael Conforto with the free runner at second base. Conforto was able to slice a drive down the left-field line that bounced into the seats for a ground rule double, scoring the free runner.
“I got a good jump,” left fielder Riley Greene said. “It was just placed perfectly, less than a foot inside the line. … The ball was probably a good 15-feet in front of me, so it wasn’t worth a dive. In that position, we’re still up one run. If I dive and it gets past me, it’s probably an inside-the-parker.”
With one out, Will Smith ripped a single to left, scoring Conforto and tying the game.
“The most important out of the inning is often the first out, especially late in the game,” Hinch said. “Conforto battled to get that double and when that happens, the momentum starts to go. And then you roll the lineup over to Ohtani and Betts and that’s a tough challenge.”
Shohei Ohtani singled, moving Smith to third. That set the table for Mookie Betts, whose second homer of the game triggered fitting finish for the defending champions on the day they got their World Series rings.
“Obviously, it sucks that we lost,” Greene said. “But we’ve played these guys tight. We know we can hang with anybody. We showed that last year and we’re doing it these past two games. But it’s the game of baseball. Things aren’t going our way right now and there are some things that are going their way.”
Among the things that didn’t go the Tigers’ way Friday were a pair of video challenges.
The Dodgers took 3-2 lead in the bottom of the eighth when Betts slammed a first-pitch, center-cut fastball from reliever Will Vest just over the wall in left. The Tigers challenged the play, claiming a fan interfered with Greene, who leaped at the wall and came up empty.
Video upheld the home run call.
“It was definitely worth a look,” Greene said. “I really didn’t know where the wall was because I was looking at the ball. But I knew I was going to hit the wall. It was a homer but it was worth a look.”
BOX SCORE: Dodgers 8, Tigers 5 (10)
The Tigers valiantly tied the game in the top of the ninth off lefty reliever Tanner Scott. Manny Margot delivered the club’s first hit this season with runners in scoring position, a two-out line drive single that scored Ryan Kreidler from second.
And it looked like the Tigers took a 4-3 lead when Greene lashed a double into the right-field corner. Margot, though he was stumbling around third base, was called safe at home, with umpire John Tumpane ruling the Margot eluded the tag of catcher Austin Barnes.
The Dodgers challenged and the call was overturned after video review showed that Barnes tagged Margot’s foot.
“The Dodgers are a tough team to put away, obviously,” Hinch said. “We did claw back and fight back like you would expect. This is how we play. But they come up with some big swings in big moments by some big-time players.”
All of that drama upstaged what was supposed to be the marquee storyline — Flaherty’s return to Los Angeles where last fall he was a key contributor in the Dodgers’ postseason run.
Tarik Skubal Thursday night was asked how he thought Flaherty would handle facing his former team, the Dodgers, Friday night in Dodger Stadium on the night they got their rings.
Skubal got a big smile on his face.
“I watched him against his former team last year, St. Louis, and it went pretty well,” he said. “I expect him to be just as good as that. He lives for moments like this.”
Flaherty was still pitching for the Tigers on April 30 when the Cardinals, the team that drafted him, the team he broke in with, the team that ultimately cast him aside, came into Comerica Park.
It wasn’t a fair fight. Flaherty struck out 14 in 6.2 scoreless, two-hit innings.
He came at the Dodgers with a similar focus and fury, though it didn’t end quite as happily.
“I don’t think it was so much heart rate and adrenaline, but more just emotion,” said Flaherty, who grew up outside Los Angeles and attended Harvard-Westlake high school. “Just everything, of being back. It kind of felt like the very first time back here in 2018 where it was just emotion. It was almost out-of-bodyish.”
He ended up going 5.2 innings, allowing three hits with five strikeouts. With just one regrettable pitch.
He left a first-pitch slider over the plate to lefty-swinging Freddie Freeman in the sixth inning and that ball landed 411 feet away into the bleachers in left-center and tied the game 2-2.
Flaherty, a key piece of the Dodgers’ World Series run last year, left to a well-deserved rousing ovation.
“That was unexpected,” Flaherty said. “That was very much unexpected, especially in the game and the way it was going. It was a tight game. But that meant a lot, you know, growing up here and spending a lot of time here. That was very special.”
Flaherty jokingly threw some gum at Freeman from the dugout in the top of the seventh. Both players laughed.
“We’re competitors and what-not but I have a good relationship with him,” Flaherty said. “I got him the first two times but he’s a tough guy to get out a third time. He put a good swing on the ball.”
Flaherty walked leadoff hitter Ohtani to start the game and then dispatched 11 straight hitters and didn’t allow a hit through four innings.
He gave up a broken-bat single to Tommy Edman in the fifth. And after a walk and a hit-batter loaded the bases, he locked in and got Austin Barnes on a fly out to end the inning.
He was at 70 pitches entering the sixth inning and facing the top of the Dodgers order for the third time. He got Ohtani to ground out to start the inning but Betts slapped a single to center.
Hinch, with lefty Tyler Holton starting to loosen in the bullpen, stayed with Flaherty against Freeman.
But Freeman jumped the first-pitch slider.
“Jack was incredible,” Hinch said. “I know tonight was important for him and for us and I thought he pitched really well. He adjusted his plan a little bit and I thought he had pretty much every pitch at some point and he was in complete control.
“Freeman committed to an opposite-field approach and took him deep. But I love how Jack came out with all the distractions and all the emotions that came with this start and I thought he was pretty dialed in.”
The Tigers, meanwhile, had all they could handle with Los Angeles righty Yoshinobu Yamamoto. Throwing 91-mph splitters off 95-mph four-seamers, he struck out a career-high 10 in five innings.
But they were able to build a 2-0 lead on homers by Dingler, who launched a hanging splitter 410 feet on a line into the seats in left-center in the second inning, and Gleyber Torres, who lined a 94-mph sinker just over the wall in left, another solo homer in the third.
Torres was holding his side as he trotted around the bases and in the sixth inning was pulled from the game in the sixth inning.
“I’ve felt pain in my ribs, feeling tight, the last few days,” Torres said. “I’ve been playing with that. But today I woke up more sore than normal. And in the game I felt uncomfortable. When I hit the homer, I felt it more because that pitch was really inside. I don’t want to push it too much just two games into the season.
“I just want to take care of it and try to play tomorrow. We will see how I wake up tomorrow.”
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