Tigers, Flaherty hammered in 9-6 loss to White Sox

Tony Paul, The Detroit News on Aug 13, 2025

Published in Baseball

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CHICAGO — Jim Leyland liked to say that momentum was only as good as your next day's starting pitcher.

And, well, there ya go.

A seemingly decent Jack Flaherty start turned into a miserable one in a hurry during a disastrous, five-run fifth inning as the White Sox slogged their way past the Tigers, 9-6, at Rate Field on Monday night. The root canal of a baseball game took 3 hours, 24 minutes, making it the longest nine-inning game of Detroit's season.

The White Sox strung together four consecutive hits to start the fourth and knocked Flaherty, who was at just 52 pitches entering the fifth inning, from the game before the inning was over. A two-run single by White Sox slugging rookie Colson Montgomery, who struck out the first two times up and was in an 0-2 hole in his at-bat in the fifth, proved to be the biggest blow, and was followed by an RBI single by Luis Robert Jr. to make it 4-1.

Flaherty had allowed one hit through the first four innings, then saw Kyle Teel, Edgar Quero, Curtis Mead and Mike Tauchman single consecutively to start the fifth.

Flaherty (6-12) struck out Lenyn Sosa and then got ahead of Montgomery, before the roof completely caved in. Not all of the hits were hit all that hard, but most were on quite hittable pitches. He was relieved by Brant Hurter, who walked two of the first three White Sox batters he faced, including one with the bases loaded, to make it 5-1.

The White Sox made it 6-1 on a bases-loaded walk by Andrew Benintendi in the sixth, off Codi Heuer, and 7-3 in the seventh, when Quero, also off Heuer, hit his seventh homer of the season.

Quero added a two-run single off Tommy Kahnle to blow it wide open in the eighth inning. Kahnle has been scored upon in eight of his last 11 appearances.

For the second consecutive start, Flaherty allowed five earned runs in fewer than five innings. There were signs before the fifth that he didn't have his best stuff. The first two batters of the game made a combined 780-plus feet of outs. Flaherty allowed eight hits. His ERA is up to 4.76.

Also, for the second consecutive night, the Tigers didn't do much offensively, against the worst team in the American League, in a hitters' park, no less — at least, they didn't until the game had gotten out of hand.

White Sox right-hander Yoendyrs Gomez (2-1), who's been DFA'd by two teams already this season and was called up from Triple-A before the game, allowed just one hit in five innings, while striking out a career-high seven. He hit two batters and walked one.

The Tigers did strike first in the game, which was delayed 50 minutes at the start because of a storm that blew through the South Side, in the fourth inning, when Kerry Carpenter was hit leading off, and Riley Greene followed with a double to deep center field (one of his two doubles on the night). Wenceel Perez drove in Carpenter for the sacrifice fly to make it 1-0, and triggering some "Let's Go Tigers" chants from the crowd of 19,494. Those chants didn't last long.

Dillon Dingler cut the deficit to 6-3 when he homered to right-center in the seventh inning. Robert, the White Sox center fielder, leapt and got a glove on the ball but couldn't corral it and nudged it over the fence for Dingler's 11th homer. Andy Ibanez, pinch hitting for Zach McKinstry (five strikeouts in his last two games), singled ahead of Dingler.

Colt Keith hit his 10th homer of the season, a three-run shot to right-center in the ninth inning.

The White Sox had to go to the bullpen for the final out; Jordan Leasure struck out Spencer Torkelson for his fourth save.

With the loss, the Tigers' lead in the American League Central dropped to 5.5 games over the Cleveland Guardians, who beat the Miami Marlins, 4-3, earlier Tuesday. Detroit has 41 regular-season games remaining.

The Tigers (69-52) are just 3-3 against the White Sox (44-76) in Chicago this season, after going 7-0 here a year ago.

The Tigers and White Sox wrap up the three-game series at 2:10 Eastern Wednesday.