CLEVELAND — Detroit Tigers manager A.J. Hinch climbed out of the dugout after right-handed reliever Tommy Kahnle walked Cleveland Guardians nine-hole hitter Austin Hedges with two outs in the seventh inning.
Coming up next: Steven Kwan.
Surely, Hinch would deploy one of his two left-handed relievers — Tyler Holton or Brant Hurter — to face the Guardians’ pesky, contact-driven leadoff hitter. The Tigers needed that left-on-left matchup to get the out and keep their comeback hopes alive.
But then came the surprise.
Instead of a lefty, Hinch summoned right-handed reliever Kyle Finnegan.
“It’s going to our guy,” Hinch said Tuesday, Sept. 23, after the Tigers’ 5-2 loss to the Guardians in the first of three games in the series at Progressive Field. “The top of the order is the spot where we want Finnegan to pitch.”
At the decision point, the Tigers were losing 3-2 to the Guardians in a crucial American League Central showdown — the biggest game of the 2025 season.
The Tigers ended up losing, 5-2.
“We have to get to tomorrow and get to a better result,” Hinch said after the Tigers’ seventh loss in a row. “Everybody knows. There’s no hiding behind anything other than showing up ready to play. Right now, we want just good outcomes. A good outcome would be a complete game for us.”
The Guardians extended their lead with two runs in the seventh inning, set up by Kwan’s double off Finnegan’s middle-away fastball that put two runners in scoring position. Pinch-hitter Daniel Schneemann, another left-handed hitter, smacked Finnegan’s two-strike splitter into left field, driving in two runs.
That’s how the Guardians took a 5-2 lead.
“You have Hedges down 0-2 (in the count), and he battles back and takes four pitches outside the strike zone,” Hinch said, referencing Kahnle’s six-pitch walk to Hedges, who is hitting .147 in 68 games. “They won the strike zone on both sides. That is oftentimes why we talk so much about the important of the strike zone. They dominated it, and we didn’t.”
The data doesn’t support Hinch’s decision.
Kwan is hitting .290 with a .779 OPS in 457 plate appearances against right-handed pitchers, compared to .251 with a .591 OPS in 215 plate appearances against left-handers.
The three relievers have similar results — left-handers hit .194 with a .568 OPS against Finnegan, .197 with a .524 OPS against Holton and .202 with a .573 OPS against Hurter — but that doesn’t change the fact that Kwan is worse against lefties, only for Hinch to call for Finnegan rather than Holton or Hurter.
“It is what it is,” Hinch said before Tuesday’s game, when asked why the Tigers have just two left-handed relievers in their bullpen. “We need all of our guys to get through a series like this. … I’m not as concerned about handedness as maybe some of you.”
There were other mistakes throughout Tuesday’s game.
There’s plenty of blame to go around.
“A lot of things are piling up on us,” Hinch said, “and we’re having to wear it because this is our reality.”
Left-hander Tarik Skubal — the reigning AL Cy Young winner — made three mistakes in the sixth inning, leading to three runs that allowed the Guardians to take a 3-2 lead. The three mistakes: a between-the-legs throwing error, a wild pitch and a balk. Skubal allowed three runs (one earned run) on four hits and three walks with eight strikeouts across six innings, throwing 95 pitches.
The Tigers’ offense struck out 19 times, including back-to-back strikeouts with the bases loaded in the fourth inning against right-hander Gavin Williams. Those two mistakes: Zach McKinstry struck out swinging on a hanging curveball; Wenceel Pérez struck out swinging on a curveball in the dirt.
“We had the same exact situation with Williams last week, where we seem to get a couple of things going early and then go outside of the strike zone,” said Hinch, who watched Williams shut down the Tigers in back-to-back starts. “It looked like we had a hard time with his array of pitches, and we didn’t make contact a ton.”
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Maybe Hinch’s bullpen decision didn’t matter anyway, as the Tigers struck out five times in the eighth and ninth innings — never giving themselves a chance for a comeback after the Guardians secured a 5-2 lead in the seventh.
In the eighth, Parker Meadows and Gleyber Torres struck out to start the inning against right-handed reliever Hunter Gaddis, and after Kerry Carpenter delivered a single, Spencer Torkelson struck out to end the inning. In the ninth, Riley Greene and Dillon Dingler struck out swinging against right-handed reliever Cade Smith, then McKinstry lined out to end the game.
The offense continues to struggle, rarely scoring more than two runs in recent games.
“We’ve been this way for a couple of series,” Dingler said. “It’s not quite pressing, but we definitely feel some of the pressure. We got to mitigate it. We got to eliminate it. We still got to find ways to stay loose and focus on what we need to do — and go out and do it.”
With the loss, the Tigers surrendered first place in the AL Central to the Guardians. Both teams have five games remaining, but the Guardians clinched the head-to-head tiebreaker by beating the Tigers in Tuesday’s opener of the three-game series.
The Tigers have a 42.9% to win the AL Central, according to FanGraphs. Just 14 days ago, the Tigers had a 99.9% chance to win the division.
They’ve lost 10 of 11 games.
“The team across the way doesn’t feel bad for us,” Skubal said. “There’s no reason we should feel bad for ourselves. We still got an opportunity to come out there and win tomorrow and then win a series. I think that’s what really matters.”
Contact Evan Petzold at epetzold@freepress.com or follow him @EvanPetzold.
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This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Detroit Tigers, A.J. Hinch take AL Central loss to Cleveland Guardians
