Tigers hit wall, fall to Nationals 11-7

Chris McCosky, The Detroit News on Jul 3, 2025

Published in Baseball

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WASHINGTON — The baseball schedule is unrelenting. Players accept that, they train for it and they don’t make excuses about it.

But playing three games in the span of 30 hours – that’s an uncommon level of drudgery and the Detroit Tigers handled it poorly in the early stages Thursday night and wound up losing the rubber match to the 37-50 Washington Nationals, 11-7.

If there is such a thing as hitting the wall, the Tigers hit it at the end of Game 2 Wednesday night when the Nationals sent 10 batters to the plate in their final at-bat and scored six runs.

The next time the Nationals came to bat, in the first inning Thursday, they sent nine batters to the plate, scored five runs and never really looked back.

Lefty Dietrich Enns, who blanked the Athletics in his season debut last Thursday, never got untracked in this game. He lasted one batter into the fifth, but that was mostly because the Tigers’ bullpen was spent and he needed to eat some innings.

His final line told the tale, eight hits, two homers, eight runs (seven earned) in four innings.

The two lefties at the top of the Nationals batting order especially vexed Enns. CJ Abrams and James Wood produced four hits, a walk and four runs including Wood’s 23rd home run.

Wood ended up with a career-high five hits on the night.

Paul DeJong also took Enns deep, a three-run shot to cap the five-run first inning.

Things turned ugly for the Tigers in a bizarre fifth inning. First Zach McKinstry was charged with an error on a throw that eluded first baseman Colt Keith. All Star Javier Baez then booted a sure double play ball.

Lastly, McKinstry misplayed a routine ground-ball at third.

Amazingly, reliever Brenan Hanifee was able to limit the damage to two unearned runs.

Hard to believe there was a time in this game when the Tigers had a 3-0 lead.

With two outs and two on in the first inning, Spencer Torkelson and Nats’ starter Jake Irvin engaged in a 10-pitch battle that Torkelson won, launching a 3-2 fastball onto the green batter’s eye in dead center – a 428-foot blast.

It was Torkelson’s 19th homer.

Irvin needed 34 pitches to get out of the first inning, but did not allow another hit and worked through the sixth inning.

The Tigers chipped away at the Nats’ bullpen.

They strung four singles together off reliever Cole Henry in the seventh, with RBI singles by All Star Gleyber Torres and Wenceel Perez. Torres had two hits and extended his on-base streak to 18 games.

In the eighth, they took advantage of a hit-batsman and walk by reliever Brad Lord. Parker Meadows singled in a run and Baez’s hard ground-ball – robbed of a hit by Abrams at shortstop – plated another to make it 9-7.

The Nationals put the game away in the eighth, scoring twice off reliever Carlos Hernandez, forcing manager AJ Hinch to use leverage reliever Will Vest to get through the inning.

The Tigers, who have lost two straight road series, open a three-game series in Cleveland Friday night. At 54-34, they will go in with a healthy 11.5 lead over the Guardians in the Central Division.

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