After silencing Father’s Day jeers with a gritty ninth-inning hustle play, Jahmai Jones ignited a late-game rally to secure Detroit’s dramatic series sweep over the White Sox.
“I feel like fans forget that we’re trying just as hard, I promise.”
Jahmai Jones was not hiding from it after the Detroit Tigers’ 5-4 extra-inning win over the Chicago White Sox on Sunday afternoon at Comerica Park. He heard the boos. He understood the frustration. He knew his seventh-inning strikeout, after A.J. Hinch went to him as a pinch hitter in another leverage spot, was going to bring more questions.
But he also knew the ninth inning gave him another chance.
“Obviously, I know I haven’t been playing as well as I know that I can, but anytime I get out there, I’m going to give my best effort,” Jones said. “I’m going to do everything I can to try to extend the game, and that’s just how I was brought up.”
That became one of the biggest details in a game that kept changing until the Tigers finally finished off a sweep of the White Sox.
For most of the afternoon, Jones looked like he might be part of another difficult conversation about Hinch’s bench usage. The Tigers trailed 3-1 in the bottom of the seventh when Hinch went to his bench three straight times against left-hander Bryan Hudson. Matt Vierling pinch hit for James Outman and flew out. Hao-Yu Lee pinch hit for Trei Cruz and doubled to left field. Then Jones pinch hit for Zach McKinstry, who had been Detroit’s best offensive player in the game to that point.
McKinstry had doubled, singled, driven in Detroit’s first run and made a strong defensive play at second base behind Keider Montero. Hinch still went to Jones, chasing the right-handed matchup. Jones struck out in front of another sellout crowd on Father's Day.
But Sunday did not stop there.
Dillon Dingler pulled the Tigers within a run in the eighth with a solo home run off Grant Taylor, his 18th of the season and his 7th home run in the month of June. Drew Summers continues to pitch well, striking out the side in the 8th.
Kyle Finnegan then gave the Tigers a clean top of the ninth, striking out Chase Meidroth before getting Braden Montgomery and Jacob Gonzalez on groundouts. That gave Detroit one more chance against Seranthony Domínguez.
For two quick outs, it looked like the Tigers were going to come up short. Vierling popped out. Lee struck out. Then Jones came back to the plate, carrying the seventh-inning strikeout, the boos and the weight of a rough month into a two-out at-bat.
He put the ball in play and ran.
“I had no clue,” Jones said. “I just put my head down. I didn’t even take a peek.”
Jones beat out a ground ball to shortstop Luisangel Acuña, and the White Sox challenged the play at first. The call stood. Jones was safe, and the game was still alive.
That effort flipped the lineup back to the top, which Jones said was the entire goal in that spot.
“I know what it meant to be up there in that situation,” Jones said. “We were just rallying, so you want to keep it going and try to do what you can to get it back to the top of the lineup.”
Kevin McGonigle followed with a single to right, moving Jones to third. Then Dingler came through again, this time with a game-tying single to left that scored Jones and made it 3-3.
Hinch pointed to that moment afterward as an example of Jones not letting the earlier failure or crowd reaction take him out of the game.
“High character again, because he’s been through it,” Hinch said. “He’s going through it, and he feels it, he knows it, he hears it. And obviously, he doesn’t have any quit in him.”
The Tigers still had to win it.
The White Sox took the lead back in the 10th when Tristan Peters lifted a sacrifice fly to right, scoring automatic runner Jacob Gonzalez and putting Chicago ahead 4-3. Will Vest limited the damage there, and that kept the Tigers close enough for one more push.
Kerry Carpenter started the bottom of the 10th at second base. Riley Greene opened the inning with a sharp single to right, moving Carpenter to third. Spencer Torkelson followed with a single into the left-center gap, scoring Carpenter and tying the game at 4-4. Colt Keith then reached on a strange fielder’s choice by Jacob Gonlazez, who could had Keith at first, when he tried to throw home, which then loading the bases after Torkelson moved to second.
Chicago went to Jordan Hicks, but Vierling ended it. He dropped a fly-ball single just over the drawn in infield into right, scoring Greene from third and giving the Tigers a 5-4 walk-off win.
That finish changed the entire conversation around Hinch’s bench usage.
Pinch hitting Jones for McKinstry in that spot was a gamble, especially given Jones’ recent offensive production and McKinstry’s value in the game. If the Tigers had lost, that decision would have been one of the first places to start.
Instead, the Tigers won, and every part of Hinch’s bench sequence eventually found its way back into the game. Lee doubled in the seventh. Jones beat out the two-out single in the ninth and scored the tying run. Vierling delivered the walk-off single in the 10th.
Jones said he understands the frustration from fans. He also said he cannot let it take over his at-bats.
“I think that’s the first time in my career I’ve been booed by an entire stadium,” Jones said. “You never want to get booed by your own fans.”
But he also added the line that explained why he was able to stay in the game mentally.
“At the end of the day, I can’t get wrapped up in that,” Jones said. “Obviously, if I got wrapped up in it, I would not have been able to do what I did my last time up.”
Jones did not dismiss the fans, either. He said he understands why the reaction has been strong, especially with the Tigers trying to climb back into the race after spending much of the first two months digging a hole.
“The entire city wants us to win,” Jones said. “They want us to be good. They know how good we can be as a team. Obviously, we want to do that too. So I feel for them, I really do. But nobody takes it harder than me.”
Sunday was not clean. The Tigers stranded chances early. Dingler grounded into a double play in the third before later homering and tying the game in the ninth. Spencer Torkelson grounded into another double play in the fourth before tying the game in the 10th. Montero carried a shutout into the sixth before Luisangel Acuña hit a two-run homer and Peters added an RBI ground-rule double in the seventh.
But the Tigers kept coming.
Hinch said afterward that it was “nice to see things go our way” and praised his team for finding a way to fight back.
For Jones, the ending did not erase the hard part of the day. It gave him something to build from. In the end, Jones did not need to be the star of the comeback. He just needed to keep the game alive.
He did, and the Tigers turned it into a 5-4 win, a sweep of a division opponent and one of their more emotional victories of the season as the Yankees come into town, starting tomorrow night.
Follow me on "X" @rogcastbaseball
