Jackson Jobe’s return from Tommy John surgery took a brutal turn Friday night, and the Detroit Tigers paid for it in a 9-5 loss to the Chicago White Sox at Comerica Park.
The fourth inning was the whole story for Jobe. Detroit’s starter entered that frame with a 3-1 cushion and left it buried under a five-run White Sox burst, one that turned a promising night into a career-worst mess. Jobe finished with six earned runs allowed over 3⅔ innings, matching the most damage he has ever taken in a start.
That inning came apart fast. Chase Meidroth opened it with a single, Tristan Peters followed with a two-run homer, and Munetaka Murakami then put Chicago ahead with a solo shot, his 27th of the season. Braden Montgomery capped the rally with a two-out triple that scored Miguel Vargas and Andrew Benintendi.
The Tigers had given Jobe early help, too. Rookie Ben Malgeri launched a two-run homer in the second, his first of two on the night, and Eduardo Valencia added an RBI double in the third to build the 3-1 lead. Chicago needed only two batters in the fourth to wipe that out.
Jobe’s night started off shaky before the White Sox ever got rolling. He hit Sam Antonacci on his second pitch of the game, then hit Murakami on his third, with both left-handed hitters taking wayward breaking balls off the foot.
Three batters later, Montgomery drove an opposite-field single into left to bring Antonacci home for the game’s first run. Jobe escaped the inning after striking out Colson Montgomery, but he had already allowed his first earned run of the season.
The White Sox kept finding him after that. Jobe allowed a single in the second and two more hits in the third without surrendering a run, but the fourth was a different animal.
Four of Chicago’s five hits in the inning came against his fastball, which averaged 97.8 mph and touched 100 mph in the first. The White Sox still barreled it up, with Murakami, Peters and Braden Montgomery each producing exit velocities of at least 104 mph on their extra-base hits in the frame.
Chicago wasn’t done after Jobe exited. Vargas added a two-run homer off lefty reliever Enmanuel De Jesus in the sixth to stretch the lead to 8-3, then hit another solo shot off Ty Madden in the eighth for his 27th homer of the season. That second blast tied Murakami for the team lead and kept alive a strange White Sox stat line: they’re the only club in MLB with three players at 25 or more home runs in 2026, with Vargas, Murakami and Colson Montgomery all in that group.
Detroit did make a late push. Malgeri led off the seventh with his second homer of the game, cutting the deficit to 8-4 and giving the Tigers their sixth multi-homer game by a player this season. Max Clark then tripled and scored on a Gleyber Torres groundout, but that was as close as Detroit got.
The Tigers’ offense was quiet against opener Sean Newcomb before waking up against long reliever José Urquidy. Spencer Torkelson singled, Malgeri homered, and Valencia’s third-inning double brought home Kevin McGonigle from first. Valencia now has 11 extra-base hits in his first 16 games and owns a 1.253 OPS to start his career.
The loss left Detroit at 60-62, still chasing .500 and now tied with the Texas Rangers for the final American League wild-card spot, though the Tigers hold the tiebreak. Chicago, meanwhile, pushed its American League Central lead to 3½ games over Detroit.
The teams meet again Saturday afternoon at Comerica Park, with first pitch set for 1:10 p.m. ET. Tigers right-hander Troy Melton is scheduled to face White Sox lefty Anthony Kay, who may have former Tigers catcher Jake Rogers as his battery mate after Chicago claimed Rogers off waivers earlier Friday.
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