It would be a stretch to call the seattle-mariners/236" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">Seattle Mariners rivals of the tigers/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">Detroit Tigers, no matter how much Tigers fans booed Seattle first baseman Josh Naylor on Friday.
But the Tigers have played the Mariners a lot since the beginning of 2025, more than any other non-divisional opponent (12 games) except the Boston Red Sox. And that familiarity may be helping them extend their hot streak.
The Tigers beat the Mariners, 7-3, on Friday, June 5, at Comerica Park in Detroit. The win brought their win streak to four games after a 6-22 record in May left them 16 games under .500.
And two of the best performances of the night came from two players very familiar with what Seattle has to offer – starting pitcher Framber Valdez and right fielder Kerry Carpenter.
Tigers manager A.J. Hinch didn’t seem convinced that the Tigers are all that familiar with the Mariners, with the exception of one key player.
“Except for the playoff series last year, we don’t play them a ton. Framber has,” he said “He’s played them his whole career a lot, and so he’s got a lot of history with that lineup, especially at the top with [Randy] Arozarena and Julio [Rodríguez] and J.P. [Crawford], and so he had to battle and he did.”
Valdez has done well pitching through adversity lately, with Friday’s game adding to a tally of impressive starts in 2026. He only got through five innings, but Valdez pitched through the rain while allowing scoreless innings in the fourth and fifth with two runners on, both times representing game-tying opportunities for the Mariners.
“I wasn’t putting my head down. I was ready to go as deep as I could, and it was in my mind, ‘I’m not going to let him score,'” he said. “When situations needed a big time, I stepped up.”
Friday’s win was Valdez’s sixth start this season of at least five innings allowing one run or fewer, as his clutch pitching helped keep a powerful Seattle team (fourth in the American League in slugging percentage at .398) from doing much damage through the first half of the game.
Valdez’s win makes him 8-4 all-time against the Mariners over 17 regular-season starts (16 of them with the Houston Astros), sporting a 3.43 ERA against Seattle, in line with his career average. His team has won five of his last six games against the Mariners, with Valdez showing out against his old divisional rival for the first time as a Tiger.
The lefty said his familiarity with the lineup helped him on Friday, but that it wasn’t the only thing that led to a win.
“The familiarity helps a lot, but at the end of the day, I gave myself an opportunity to study what I already know and improve the things that I didn’t know,” he said. “At the end of the day, I’m just doing my best and giving my best on the field.”
Carpenter’s third-inning home run against Seattle starter Bryan Woo was his seventh of the year and ninth of his career against the Mariners, including the two home runs he hit against them in last year’s ALDS.
With those two postseason home runs included, Carpenter has more home runs against the Mariners than any other opponent.
“It’s weird because their pitchers are so good and they strike me out a lot, and I happened to get [Woo] a little bit,” he said.
Carpenter finished 1-for-4 with two strikeouts, but his two-run home run in the third brought the Tigers a 3-1 lead. In his three games since returning from the injured list, Carpenter already has five hits, four RBIs and two home runs, providing pop to a Tigers lineup that suffered a power outage through May.
“[Carpenter] hits the fly ball that carries out of the ballpark, which was a really big blow early just because it was so hard to get the big hit against [Woo],” Hinch said after the game, also praising second baseman Gleyber Torres for his 3-for-4 day. “You want to see what those two guys are worth to this lineup, they contributed in great fashion.”
Torres had the most impressive day at the plate with his two-RBI double in the seventh extending Detroit’s lead to 5-2, while first baseman Spencer Torkelson‘s eighth-inning home run ended up the finishing touch on a solid win. But on a night where every Tigers starter recorded at least one hit, it was Carpenters big fly in the third that got the offense going.
The Tigers get five more games against the Mariners this season (two over the next two days to finish out the home series), and Carpenter is looking forward to all of them – and he has a reason for that beyond his historic success against Seattle.
“I love playing them here, but I love playing them in Seattle, too. My wife’s family is from up there, so it’s always fun to be out there.”
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You can reach Christian at cromo@freepress.com.
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