DETROIT >> When the ninth-inning comeback was brought up after the game, manager AJ Hinch’s response was somewhere between defiant and, “Duh, like that’s not new.”

“This is who we are when it comes to playing the whole game,” he said after the Tigers’ rally came up one run short and the Yankees escaped town with a 4-3 win Wednesday in the series finale at Comerica Park. “If that surprised anybody, then you haven’t watched us play. We play the whole game.”

The first two weeks of the season are in the books and with a day off Thursday before the Tigers head back out on the road to Minneapolis and Milwaukee, it’s probably good to take a minute to put things in perspective — especially given the way things got scuffed up the top of the ninth.

The loss Wednesday ended a five-game winning streak. After being swept by the defending champion Dodgers in Los Angeles, the Tigers have won three straight series. That in spite of the fact that the injury list keeps growing, with six regulars out of the lineup.

“Just play the game that’s in front of you,” Hinch said. “We can’t do anything more than that with anybody who is not here. I think our team embraces that…and there’s also the reality that this is how it is. Our toughness, our resilience, our fight, our character, all of that stuff is guaranteed. We are who we are and our players respond.

“That’s why games like today you get a little bit of both feelings. We’re disappointed we didn’t get a chance to sweep but at the same time you can’t argue the effort and what we’re putting into these games.”

The first six innings of the game was like a Harvard-Westlake reunion featuring two of the Los Angeles high school’s most famous alums, Tigers’ Jack Flaherty and Yankees’ lefty Max Fried. The two were teammates there in 2012 and they traded zeros for six innings, striking out 20 hitters combined.

“I don’t think we ever talked about it,” Flaherty said, after striking out nine and allowing three hits in 5.1 innings. “We’ve been in different settings and we’ve watched each other throw. But we never matched up on the same day.”

Flaherty had pitched against another Harvard-Westlake alum in 2021, Lucas Giolito. He was more focused on the task at hand in this one.

“My job remains my job,” he said. “I need to pitch well. Max was unbelievable today. He outpitched me.”

Fried was brilliant. Expertly mixing six pitches, he struck out