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 11 in seven innings and allowed only two runners into scoring position.

“I’m facing the lineup, I’m not necessarily facing him,” Fried said. “It was cool to be able to walk out before the game and give him a little head nod. We’re both competitors. We knew we were locked in and had a job to do, but it was fun. It was a cool experience.”

A 29-pitch second inning pushed Flaherty’s pitch-count up and shortened his outing. He was at 79 pitches entering the sixth and he walked Aaron Judge to start the inning. With one out Paul Goldschmidt, who had seven hits in the three-game series, lashed a double and ended Flaherty’s day.

“Jack was nasty,” Hinch said. “He had a feel for both breaking balls (slider and knuckle-curve) and his finish fastball was pretty good early in the game. When he did get in trouble, he found a way to escape.”

In the sixth, though, it was lefty Tyler Holton who bailed him out. He got lefty-swinging Jazz Chisholm to bounce one back to him. Holton ran at Judge, trapping him between third and home and tagged him out.

Holton struck out Anthony Volpe to end the sixth and he got the first two outs in the seventh. But No. 9 hitter Oswaldo Cabrera kept the inning alive with a single.

Holton then made his only mistake of the outing. He left a 1-0 sinker up and in on lefty Ben Rice. Rice hit it 419 feet over the wall in right-center. It was just the fourth homer Holton has allowed to a left-handed hitter in his career. Then came the ninth, a tale of two very different half innings.

The top of the ninth featured two dropped foul popups by catcher Dillon Dingler on consecutive swings, back-to-back hit-batsmen by reliever John Brebbia, an error on a potential double-play grounder by second baseman Colt Keith and a malfunctioning PitchCom.

It’s a minor shock that all the led to just two runs, on a two-run single by Judge.

Dingler’s drops came against leadoff hitter J.C. Escarra. Both balls were hit to virtually the same spot, to the side of the Tigers’ dugout and right at the netting. Both balls bounced out of Dingler’s glove.

With two on, Brebbia got Rice to hit a hard ground ball right at Keith but the ball squirted through.