DETROIT >> New Tigers reliever Tommy Kahnle, to this day, hasn’t spoken to Miguel Cabrera about that infamous fracas at Comerica Park back in 2017.

“I’m sure I will see him this spring,” he said. “He’ll come up and say something funny about it.”

Back on Aug 24, 2017, Kahnle, pitching for the New York Yankees, played a prominent role in igniting what ended up being a series of benches-clearing brawls.

“Just a wild day,” he said Thursday on a Zoom call from his Notre Dame- and Philadelphia Eagles-themed man cave.

Actually, blood turned bad between these two teams several weeks earlier. In a game on July 31, Yankees pitchers hit three Tigers’ hitters. Kahnle was one of them, drilling Mikie Mahtook in the middle of the back.

Tigers’ starting pitcher Michael Fulmer hit Jacoby Ellsbury that same day and he was on the mound at Comerica on Aug. 24. Yankees catcher Gary Sanchez hit a long home run off him in the fourth inning and Fulmer drilled him the next inning.

Kahnle responded in the bottom of the fifth, throwing a pitch behind Cabrera.

“I instantly got ejected,” Kahnle said. “They told me to go to the clubhouse. (Manager Joe) Girardi was up there with me. The next thing you know, I’m looking at the TV … Chappy (Aroldis Chapman) is just sprinting toward home plate, everybody is going, ‘Woah, woah, woah.’ It was crazy.”

Cabrera ended up having words with catcher Austin Romine, who would be his teammate three years later. Cabrera shoved Romine and the brawl ensued. Both benches and bullpens emptied and real punches were thrown.

Sanchez ended up at the bottom of the pile wildly throwing sucker punches. Those punches ended up on the side of Nick Castellanos’ head. In the seventh inning, reliever Dellin Betances hit James McCann in the head. He was ejected. Chapman entered and hit John Hicks.

Benches emptied again.

“Wild day,” Kahnle said.

He comes to Detroit now on far more calmer and amicable terms, signing a one-year deal for $7.75 million on the heels of a hugely successful season and postseason with the Yankees.

“It’s just something about this team itself,” Kahnle said of his decision to sign with the Tigers. “The aura around them. They hit their stride late in the season last year and it was fun to watch from the outside. And a lot of us were watching. It was one of those things where, ‘Do you want to run into that team (in the playoffs)? I don’t know.’

“I was really intrigued with where they’re at as a ballclub and that was a big hit for me. When you have a team that is that serious and it wants to accommodate you in every way based on the conversations I was having with them, it seemed to me to be the right way to go.”

Watching how manager AJ Hinch and pitching coach Chris Fetter trusted and used the bullpen last year, Kahnle said that was right up his alley.

“They were used quite heavily and they got them to the playoffs, I feel like,” he said. “I felt like the bullpen was a big part of that team and helped them get where they got to. It was impressive to see how they were able to respond every day.”

Kahnle, 35, is expected to be another back-end, leverage option for Hinch, supplementing Jason Foley, Tyler Holton, Beau Brieske and Will Vest.

“I talked to Fett and AJ and the back end of the bullpen is a situation I’ve been in for a good part of my career and I think that’s where they envision me, somewhere in the later innings,” he said. “But I told AJ up front, ‘You call down and I’m going to pick up the baseball and answer the call.’ That’s the way I’ve always been.

“I enjoy getting out there and competing. It’s been my thing since I was a little kid, and it still is to this day. I want the ball. I want to compete.”

Back on that August day in 2017, the fastballs Kahnle was humming into the backs of Tigers’ hitters were ringing 97 and 98 mph. After Tommy John surgery in 2020 and some subsequent arm issues, the fastball velocity has dropped to the mid-90s.

Which is only partly why he throws changeups more than 70% of the time. Mostly, it’s because his changeup is one of the nastiest pitches in the game. Since 2019, opponents have hit just .163 against it with 155 strikeouts with a 39.7% whiff rate.

“I’m comfortable doing that,” he said of his heavy reliance on one pitch. “But in the back of my head I sometimes second guess, like, should I be throwing 75% changeups? I would like to keep it around the 60% range; that way I can still utilize my fastball, even though it’s not an elite fastball like it once was.”

Still, it has to be a comfort for a pitcher to have a weapon he can throw even when the hitters know it’s coming.

“Yeah, a lot of guys get on me about that,” he said. “In 2022 when I was in Los Angeles, they were like, ‘You can throw that pitch 100 times. They know it’s coming and they still can’t hit it.’”

Kahnle pretty much tested that theory at the end of last season, ripping off 61 straight changeups in one stretch.

“I wasn’t sure what the number was but in the back of my head I was like, ‘Man, I have not thrown a fastball in a long time,’” he said, laughing. “It was working. Sometimes I go through stretches where I can throw a ton of changeups in a row and get away with it.”

It’s been a pretty good offseason for Kahnle, even before cutting his deal with the Tigers. His beloved Fighting Irish made it to the NCAA championship game and the Eagles will battle the Chiefs in the Super Bowl on Feb. 9.

“I’m flying down to Lakeland the day after the Super Bowl,” he said. “Hopefully it will be a good flight. But, it could be a bad one and my kids could be tormenting me, too. We’ll see.”