If Tuesday night is any indication, the Detroit Tigers appear ready for playoff baseball.
Casey Mize went toe to toe with the New York Yankees‘ stalwart lineup, but it was the Tigers hitters that did the damage in a historic nine-run seventh inning that turned a tight, playoff-style game into a 12-2 laugher at Yankee Stadium on Tuesday night.
Mize gave up just two runs and four hits while striking out eight to pick up his team-leading 14th win.
He also cut Detroit’s magic number to clinch the American League Central to 10, despite the Cleveland Guardians‘ fifth straight win, a 2-0 win over the Kansas City Royals.
What Did The Tigers Do In The 7th Inning?
Mize served up a pair of home runs to Aaron Judge and Cody Bellinger that put Detroit behind 2-0, but Parker Meadows’ rare two-run homer knotted the game going to the seventh inning.
That’s when the Tigers offense went nuts.
Detroit scored eight runs before New York made an out, capitalizing on wildness from Yankees relievers Fernando Cruz and Mark Leiter Jr. After Riley Greene’s leadoff ground-rule double, the Tigers scored six runs on just two hits — Meadows’ RBI single that scored Spencer Torkelson and gave Detroit the lead for good, and Trey Sweeney’s RBI single.
â(In the seventh), some of them were hits, some of them were walks, and some were pressure points where we could really push them to have to make pitches,” Tigers manager A.J. Hinch said. “I was really proud of our guys. Obviously it became a huge inning for us, a separator.â
In the inning, the Tigers worked four walks, plus Colt Keith drove in a run when he was hit by a pitch. Sweeney also scored on Leiter’s wild pitch.
Then Kerry Carpenter capped the frame by driving in Keith and Gleyber Torres with an RBI triple that made it 10-2. Finally, Yankees left-hander Tim Hill relieved Leiter and got Greene — the 10th batter of the inning — to ground out to first for the first out of the inning.
âWe have a good team, and when weâre good, we do this to the opponent, where you put up a good at-bat after a good at-bat,â Hinch said. âIâm glad that our at-bats got better as the game went on.
“As the game went on, our at-bats got better and we started to control the strike zone.”
What Is The Tigers’ Magic Number?
Detroit’s magic number to clinch the American League Central is 10. That means a combination of wins and Guardians losses needs to add up to 10 for the Tigers to officially earn the moniker of division champs — something they have not done since 2014.
Still, Detroit has the second-biggest division lead in baseball (8.5 games) — only the Philadelphia Phillies‘ nine-game advantage over the New York Mets is bigger — with just 17 games to go.
The Tigers do still have six head-to-head games against the Guardians, starting with a three-game set at Comerica Park on Tuesday. Detroit is 4-3 against Cleveland this season.
The Tigers should be able to wrap up the American League Central at some point next week — potentially even by Tuesday or Wednesday, when Tarik Skubal is slated to face the Guardians.
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