Division crown is Cleveland’s first since 2007

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Crisp and Detroit’s J.D. Martinez traded two-run homers in the second, and Cleveland took the lead for good in the fifth on the double by Kipnis. Mike Napoli’s sacrifice fly later that inning made it 4-2.

With the division title 15 outs away, the Indians took the field for the bottom of the fifth without their ace. Kluber, the team leader with 18 wins, was replaced by Dan Otero, and the announcement about the 2014 AL Cy Young Award winner’s groin problem came a little while later.

“He’s good, but he has a groin thing that he’s fighting,” Francona said. “It started getting him in the third and again in the fourth, so I grabbed him. I told him we need to find a way to win a game, but we aren’t going far without him, so we need to get him healthy and let him do what he does.”

Miguel Cabrera made it 4-3 with an RBI single, but Perez led off the seventh with a drive to right to put the Indians back up by two.

Cabrera added another run-scoring single in the seventh, but Perez — who entered the game hitting .168 — answered with another big hit in the eighth, lining an RBI single up the middle.

Cleveland made it 7-4 on an error by Martinez in right.

Miller, the third reliever for the Indians, struck out four of the six hitters he faced before giving way to Allen. The final out came on a strikeout by Cameron Maybin.

It was fitting that Cleveland clinched the division with a head-to-head victory over the Tigers, because that’s how the Central was won. The Indians are 14-2 against Detroit with three games left in the season series.