Tigers win second straight over White Sox, 7-6
Sometimes it’s a big hit. Sometimes it’s a dominant pitching performance. And other times, like Saturday in the Tigers’ action-packed, 7-6 victory over the Chicago White Sox, the game-changing event can be a defensive play.
The Tigers had just erased a 6-4 deficit with two runs in the top of the seventh. Tigers manager AJ Hinch gave the ball to right-handed reliever Alex Lange to face the Nos. 9-1-2 hitters. Lange ended up throwing 23 pitches to four hitters and just eight strikes.
He walked the bases loaded and left the one-out mess for Will Vest.
Vest got Eloy Jimenez to hit a hard bouncer at third baseman Zach McKinstry. The ball took a tough hop into McKinstry’s midsection. He stayed with it, stepped on third for one out and threw a seed in the dirt to first. Spencer Torkelson deftly scooped it up to end the inning and keep the score tied.
In the top of the 10th inning, catcher Carson Kelly lined his third hit of the day, a single up the middle, scoring free runner Mark Canha from second base and breaking the tie.
Veteran right-hander Shelby Miller, who had dispatched the top of the White Sox order in the bottom of the ninth, closed out the White Sox in the 10th, securing the Tigers’ second straight win to start the season.
Vest had gotten the Tigers through the bottom of the eighth, as well, navigating his way through three left-handed hitters, plus a single and an error. He punched out
Korey Lee and stranded runners at the corners.
The Tigers surrendered a threerun lead early and, getting some big hits from Canha, Riley Greene and Kelly, fought out of a three-run deficit late.
Down 6-3 in the fifth, Canha delivered the Tigers’ first home run of the season, a solo shot to left. That triggered the first dugout home run celebration, which this year is Little Caesars’ pizza themed — the pizza-pizza triple-stacked on a pole.
It was a three-RBI day for Canha, who had a two-run single in the first inning.
The Tigers tied the score in the seventh.
White Sox manager Pedro Grifol summoned right-handed reliever Dominic Leone, even though the Tigers had left-handed hitters