Red Sox 5, Tigers 4: Kevin Millar speaks a win into existence

Matt used to write an intro here. I guess I’ll start doing it too.

Here’s the game story:

The Tigers scored after a Javy Baez triple in the first that Jarren Duran should have held to double but didn’t when Miguel Cabrera, facing fellow ancient one Rich Hill, singled to left. Hill got out of trouble and the Sox got one right back when Duran reached on a walk, Devers singled and J.D. Martinez hit a sac fly and after one it was 1-1.

Do you know what happened in the second? Hill walked the leadoff batter but did got the rest and the Sox did nothing. Now you know.

In the bottom of the second, Hill dominated the Tigers for two batters but then Baez continued to positively regress, hitting a solo homer to right center to give him the hard parts of the cycle. Miggy singled, but a popout to Devers ended it at 2-1 heading into the bottom of the third.

In the bottom of said inning, Riley Greene, who is awesome, stole a double from Devers to end the inning. You know what happened in the next 20 minutes or so? Nothing, but in the bottom of the fourth, Alex Verdugo singled to left after a nice at-bat to put two men on with one out.

Which made it 2-1, and Kevin Millar starts saying, you know what? Trevor Story is going to yard here. I just feel it. And lo:

Good call, Kev. 4-2, very memorably, after 4.

Hill got through two outs in the fifth with one on, then tried a little hesitation move in his windup with Cabrera pounded to right, which put men on first and third with two outs for Eric Haase, who lined a single to left to make it 4-3. This brought up Greene, for whom Hill brought out his best lefty-on-lefty stuff to get it to 2-2, then got him on a foul-tip slurve. Phew.

Duran pounded one to the deepest part of center field where it’s obviously still gonna be caught to open the fifth.

Ryan Brasier came on in half 1/6, and he shut down any uprising. Xanger Bogearts led off the bottom of the inning with a single but nothing came of it. With the Sox undefeated in their yellow uniforms this year, Brasier helped keep the Tigers at by retiring the side in the 7th. Not without drama: Dugie caught one against the wall. Then Trevor Story did this:

And right after the commercial Christian Vázquez did this:

And it was 5-3. Fun game! From there it was largely quiet except for a really nice catch by Dugie against the wall. Matt Strahm came out in the ninth to finish it off and, against, his first batter, got battered:

You rang? After that, at 5-4, Strahm got out Robbie Grossman on an iffy call and former Tiger John Schreiber came on to finish it off against Baez... who lined a single down the first base line, his third hit of the night, to put the tying run on, but Miggy grounded out to Bogey and that was that, baby!

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