Baseball
Baseball
Outman and Dingler Deliver Late-Game Heroics for Tigers
Detroit, Michigan – The Detroit Tigers secured a dramatic 4-3 victory over the Kansas City Royals on Thursday night at Comerica Park, fueled by late-inning heroics from James Outman and Dillon Dingler. The win, Detroit’s fifth in seven games since the All-Star break, brought the Tigers within four games of the final American League Wild Card spot and six games of the AL Central lead.
The Tigers found themselves trailing for much of the contest, as former Toledo Mud Hen Randy Dobnak and reliever Matt Strahm kept their bats quiet for six innings. Detroit starter Troy Melton matched zeros with Dobnak for five frames, even escaping an early jam in the first inning after a walk and a single put two on with one out. However, Isaac Collins broke the scoreless tie in the sixth with a two-run home run that ended Melton’s outing.
The seventh inning brought a pivotal moment for Detroit. After back-to-back singles by Dingler and Kerry Carpenter put runners on, James Outman connected with a 94 mph fastball from former Tigers reliever John Schreiber, lofting it over the right-field fence for a three-run home run, his fourth of the season. This blast put the Tigers back in contention.
The Royals, however, responded in the eighth when Josh Rojas hit an RBI single off Drew Anderson, scoring Tyler Tolbert and evening the score. But the Tigers had one more rally in them. Hao-Yu Lee, who singled with one out off Steven Cruz and advanced on a groundout, set the stage for Dingler. Dingler, after fouling off two cutters, ripped the third pitch into the left-field corner for an RBI double, scoring Lee for the go-ahead run and marking his 35th two-out RBI of the season.
This hard-fought victory against a division rival improved the Tigers’ record to 10-16 against AL Central opponents this season, with half of those wins coming at the expense of the Royals.
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