CLEVELAND — Dillon Dingler hit a tiebreaking homer in the sixth inning, Wenceel Pérez drove in a pair of runs in a four-run seventh and the Detroit Tigers defeated the Cleveland Guardians 6-3 on Thursday in the deciding Game 3 of their AL Wild Card Series.
It is the second straight season the Tigers have won a Wild Card Series on the road. Detroit heads to Seattle for the first two games of a best-of-five Division Series, with Game 1 on Saturday.
It was also a little bit of sweet revenge for the Tigers after their season ended in Cleveland last year with a loss in Game 5 of the ALDS.
“I don’t think it needs to be any sweeter than what it feels like right now because you have to earn these wins,” manager A.J. Hinch said. “You have to earn the opportunity to play in October. You’ve got to earn a full-series win over a good team, a hot team, a team that we know well.”
The AL West champion Mariners, the second seed, took four of six regular-season meetings with the Tigers, who are the third AL wild card.
José Ramírez drove in Cleveland’s first run with a single. The AL Central champion Guardians were 15 1/2 games back in early July before completing the biggest comeback in division or league play in baseball history.
However, they ran out of steam in the playoffs as Detroit turned the page after posting the second-worst record in the majors in September (7-17).
“It stinks for it to end that way. I couldn’t be more proud of them, of what we accomplished,” Cleveland manager Stephen Vogt said. “It’s not enough. We want more. And I think that’s really the message, is let this sting. We’re close. We are really close. We’re not quite there yet.”
The game was tied 1-all with two outs in the sixth when Dingler got an elevated changeup from Joey Cantillo on a 1-1 count and drove it 401 feet into the bleachers in left-center to put the Tigers on top.
It was also the first postseason hit and RBI for the Tigers catcher.
“I was able to get a pitch to hit and do a little damage,” Dingler said. “I feel like the momentum in the series was the biggest thing. The team with the biggest momentum or the most momentum was the one that was going to carry on.”
Detroit then broke it open in the seventh by sending 10 batters to the plate and scoring four times to make it 6-1.
With one out and the bases loaded, Pérez lined a base hit to right off Erik Sabrowski to drive in Javier Báez and Parker Meadows. Hunter Gaddis came in and gave up RBI singles to Spencer Torkelson and Riley Greene, which brought in Kerry Carpenter and Pérez.
Kyle Finnegan got the win, retiring all four batters he faced in relief. Cantillo took the loss.
“When Wenceel got the hit — I don’t know why, in baseball, it seems like one good thing happens and then two, three, four, five at-bats in a row were exceptional,” Hinch said. “We wanted to get even more greedy and do more. But it was nice to separate and breathe a little bit. But knowing they weren’t going to give in.”
The Tigers opened the scoring in the third. With one out and runners on the corners, Carpenter hit a grounder down the first-base line that deflected off C.J. Kayfus’ glove when he tried to backhand it. The ball rolled into foul territory near the stands as Meadows scored. Carpenter went to second and Gleyber Torres advanced to third on what the official scorer ruled a double
The Guardians tied it in the fourth. George Valera led off with a double to the right-field corner and scored on Ramírez’s base hit on a knuckle curve by starter Jack Flaherty on a full count.
The single was the 40th hit of Ramírez’s postseason career, making him the fifth player in franchise history to reach that mark.
In the eighth inning, Detroit reliever Will Vest dropped a throw while covering first base on Ramírez’s grounder for an error that allowed Brayan Rocchio and Steven Kwan to score. Vest quickly recovered the ball near the dugout, however, and threw out Ramírez trying to reach second on the play.
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