Detroit Tigers surge to winning record with home runs in 6-2 win over Los Angeles Angels

The Detroit Tigers hit three home runs in a span of five plate appearances against Los Angeles Angels right-hander Johnny Cueto, with the three homers combining for 1,272 feet.

All of them were long homers to center field.

Jake Rogers hit a first-pitch fastball 422 feet; Riley Greene hit a middle-middle sinker 425 feet; Kerry Carpenter hit a middle-down changeup 425 feet.

The three homers, headlined by Rogers’ go-ahead swing in the fifth inning, led to a 6-2 win over the Angels in Tuesday’s opener of a three-game series at Comerica Park. The game didn’t start until 9:25 p.m., rather than 6:40 p.m., because of a rain delay.

“It’s huge,” Rogers said. “Those are big at-bats. I tried to get things going there at the bottom of the lineup and get it up to those guys, Murderers’ Row. Every homer is a good homer.”

The Tigers (67-66) have won five games in a row, exceeding a .500 record for the first time since June 4. The Tigers are 5½ games back of the final spot in the American League wild-card.

They have a 12-3 record in their past 15 games.

“It’s awesome, where we’re at as a team,” Greene said. “We’re not going to change a thing. We’re going to go out there and try to win every game we can.”

Three long homers benefited the Tigers, but not before they took advantage of mistakes from the Angels in the fourth inning, scoring their first two runs of the game.

The Angels made defensive mistakes on Parker Meadows’ triple, Matt Vierling’s RBI double and Kerry Carpenter’s RBI single, but only one error was charged on the three misplays. Regardless, the Tigers grabbed a 2-1 lead.

After the Angels answered back, the Tigers crushed three home runs off Cueto across the fifth and sixth innings.

“He was going to pump strikes,” manager A.J. Hinch said. “Johnny Cueto has been a strike-thrower, and he can changes shapes, and he does the shimmy, and he disrupts timing. As a young team, we warned our guys that he’s going to be in full shimmy mode. He didn’t do it quite as much as I anticipated, mostly because we got a few guys on and he was getting really quick outs. We wanted to be aggressive against him.”

Rogers put the Tigers ahead, 3-2, with a two-out solo home run to center field in the fifth. In the sixth, Greene hit a solo homer and Carpenter hit a two-run homer, making it 6-2.

Greene has 19 home runs in 108 games.

“I tell them all the time, ‘If Rog can do it, anybody can do it,’” Rogers said. “It’s fun when you win. It definitely helps when you score a lot of runs.”

The homer from Carpenter chased Cueto, a 17-MLB veteran who allowed six runs on six hits and one walk with five strikeouts across five-plus innings, throwing 83 pitches. It was the second start in the big leagues this season, following 13 starts in the minor leagues.

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First time starting

Left-hander Brant Hurter — who started 18 of 19 games in Triple-A Toledo — appeared in four games as a long reliever to begin his MLB career, but he started Tuesday for the first time.

Hurter, who turns 26 in early September, gave up two runs on four hits and two walks with four strikeouts, throwing 80 pitches. He found success against a lineup with a lot of right-handed hitters, even without a premier pitch to get righties out.

“It wasn’t too different,” Hurter said. “A lot of lineups I’ve faced take all their lefties out because I’m better against lefties, so it wasn’t something too new. It was one lefty. I think I did that in Triple-A, so it wasn’t anything crazy.”

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The Angels scored one run apiece in the first and fifth innings, thanks to Nolan Schanuel’s RBI single in the first and Taylor Ward’s sacrifice fly in the fifth.

Hurter retired 10 batters in a row from one out in the first inning through two outs in the fourth inning. He also stranded two runners in scoring position in the first inning, which he advanced with a balk, when he struck out Anthony Rendon looking with a sweeper that painted the corner of the strike zone.

Hurter has a 3.57 ERA with three walks and 21 strikeouts across 22.2 innings in five games (one start) in his MLB career.

“I wasn’t too happy with my outing,” Hurter said. “I wasn’t landing my offspeed at all. I was getting away with the sinker. I don’t think I pitched well by any means.”

After Hurter, the Tigers picked up scoreless efforts from right-handed reliever Brenan Hanifee, right-handed reliever Shelby Miller and right-handed reliever Jason Foley. In the ninth, Foley recorded the final out after Miller allowed two batters to reach safely with two outs.

Hanifee retired all eight batters he faced, covering 2⅔ innings.

“He can really go into attack mode with the two-seam, four-seam and an occasional slider,” Hinch said. “Eight up, eight down was really the key outs of the game. When I took Hurter out, that’s a lot of game left and a lot of pitching that needed to be used.”

Contact Evan Petzold at epetzold@freepress.com or follow him @EvanPetzold.

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