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.”

RACKING UP WINS: Detroit Tigers haven’t been .500 this late into season since 2016

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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MILWAUKEE – One person was wounded in a shooting on Milwaukee’s north side Tuesday, Aug. 27.

It happened near 27th and Burleigh around 6:30 p.m. Police said the 26-year-old victim was taken to a hospital and is expected to survive.

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Police are looking for whoever is responsible. Anyone with information is asked to call MPD at 414-935-7360; to remain anonymous, call Crime Stoppers at 414-224-TIPS or use the P3 tips app.

MINNEAPOLIS — The victim of a violent hit-and-run crash last month is out of the hospital and says he hasn’t watched the security footage of what happened.

“It was just green light, and yeah, that’s literally all I remember,” said Carl Vargas.

Vargas was tossed through the air like a rag doll in downtown Minneapolis when another vehicle blew through a red light and T-boned him.

“Everyone who’s seen the video and come to see me and talk about it, they are just like, eyes wide, ‘You are a lucky man,’” he said.

After the crash, the video shows two people getting out of the car and into another car that had been trailing behind. They drove off.

Vargas still can’t walk. Much of his daily life is a struggle.

“My ankle was completely destroyed,” Vargas said. “I had several head injuries like a skull fracture and a ruptured eardrum.”

Adding insult to the injuries, someone on the street stole Vargas’s phone and wallet while he was lying unconscious.

“Everything was lining up: school, got the job, got the bike, got the new place and then — life isn’t meant to be perfect,” he said.

Vargas says the crash has changed his perspective on life and he’s very grateful he wasn’t hurt worse.

He’s also not too concerned about catching the people who hit him and stole his wallet.

“Why am I even worried about it or thinking about it because who knows where they are?” Vargas said. “Who knows what they are? Who knows what I would even get if they were caught?”

Still, he says Minneapolis police haven’t talked to him once, and it was his family who canvassed the area to secure the surveillance videos.

WCCO asked the Minneapolis Police Department for an update on the case Tuesday and didn’t hear back.

Vargas says he plans to get back on the bike, and his focus is his health and school, which he returned to this week.

“That’s what everybody points out, ‘The people who did this, they have stuff coming to them,’ and I’d rather just know I was doing good, I’m still doing good,” he said. “That good has to come around eventually.”

Vargas says he hopes to be walking again in mid-October.