Tigers rediscover clutch gene at right moment

DETROIT — The Tigers don’t put too much emphasis on one game, let alone innings. It’s a 162-game schedule, and at least publicly, they like to treat them relatively equally. And yet, as they wound down from two dramatic innings and a 4-3 win over the Red Sox Thursday afternoon at Comerica Park, they were in agreement:

“Oh, it was big, man,” Miguel Cabrera said. “It was big.”

The Tigers were six outs away from being held to one run or fewer in four consecutive games for the first time since 2005. They answered with a three-run eighth inning, capped by a go-ahead RBI from Andrew Romine without having to swing the bat.

“It was fun,” manager Brad Ausmus said of the rally. “It hasn’t been fun for the last three days.”

The first seven innings looked like much of their previous series against the Royals — well-pitched starts, one run of support, a struggle to follow up and an opposing rally. Matt Boyd tossed six innings of one-run ball, but so did Clay Buchholz, creating a sense of deja vu when Boston took a 3-1 lead in the eighth.

Red Sox manager John Farrell didn’t want to throw Brad Ziegler against the top of the Tigers order, fearing they’d hit the low ball. Instead, Ian Kinsler improved to 6-for-10 off Junichi Tazawa with a single. Erick Aybar improved to 4-for-8 off Tazawa. And the dormant Detroit offense had a spark.

Up came Cabrera, …

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