DETROIT (AP) \u2014 Nacho Alvarez Jr. hit the first two homers of his MLB career, then added a game-tying single in the ninth inning and the Atlanta Braves won their seventh straight game with a 6-5 victory against the Detroit Tigers on Saturday.<\/p>\n
The Tigers have lost five straight and eight of the past nine. Their lead in the AL Central \u2014 at 14 games shortly before the All-Star break and 10 games on Sept. 3 \u2014 is down to one game over the Cleveland Guardians, who swept a doubleheader against the Minnesota Twins.<\/p>\n
The Braves trailed 5-4 going into the ninth. Ozzie Albies and Ha-Seong Kim started the ninth with singles off Will Vest (6-5), but he struck out Michael Harris II and Sandy Le\u00f3n.<\/p>\n
That brought up Alvarez, who had already homered in the third and eighth innings. He lined a single to right to tie the game and Jurickson Profar followed with a base hit to put the Braves ahead.<\/p>\n
Raisel Iglesias pitched the ninth for his 27th save. Dylan Dodd (1-0) got the win in relief with a scoreless eighth.<\/p>\n
The Tigers trailed 3-1 after the top of the third, but scored a run in the bottom of the inning, tied the game in the sixth on Zach McKinstry\u2019s pinch-hit homer and took the 5-3 lead on Spencer Torkelson\u2019s seventh-inning homer off Pierce Johnson.<\/p>\n
The Tigers took a 1-0 lead in the first on Torkelson\u2019s RBI single.<\/p>\n
Alvarez tied it in the third with his first homer, and Drake Baldwin made it 3-1 with his second homer in as many games later in the inning.<\/p>\n
Wenceel Perez cut the deficit to 3-2 with a sacrifice fly in the third.<\/p>\n
Key moment<\/p>\n
Trailing 3-2, the Tigers loaded the bases with two outs in the fifth. After a visit to the mound, Joey Wentz was allowed to face Riley Greene \u2014 his teammate in Detroit from 2022-24. Greene swung at and missed a slider, then flew out to shallow left on a 94-mph fastball.<\/p>\n
Key stat<\/p>\n
Torkelson\u2019s homer was his 31st, tying the career high he set in 2023.<\/p>\n
Up next<\/p>\n
The teams finish the weekend series on Sunday, with Tigers RHP Casey Mize (14-5, 3.88) scheduled to face RHP Spencer Strider (6-13, 4.64).<\/p>\n
Copyright 2025 WCSC. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DETROIT (AP) \u2014 Nacho Alvarez Jr. hit the first two homers of his MLB career, then added a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":159254,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,105878,105880,591,58650,105879,85],"class_list":["post-159253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-country-club-shooting","tag-man-killed-at-country-club","tag-mlb","tag-new-hampshire","tag-sky-meadow-country-club","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=159253"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159253\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/159254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=159253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=159253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}