DETROIT (AP) \u2014 Justin Verlander made a teary farewell, accompanied by his 7-year-old daughter as he left a major league mound for the final time in the Detroit Tigers\u2019 4-3 come-from-behind win over the Pittsburgh Pirates on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Eduardo Valencia hit a game-ending, two-run homer off Mason Montgomery (6-4) in a three-run ninth that included Kevin McGonigle\u2019s RBI groundout.<\/p>\n
Verlander allowed two runs and five hits in 5 1\/3 innings with one walk and six strikeouts in his 91-pitch outing. The 43-year-old right-hander was making his second start of the year and first since March 30 in a season derailed by a sore hip and hamstring injury.<\/p>\n
After Brandon Lowe hit a foul popup starting the sixth, Tigers manager A.J. Hinch walked from the dugout toward the plate and pointed toward the seats. Genevieve Verlander, wearing a Tigers jersey with her dad\u2019s name and number, sprinted to the mound and hugged her father, who reached down to embrace her and started shaking and sobbing.<\/p>\n
Verlander finished 266-159 in 557 starts with a 3.33 ERA and 3,560 strikeouts, eighth on the career list.<\/p>\n
Pittsburgh took a 2-0 lead on solo homers by Brandon Lowe in the fourth and Nick Gonzales.<\/p>\n
Javier B\u00e1ez hit an RBI double in the sixth, and Bryan Reynolds extended Pittsburgh\u2019s lead to 3-1 with a run-scoring triple in the eighth.<\/p>\n
Jacob Waguespack (2-2) pitched 1 1\/3 scoreless innings.<\/p>\n
Pittsburgh (81-80) needs one win for its first winning season since 2018.<\/p>\n
The Pirates\u2019 Kirby Yates made his first career start after 517 relief appearances. The 39-year-old right-hander allowed two hits over 1 2\/3 innings in what he said might be his final game.<\/p>\n
Pirates center fielder Oneil Cruz left in the third inning. He fell awkwardly while trying to field McGonigle\u2019s bloop single in the first.<\/p>\n
Up next<\/p>\n
Tigers RHP River Ryan (0-0, 0.00 ERA) and Pirates RHP Jared Jones (5-6, 3.87) start Sunday in the final game before Comerica Park\u2019s name changes to Fifth Third Park for 2027.<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
See AP\u2019s full MLB coverage here <\/p>\n
Dave Hogg, The Associated Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DETROIT (AP) \u2014 Justin Verlander made a teary farewell, accompanied by his 7-year-old daughter as he left a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":910812,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[49,48,462,82],"class_list":["post-910811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/910811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=910811"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/910811\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/910812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=910811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=910811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=910811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}