CLEVELAND — The Detroit Tigers are one win away from advancing to the next round in the 2025 MLB playoffs.

They took a page out of the Cleveland Guardians‘ playbook to do it Tuesday, Sept. 30.

Zach McKinstry, a 2025 All-Star, laid down the perfect sacrifice bunt toward first base to score Riley Greene in the seventh inning, breaking a tie game at Progressive Field, and Tarik Skubal tied a franchise playoff record with a career-high 14 strikeouts to help the Tigers defeat their nemesis, the Guardians, 2-1, in Game 1.

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Both of the Tigers’ runs were unearned against Gavin Williams.

The Tigers have a 1-0 lead in the best-of-three American League wild-card series.

Skubal allowed one run — in the fourth inning once again without a hit leaving the infield — in 7⅔ innings, allowing three hits and walking three on 107 pitches, one shy of his career-high in 2022 at San Francisco.

Will Vest got the final out of the eighth inning, then worked around a runner on third with no outs to earn an epic save.

Spencer Torkelson had an RBI single to score Kerry Carpenter with two outs in the first inning, after Carpenter advanced to second on an error by the right fielder following his line-drive single.

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Casey Mize will make his postseason debut Wednesday as the starting pitcher for the Tigers against Tanner Bibee (1:08 p.m., ESPN), with a chance to send the Tigers to Seattle to face the Mariners on Saturday in Game 1 of the ALDS.

THE STARTERS: Tigers’ Casey Mize is Game 2 starter for wild-card series; Jack Flaherty in Game 3

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This breaking news story will be updated.

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

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This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Tigers score Game 1 win over Guardians in MLB playoffs 2-1