The Yankees took care of their own business against the Angels, winning the opening tilt 5-1. Their score capped off a night of baseball that saw a few of their rivals take the day off, with both Seattle and Houston inactive. There were still four games of note to us, however, and we’ll start off with the current top dogs in the American League.

Detroit Tigers (35-20) 3, San Francisco Giants (31-23) 1

The Tigers have been riding high atop the AL for most of the year, but they were on a bit of a downswing until yesterday’s dominant Tarik Skubal complete game shutout to salvage the finale of a series with Cleveland. Now opening up against another strong team in San Fran, they’d get another strong pitching performance from the entire pitching staff.

Keider Montero got the start and was effective through five innings of work, allowing just a single hit and a pair of walks. Two of those baserunners came in the first inning, but Montero got Willy Adames to strike out to end the frame without any damage, and it was smooth sailing from there.

The Tigers offense, meanwhile, backed up their starter with a spark in the middle innings. In the fourth they got on the scoreboard via a Dillon Dingler RBI single, but the fifth was where they got a rally going. Kerry Carpenter got it started with a one-out single, and went to second on a wild pitch. Gleyber Torres walked, chasing Giants starter Hayden Birdsong from the game, and his replacement Erik Miller immediately walked Andy Ibáñez to load the bases. Riley Greene capitalized, singling to right to score two and make it 3-0.

Detroit’s bullpen took over starting in the sixth, and things were a bit shaky at first. Tyler Holten was the first man out of the ‘pen and he gave up a couple of one-out singles to bring the tying run to the plate. Brenan Hanifee took over for him and gave up another single to allow one run in, but induced a double play from Adames right after to avoid putting up a crooked number. Three more relievers handled innings 7-9, and the Giants mustered just a single hit against them as they went down without much more of a fight.

Other Games

Milwaukee Brewers (27-28) 3, Boston Red Sox (27-29) 2: Garrett Crochet had a strong outing overall, going 6.2 innings and allowing just two runs with 11 strikeouts. Unfortunately, after allowing a solo shot in the first inning and an RBI double in the fifth, he exited as the losing pitcher on record. Boston rallied for a pair of runs in the eighth and ninth innings, but Milwaukee had gotten an insurance run in the eighth on an Eric Haase RBI single that wound up being the game-winning run.

Tampa Bay Rays (27-26) 7, Minnesota Twins (29-24) 2: Minnesota’s big winning streak catapulted them back into the playoff picture earlier this month, but now it’s Tampa Bay that’s streaking their way into the conversation with their sixth straight win. They struck for three runs in the sixth on a three-run bomb from Jonathan Aranda, and added four more in the eighth for good measure thanks to a José Caballero two-run double and Danny Jansen homer.

Los Angeles Dodgers (33-21) 7, Cleveland Guardians (29-24) 2: Shohei Ohtani set the tone in the very first at-bat by launching his MLB-best 19th home run of the year, and the Dodgers were off to the races. They scored again in the second inning on an Andy Pages RBI single, added two more in the fifth and sixth respectively, and topped off the scoring output with a Will Smith solo shot in the ninth inning. Yoshinobu Yamamoto cruised through six innings of two-run ball to pick up his sixth win of the year, and the Dodger ‘pen did enough to prevent any rallies from emerging.