DETROIT, Mich. (WNEM) – It was a beautiful day in Detroit for Opening Day as the Detroit Tigers played their first home game of 2026, as the Tigers held opening day in front of just over 45-thousand fans around Comerica Park, for the largest home opening crowd since 2017. Detroit would take on the St. Louis Cardinals.<\/p>\n
We\u2019ll pick things up in the bottom of the 4th inning. Dillon Dingler is up, and he smashes the ball to left center field, and it would be out of there, A 2-run shot to get the Tigers on the board.<\/p>\n
Next inning… Riley Greene up to bat… he hits a line drive to center field. A round comes around to score to make it 3-0.<\/p>\n
On the mound, making his first opening day start with the Tigers was Framber Valdez, who would go 6th inning, allowing three hits, no runs, and striking out 5.<\/p>\n
As the Tigers would go on to get the shutout win 4-0, sending the fans home happy.<\/p>\n
After the game, we spoke to some of the players about their opening day experience.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was cool. Obviously, there is still some nerves, even though this is our third of the season. Still a little bit of nerves coming. It was awesome. You settle down a little bit pregame before you go out, so just cool. Great atmosphere.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was unbelievable. It\u2019s one of those moments you just, you know, sit back, and feel like you\u2019re dreaming. The crowd going crazy, next to A.J., of course, was an unbelievable moment.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we started rallying and scoring, and Franber was getting out of jams, I mean, he was amazing today. Thank God that we gave the fans a good reason to cheer, so it was fun to play in front of them today.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Tigers will continue their series with the Cardinals this weekend, and on Sunday, Justin Verlander will take the mound wearing the old English D in Detroit for the first time in over 8 years.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 WNEM. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DETROIT, Mich. (WNEM) – It was a beautiful day in Detroit for Opening Day as the Detroit Tigers…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":661956,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2386],"tags":[5,147,53,2583,4,67,594],"class_list":{"0":"post-661955","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-detroit-tigers","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-detroit","10":"tag-detroit-tigers","11":"tag-detroittigers","12":"tag-mlb","13":"tag-st-louis-cardinals","14":"tag-tigers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116343956972288457","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/661955","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=661955"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/661955\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/661956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=661955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=661955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=661955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}