Zach McKinstry’s broken-bat RBI single with two outs in the top of the 11th inning broke a tie as the Detroit Tigers defeated the host Seattle Mariners 3-2 on Saturday night in the opener of their best-of-five American League Division Series.

Kerry Carpenter hit a two-run homer for the Tigers, who are set to send ace Tarik Skubal to the mound in Game 2 on Sunday.

“I don’t know if it was an exhale or what (beating Cleveland in the AL wild-card round), but this crowd was great and we played free and fearless,” Carpenter said.

Will Vest (1-0) pitched two innings of scoreless relief for the victory and Keider Montero worked the 11th for the first save of his career.

Julio Rodriguez homered and had a run-scoring single for the Mariners. Rodriguez and Cal Raleigh both went 3-for-5, but the rest of Seattle’s lineup was 0-for-28.

“A big blast from Julio, able to get some traffic in a couple of different innings, just not able to convert as much as we would have wanted to tonight,” Mariners manager Dan Wilson said. “But, you know, I thought we had some good at-bats. We did grind, what we do. That’s how we run our offense, is grind out some at-bats and just weren’t able to get enough back-to-back to kind of put the damage that we wanted to put up.”

Five Mariners relievers combined for five hitless innings before Carlos Vargas (0-1) walked Spencer Torkelson leading off the 11th. Torkelson took second on a wild pitch, then after Munoz struck out the next two, scored on McKinstry’s first-pitch single up the middle, just out of the reach of diving shortstop J.P. Crawford.

Wilson said the Mariners considered walking McKinstry with first base open and were looking for a groundball.

“You know, obviously (Vargas) gets the ball on the ground, and that’s what he does best, righty or lefty, and, you know, got the ball on the ground,” Wilson said. “McKinstry (was) able to find a hole for it and get it through.”

Rodriguez broke a scoreless tie, leading off the fourth with a homer to straightaway center field on a 2-2 fastball from Tigers starter Troy Melton.

Detroit answered in the fifth as Parker Meadows hit a one-out single to right and Carpenter launched a 1-2 sinker from Mariners starter George Kirby over the fence in right an out later. It was Carpenter’s fifth hit in 11 career at-bats against Kirby — all home runs.

“Had seen him pretty well the first couple of at-bats,” Carpenter said. “I felt like my timing was really good that (third) at-bat and just let it fly.”

The Mariners tied it in the sixth off reliever Rafael Montero. Randy Arozarena drew a leadoff walk and Raleigh singled to right-center, sending Arozarena to third. Rodriguez lined a single to right to make it 2-2. Tyler Holton entered and got Josh Naylor to ground into a double play and Jorge Polanco to line out to right to end the inning.

Kirby allowed two runs on six hits over five innings. The right-hander walked one and struck out eight.

Melton, a rookie making his fifth career start, went four innings and gave up one run on two hits. The righty walked one and fanned four.

Carpenter acknowledged the Tigers’ playoff success so far has followed a regular season when they blew a 15 1/2-game lead in the AL Central in losing the division title by one game to the Guardians.

“(I) think that was as tough a stretch as anyone in this clubhouse has ever been through,” Carpenter said. “Especially after the first half we had, we were rolling. We had to find our confidence.”

-Field Level Media