Detroit Tigers lose six-run lead and fall to Baltimore Orioles

For the second straight evening, the Detroit Tigers built up a huge lead in Baltimore and saw the Orioles peck away at the deficit, but unlike Thursday night they couldn’t hold the slim lead and ended up losing 8-7 to snap their modest two-game winning streak on Friday.

Getting his first start in the rotation for Shane Greene, Buck Farmer looked good early and worked out of multiple jams throughout his outing. The most impressive was when the Tigers had grabbed a 4-0 lead after scoring single runs in the first and second and off a two-run homer from J.D. Martinez. Farmer had runners on first and third with one out facing a dangerous hitter in Adam Jones who bounced out to Nick Castellanos for an inning-ending double play.

Back-to-back 4th inning homers seemed to have the Tigers sailing along as James McCann went deep, followed by Jefry Marte with the second home run of his career and second RBI of the game after doubling home McCann a few innings early for Detroit’s second run. At that point the Tigers were leading 6-0 and chased starter Wei-Yin Chen.

In the bottom half of that inning, Baltimore began to inch back and scored their first run on a Marte first base error, but Farmer escaped without further damage.

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Baltimore began rallying when a ball struck Farmer in the leg and caromed into the outfield to put runners at first and third in the fifth inning. He stayed in the game and faced Jones, who atoned for his early GIDP by hitting a three-run homer. They would add one more run to close the gap to 6-5.

The flood gates opened in the sixth inning when Manny Machado gave the O’s the lead with a two-run homer off newly recalled Jose Valdez, brought up in place of now departed Joakim Soria. They would add another run to make it a two-run lead.

The Tigers nearly had a big inning in the seventh inning. Jose Iglesias attempted to score from first on an Ian Kinsler double but was called out. It looked as if  Matt Wieters blocked home plate, which is not allowed in the home plate collision rule, but the umpires looked at it and inexplicably upheld the call. Kinsler took third base on the throw and scored on a fielder’s choice to make it 8-7.

These two teams will play the third game of their four-game set as Anibal Sanchez faces Kevin Gausman just after 7:00 on Saturday.

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