Intentional walk ahead of Tork? He responds with walk-off winner!

DETROIT – Spencer Torkelson made the Blue Jays pay for bringing him up to the plate, lining a walk-off single with two outs in the ninth to end the Tigers’ three-game losing streak with a 3-2 win on Friday night at Comerica Park.

The Tigers faced the double whammy of a 2-0 deficit and an unplanned bullpen game when Ty Madden, the planned bulk pitcher, took a 107.9 mph line drive from Yohendrick Piñango. Burch Smith and Drew Anderson, Detroit’s fourth and fifth pitchers of the night, combined for six scoreless innings to rescue the Tigers’ taxed bullpen while keeping Detroit in the game.

The Tigers struggled to hit Blue Jays starter Trey Yesavage, but they were opportunistic. Kevin McGonigle walked and came around on a pair of Yesavage wild pitches to put Detroit on the board in the third inning, then Dillon Dingler turned a leadoff infield single into the tying run on Riley Greene’s sixth-inning double.

With the game tied, Matt Vierling’s one-out bloop single off Jeff Hoffman set the game-winning rally in motion in the ninth. Hoffman struck out Gage Workman, but Vierling’s steal of second led the Blue Jays to intentionally walk Zach McKinstry and bring up Torkelson, who was 3-for-33 since his last home run on May 3. Torkelson went with a 96.4 mph fastball and lashed it into the opposite-field gap for the game-winner.