DETROIT -- Niko Goodrum was ready for a friendly reception from the Comerica Park faithful for the Tigers’ home opener Thursday. He expected no such thing from the visiting team.

It would be an easy storyline if Goodrum took offense to Royals starter Jakob Junis pitching around Miguel Cabrera with a runner on third and two outs in the fifth inning and was motivated to drive in the run. But it wouldn’t be honest.

“I mean, if I was a pitcher, I would pitch around to [get to] me, too,” Goodrum said. “You expect that to happen, and you go up there and try to get a good pitch you can do some damage on.”

This is the challenge the Tigers face in the middle of their order with Nicholas Castellanos and Cabrera batting second and third, respectively. This is the potential benefit of Detroit's 5-4 win Thursday, beyond its 5-3 record.

While the structure of the Tigers' batting order has given plenty of at-bats to Castellanos and Cabrera, which was manager Ron Gardenhire’s motivation for putting them up there, Detroit needs somebody to emerge in the traditional run-producing spots -- a reason why the team produced just 12 runs in its first seven games.

The Tigers have hitting potential in the Nos. 4-6 spots between Goodrum, Jeimer Candelario and Christin Stewart. They do not have much hitting experience, but Gardenhire clearly trusts Goodrum.

“He can hit,” Gardenhire said. “It makes a really hard sound when he hits the ball. He’s a strong young man.”

A three-RBI game for Goodrum in the cleanup spot, including a go-ahead four-pitch walk with the bases loaded in the seventh inning, won’t likely make pitchers think twice about their approach. But it provides some results.

“It’s just a number,” Goodrum said about his batting spot. “Everybody has to hit. You go around [the lineup] and I hit fourth. You come back around and you don’t know who’s hitting where. I just try to do my job and hit something hard.”

Until Thursday, the Tigers had been winning in spite of their offense. Detroit batters went 6-for-45 with runners in scoring position during its season-opening seven-game road trip, yet the Tigers posted a 4-3 record against the Blue Jays and Yankees. Those wins came almost entirely on the strength of stingy pitching, especially from their starters.

Spencer Turnbull continued the pitching part Thursday. The hard-throwing right-hander struck out 10 batters over six quality innings, but paid for two runs aided by outfield miscues.

Unlike his predecessors, Turnbull had the honor of pitching with an early lead. When Josh Harrison and Castellanos walked and came around to score off Junis in the first inning -- the latter on a Goodrum fielder’s choice -- it marked Detroit's first runs in the first three innings of a game this season.

Junis was protecting a 3-2 lead in the fifth with Harrison as the tying run on third when he walked Cabrera. It wasn’t an intentional pass, but with four pitches well out of the strike zone, Junis clearly wasn’t going to let Cabrera beat him. By comparison, Junis challenged Goodrum with four fastballs, and Goodrum connected on the fourth one enough to send a well-placed line drive inside the right-field line behind first base for an RBI double.

It was Goodrum’s second double of the game and sixth of the season, one behind Arizona’s David Peralta for the Major League lead. But Goodrum turned the tables in his decisive plate appearance in the seventh, essentially daring Kansas City reliever Kevin McCarthy to throw a strike upon entering from the bullpen on a chilly afternoon. McCarthy inherited a bases-loaded, no-out jam created by three consecutive Kyle Zimmer walks.

“They’re in trouble, not me,” Goodrum said. “So [the focus is] getting a pitch I can drive and do damage on and get the run in.”

All four McCarthy pitches to Goodrum were sinkers, three of them starting in the zone and dropping out. Goodrum watched all four and took his base as Harrison trotted home. McCarthy retired Candelario on a hard-hit liner, but still faced a sacrifice fly situation with Stewart, who was 1-for-22 with eight strikeouts on the season before his first-inning double.

“He has a power sinker, and the ball was dropping,” Stewart said. “I knew I had to go the other way with it. He wasn’t going to give me anything inside. He probably wouldn’t give me anything over the plate. The ball I hit was a bit off. I just drove it that way. That’s all I was trying to do, get the ball in the air and drive in the run.”

The insurance run turned out to be critical after Alex Gordon hit a solo homer off Blaine Hardy in the eighth. The rally came too late for Turnbull to break the winless streak among Tigers starting pitchers, but just in time for Detroit to win its fourth game in five days across three cities.

Winning this one at home, however, meant more.