Matt Vierling powers Tigers past Cardinals as Detroit wins 4th straight series

Detroit — The Tigers came into the rubber match against the St. Louis Cardinals on Wednesday afternoon with 17 wins. It’s the most wins the Tigers have had going into May since the 1984 championship team won 18 on its way to a 35-5 start.

Manager AJ Hinch, while certainly appreciative of the solid start, wasn’t going to throw a party.

“Our challenge is not milestones or creating a certain something, be it a winning month or a target of some sort,” he said. “The target is to win as many series as we can. … I don’t subscribe to spending a lot of time assessing things on a macro level.

“We have a chance to win a series today, which is the key to having winning months like we had in April.”

The players subscribe to that theory.

“Just wake up and try to win every day,” Riley Greene said before the Tigers did indeed win the series, beating the Cardinals, 4-1, at Comerica Park.

BOX SCORE: Tigers 4, Cardinals 1

Understand, Hinch isn't pooh-poohing the 18-13 start. He's trying to keep everything in perspective. There are five months and 131 games left, starting with a tester of a road trip to New York, where the Yankees are 19-12, and to Cleveland, where the Guardians are 19-10 and lead the Central Division.

"When I preach to our players virtually every day that you better focus on where your feet are, I have to do it, too," he said. "They wouldn't want to hear me on this camera speaking any other way. It would be inauthentic. We needed to win the series today.

"But I think we're proving to ourselves that we can win every series we play, and that in itself will build the type of months and the seasons that this city deserves. But it's May 1. We're not going to get too far ahead of ourselves."

As it turned out, the Cardinals were done in by one of their own on Wednesday. St. Louis native Matt Vierling put a hurting on his hometown team, knocking in three runs and scoring another.

"Just getting a chance to play the team I grew up rooting for my whole life is awesome," Vierling said. "But to have a little bit of success and help the team win, that feels even better."

He singled and scored from first base on a bullet double to the right-center field gap by rookie Colt Keith in the second inning. It was just Keith’s second extra-base hit of the season. One inning later, Vierling lined his third home run, a two-run shot that left his bat at 106 mph and sailed over the bullpens in left-center field.

All three of his homers have been hit in almost exactly the same spot.

"I'm just trying to hit the ball in the air and trying to pull it more," said Vierling, who had an opposite-field home run bid curl foul down the right-field line in his first at-bat. "There's been some ups and downs with it but, with all the work I've put in — there's still a long way to go but I really like where I'm at."

In the eighth against lefty reliever JoJo Romero, Wenceel Perez singled and romped to third on a pinch-hit base hit by Andy Ibanez. Vierling sent Perez home with a sacrifice fly to right.

"You know, I pinched-hit for Vierling last night with the bases loaded and nobody out against a righty," Hinch said, referencing the seventh inning of Game 2 Tuesday. "In a week where he's hit the ball hard and done really well. And Matty's the first guy at the top step to congratulate (pinch-hitter Kerry Carpenter) on the sac fly. Then what he did today.

"He's as respected as anybody we have in that room because of the way he goes about his work and how he is as a teammate. ... He's a winning player and that's a compliment."

That three-run cushion ended up being sufficient.

The flip of the calendar has generally been a good thing for starter Kenta Maeda, especially when it flips to May. Over his career, he’s 10-4 with a 3.75 ERA and a 1.046 ERA holding hitters to a .619 OPS.

His ERA was 5.96 in April but on Wednesday he limited a lefty-loaded Cardinals’ lineup to one run in six innings and earned his first win as a Tiger. He mixed sliders and splitters off well-placed four-seam fastballs and sinkers, getting 17 called strikes.

"I think I was very successful in carefully locating my pitches today," Maeda said through interpreter Daichi Sekizaki. "And it was great defense by our team. Props to them."

There was one slider he’d like to take back. The one he hung to Willson Contreras. That ball flew 433 feet and landed in the shrubs in center field.

The Cardinals hit a lot of balls hard — 15 balls in play with an average exit velocity of 92.6 mph — but Maeda got solid defense (two excellent plays by second baseman Keith in the fourth), a line drive that first baseman Spencer Torkelson turned into an unassisted double play in the fifth and a strike-em-out, throw-em-out double play from catcher Carson Kelly in sixth.

Maeda struck out five without issuing a walk.

"Nothing too crazy," Maeda said with a smile when asked how his teammates celebrated his first win. "But the first win as a Tiger is an important one for my career."

An understaffed bullpen was taxed with getting the final nine outs. With Jason Foley, Shelby Miller and Tyler Holton down (rest) and Hinch hoping not to use Andrew Chafin, Will Vest, Joey Wentz and Alex Lange tag-teamed three scoreless innings.

"Our 'pen isn't a sort of two-man or even four-man show," Hinch said. "We have eight guys down there who have certainly done their job. They're not all going to be perfect. They're not going to be and they don't have to be. But those bullpen arms have answered the bell every time we've asked.

"We put a couple of guys down today and the elevated different roles to different people."

Vest gave up a couple of singles to start the seventh inning, but a double play started by Vierling at third base calmed things down.

Lefty Wentz, who hadn't pitched since April 22, was summoned to face left-handed hitting Alec Burleson with a runner at second. Wentz punched him out. Wentz also got the first two outs in the eighth before giving up a single to right-handed pinch-hitter Jose Fermin and walking Brendan Donovan.

Hinch brought in Lange to face Contreras. With dangerous left-handed hitter Lars Nootbaar on deck, it was a critical at-bat in the game.

Lange got ahead 0-2, but Contreras worked the count full. Lange had misfired with a couple of breaking balls, but threw a beauty and got Contreras to swing over the top of it for strike three.

Lange locked down the ninth, too, earning a four-out save.

"We had a different path today," Hinch said. "But you need to change your perspective that we have to go a certain way to win. We don't. And a day like today gives us all a ton of confidence."

chris.mccosky@detroitnews.com

@cmccosky