DETROIT _ Miguel Cabrera didn't play Wednesday against the Baltimore Orioles because of a "sore left side", which means a group of muscles weren't cooperating enough for him to hit. The Detroit Tigers didn't need him.
They had Tyler Collins, the April version. Collins' three-hit, two-homer night helped the Tigers beat the Orioles, 5-4, Wednesday. The win pushed them back to .500 _ they are 19-19.
Collins, the team's part-time centerfielder, had gone 0 for 30 before Wednesday. Heck, he hadn't had a hit since early May.
He broke out of the slump in the second inning, blasting a solo home run to center. The shot tied the game 1-1.
Then, in the fifth, he hit his second homer. This time a three-run shot that gave the Tigers a one-run lead. He followed that with a double in the eighth and took third on a sacrifice bunt but stayed there when Jose Iglesias and Ian Kinsler couldn't bring him home.
Still, Collins' four RBIs were the difference in the game, and a much needed boost for a team that had lost two in a row and six of its last nine. Especially when starter Michael Fulmer wasn't quite as sharp as he had been, though that's relative.
Fulmer was coming off his best two outings of the season. And he started solidly in the first inning.
In the second, he gave up three straight singles as the Orioles pushed across a run on a fielder's choice. And after Tuesday night's 13-inning marathon, it didn't look promising for an already thin bullpen.
But Fulmer recovered in the third to plow through the middle of Baltimore's order, setting down Adam Jones, Manny Machado and Chris Davis. In each of the next two innings, though, he allowed runs to score: two in the fourth and one in the fifth.
The most impressive part of his outing came in the sixth and seventh. A double-play helped in the sixth and a strikeout to Davis in the seventh ended his night.
He hit 98 mph in his last inning and regularly pumped upper 90s gas, even as his pitch count rose above 100. The performance carried a whiff of Justin Verlander in his prime, on a night when he'd battle through an off-night and then close it out with top-shelf velocity.
He gave up 10 hits, allowed four runs and no walks.
Relievers Alex Wilson and Justin Wilson handled it from there.
