DETROIT — What would the final home game of the 2021 season be without a benches-clearing altercation and another Tigers' comeback?
Things got testy in the top of the ninth inning Monday in a game the White Sox held on and won, 8-7 over the Tigers at Comerica Park. It was the makeup of the game that was postponed on Sept. 22.
Trailing 8-2, the Tigers scored five times in the bottom of the eighth to make a game of it. As part of the rally, Tigers' second baseman Isaac Paredes was hit in the arm by a pitch from reliever Mike Wright, Jr.
In the top of the ninth, Tigers' reliever Alex Lange drilled Jose Abreu. Abreu was upset and the White Sox bench was incensed, presumably because the umpires didn't issue any kind of warning to Lange or the Tigers' bench.
Crew chief Lance Barrett ejected White Sox bench coach Miguel Cairo.
Abreu stayed in the game and tried to advance on a ball in the dirt, though he's only attempted one steal and didn't have much of a chance. He was thrown out though he slid late and hard, spikes up, at shortstop Niko Goodrum.
Had Goodrum not applied the tag, Abreu would have slid well past the bag.
The dirty slide wasn't enough, he proceeded to get into Goodrum's face. That's when the benches and bullpens emptied. No punches were thrown but there was a lot of contentious yapping.
Abreu was not ejected.
White Sox closer Liam Hendriks locked down the ninth inning without any further drama.
The initial spark in the bottom of the eighth was provided by 38-year-old Miguel Cabrera, finishing his 14th home season in Detroit. He led off with a double, his second hit of the game. He now has 2,986 career hits and 597 career doubles.
Wright loaded the bases, walking Jeimer Candelario and hitting Paredes. Lefty Garrett Crochet entered and was greeted by a two-run single by Eric Haase. Goodrum followed with a two-run triple.
And when Goodrum scored on a sacrifice fly by Jonathan Schoop, it was a one-run game.
The White Sox did the Tigers' five-run eighth one better back in the fourth when they batted around and KO’d rookie right-hander Matt Manning.
Manning got the first out in the fourth and at that point Manning had dispatched nine of the last 10 hitters and seemed to settling in.
He got unsettled in a hurry.
Designated hitter Yasmani Grandal dropped his bat head on a 93-mph, two-seam fastball that was down in the zone and hoisted it 414 feet into the visitor’s bullpen in left-center field. The ball left his bat with an exit velocity of 105 mph.
Manning never recovered.
He walked the next three hitters and gave up a two-run double to Cesar Hernandez and a two-run single to Zack Collins. Boom, boom, out go the lights.
Manning was out of the game at 82 pitches. Collins, the sixth run charged to Manning’s ledger, scored from first on a double by Luis Robert off reliever Bryan Garcia.
They mustered two runs off lefty starter Dallas Keuchel in five innings. The first came on a two-out RBI single by Akil Baddoo in the second inning. The second came on Jonathan Schoop’s 21st home run of the season, a moonshot that was caught in the Tigers’ bullpen by Ian Krol, who was warming up to come into the game.
Krol got a pair of double-play grounders in his two innings of work. But he walked Grandal with two outs in the seventh and hung a slider to Eloy Jimenez. That ball was smoked. It flew 432 feet into the shrubbery in center field, the third hit of the day for Jimenez.
All in all, pretty exciting way to end the first winning home season for the Tigers since 2016. They finish with a 42-39 home record.
