DETROIT _ The Tigers have avoided the ignominy of becoming the first Major League baseball team to lose 60 home games in a single season.
Their 6-3 victory over the Chicago White Sox Sunday ensures them of no worse than a tie for the worst home record in history _ with the 1939 St. Louis Browns (18-59) or the infamous 1962 New York Mets (22-58) _ with a three-game series with the Twins remaining.
The win also snaps a five-game losing streak and a long home run drought for first baseman Jeimer Candelario.
Candelario's two-run blast to right field in the first inning _ the first of four hit by the Tigers _ was his first home run since July 15, 130 plate appearances. It off-set the two-run home run that Eloy Jimenez hit off Tigers starter Matthew Boyd in the top of the first.
Gordon Beckham broke the tie in the second inning, hitting line drive over the fence in left field, his sixth of the year. And Victor Reyes, who had singled and scored in the first, lined one almost in the same spot in the fourth, his third.
Rookie Willi Castro capped it with a solo shot leading off the seventh inning. It was his first big-league homer and he sprinted around the bases and into the congratulatory embraces of his teammates in the dugout.
The Tigers missed a chance to blow the game open in the third. With two outs, Harold Castro doubled, Candelario walked and Christin Stewart slapped an RBI single to right. Dawel Lugo followed with a single off shortstop Tim Anderson's glove to load the bases.
Lugo has six hits in his last eight at-bats in this series.
But White Sox starter Reynaldo Lopez struck out Grayson Greiner to end the inning.
All the damage against Boyd came with two outs, too. Boyd went five innings (101 pitches) and allowed three runs, eight hits and two walks. All three runs, five of the hits and both walks came after he had gotten the first two hitters out in the inning.
In fourth inning he walked the No. 9 and No. 1 hitters with two outs, which brought up American League batting leader Anderson. Boyd, though, blew him away on three pitches.
He got two outs in the fifth, too, before Yoan Moncada doubled and Welington Castillo singled him home.
Oddly, too, Boyd balked in the second inning. He pitched around it, but it was his Major League-leading fourth balk.
The Tigers bullpen brought it home for Boyd, who earned his third win in his last four starts.
Right-handed side-armer John Schreiber allowed a single and struck out four in 1.2 innings. Nick Ramirez struck out Moncada to finish the seventh and Buck Farmer pitched a scoreless eighth.
Closer Joe Jimenez, helped by a nifty double-play turned against Anderson by Castro, Beckham and Candelario, picked up his ninth save of the season.
