Detroit Tigers game score at Cleveland Guardians: Time, TV for series finale

Detroit Tigers (56-67) vs Cleveland Guardians (59-65), series finale

When: 1:40 p.m. Sunday.

Where: Progressive Field in Cleveland.

TV: Bally Sports Detroit.

Radio: WXYT-FM (97.1 in Detroit; Tigers radio affiliates).

Probable pitchers: Tigers LHP Eduardo Rodriguez (8-6, 3.13 ERA)vs. Guardians LHP Logan Allen (6-5, 3.33).

• Box score

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Tigers lineup: TBA.

Game notes: It’s Eduardo Rodriguez’s attempt No. 2 to become the Tigers’ first nine-game winner since Michael Fulmer in 2019. (Since the start of the 2020 season, every other MLB franchise has had at least one pitcher reach nine wins in a season, and 26 of the 29 others have had multiple pitchers do it. Don’t ask about 10-win seasons.) Attempt No. 1 was, uh, less than good — Rodriguez struck out eight with one walk, but was tagged for 10 hits en route to allowing six runs over five innings last Sunday against his former team in Boston. Two of those hits were home runs; it was just the third time in 18 starts that E-Rod has given up multiple homers.

The Tigers — and, presumably, Rodriguez — are hoping today’s start goes more like his previous two this season against the Guardians. E-Rod scattered four hits over eight shutout innings, with 10 strikeouts, in a 1-0 win in Detroit on April 18, then allowed another four hits over seven shutout innings — but with only eight strikeouts — in a 5-0 win in Cleveland on May 10. Of course, those were before E-Rod missed five weeks with an injury to his left index finger. Since his return on July 5, E-Rod has a 4.89 ERA in 38⅔ innings. (Obligatory José Ramírez warning: There is none! Rodriguez has held the potent switch-hitter to five hits in 19 plate appearances — a .263 average — with five strikeouts and no walks, though two of those hits were home runs.)

The Guardians, meanwhile, will be sending left-hander Logan Allen to the mound, which would have been great news for the Tigers last season; the Allen who pitched for the Guardians from 2019-22 — 26-year-old Logan Shane Allen, born in West Palm Beach, Florida — had a 4.50 ERA against Detroit in five career appearances. The Allen who’ll start today — 24-year-old Logan Taylor Allen, born in Altamonte Springs, Florida — hasn’t faced the Tigers, though. A second-round pick in 2020, Allen the Younger was called up by the Guardians in late April and has gone through the usual peaks and valleys of a rookie starter — a 2.72 ERA in 39⅔ innings in April and May, a 4.65 ERA in 40⅔ innings in June and July and now a 1.59 ERA in 17 August innings. That was helped immensely by his most recent start, in which he held the Reds to four hits and no runs over six innings on Tuesday.

With the four-game set complete in Cleveland, the Tigers and Guardians will part ways until the final weekend of the season, when the Guardians hit Detroit for three games Sept. 29-Oct. 1. More immediately, the Tigers will return to Detroit in time for a three-game series beginning Monday against the Chicago Cubs, who enter Sunday tied with the Reds for the final NL wild-card berth. The Guardians, meanwhile, get Monday off before welcoming the NL West-leading (and Hurricane Hilary-fleeing) L.A. Dodgers to town for three games.

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