Detroit Tigers manager A.J. Hinch discusses gutsy win vs Guardians

Wed, Aug 12, 2026

Detroit Tigers manager A.J. Hinch discusses his team's 6-4 win over the Cleveland Guardians at Comerica Park in Detroit on Tuesday, Aug. 12, 2026.

Your takeaway from this, I think you just with the drama at the end, but feels like a game earlier in the year that might have gotten away.

This time, you guys found a way to score enough runs to keep chipping away and, and Kelly did what he, what he's supposed to do at the end.

Yeah.

I mean, my takeaway is we won the game, you know?

I mean, that's, right now it's the, that's the goal every day.

It's been the goal, but it was good to get to the finish line.

We played a pretty good game.

I thought our defense was good.

We knew it was gonna be a pseudo bullpen.

We're still building Drew.

So in the fifth inning, you know, we needed some guys to step up and take some innings, and so I thought Wags did a really good job.

You know, obviously Drew, you know, Finney comes in and bails Drew out, and then, on we go.

So, wasn't gonna use Holton, but we needed it to get to the finish line and, I thought it was a pretty good team win.

Your approach against Bobby, he, I felt like he attacked you differently than in the first two starts, pitching more off his changeup.

How did you see your team adjust to that, especially when, you know, McGown will hit the changeup for the big, the- Yeah.

No, we had some timely hits.

I mean, he's, he's really given us fits, you know, the last few times and, and we've seen him so many different ways.

He's very creative with his pitches.

You know, I looked up there at one point, he had 80-plus percent first pitch strikes.

That's elite.

I mean, that So he's pounding the zone, but if you go too early, we know their bullpen's a little bit hanging coming out of their week.

He was able to get pretty deep and we had some early outs, but, some really good, good sound hitting when we needed it the most.

And, and no surprise we're using the big part of the field, and Kevin got the ball down the line.

Tor gets the ball in the gap.

But we really just took a simple approach against him and we, we were able to deliver key hits at the right time.