DETROIT -- Terry Francona has always been a reluctant fan of the Tigers offense and the top pitchers in their rotation.
Now he's found something else about Detroit that he hates to love: the defense.
"They've gotten so much more athletic on defense, especially up the middle, which makes them even tougher to beat," the Indians manager said Sunday. "They've had great center fielders here for a while, but (Anthony) Gose and (Rajai) Davis can both fly out there, (Jose) Iglesias is obviously a great defensive shortstop and (Ian) Kinsler is really good at second."
Iglesias made another highlight-reel play to help snuff out an Indians rally in the ninth. With the Tigers leading 8-6 and the tying run at the plate with one out, Iglesias raced into left field and made an over-the-shoulder catch of Mike Aviles' looper.
Iglesias finished the play with a last-second flip of his glove hand -- the same thing he did when he robbed David Ortiz on a very similar play in the 2013 ALCS.
"At first, I thought Jose or (Yoenis) Cespedes had time to get under it, but then it looked like it was going to fall between them," Kinsler said. "Then he just rips it out of the air. I was covering second going, 'What the heck just happened?'"
But as the Tigers leave for a 10-game road trip through the rest of the AL Central, they might be without one of those star defenders for a day or two. Davis had three hits and scored twice, but came up limping on his last hit of the game and was replaced by Gose.
"I don't think it is serious at all. It is just tight," Davis said. "I wasn't running like I'm capable, so I wanted to get out of the game and make sure I didn't cost us the game."
Kinsler, who was on deck, hoped the injury wasn't serious.
"Hopefully, Raj can get healthy soon because he and Anthony are huge for our offense," he said. "I think he's going to be OK because he was able to hold up on it. It was a single up the middle and he wasn't going too hard out of the box. He felt just enough to shut it down."
The Tigers went 3-5 at the start of their 10-game home stand, including losing three of four to the Yankees, but finished with two straight victories. Manager Brad Ausmus, however, doesn't think that will help much as they go back on the road.
"We've got a game in Minnesota tomorrow night, and that's all I'm thinking about," he said. "The important thing to me is to win today, and when the season is over, you hope you have won enough to win the division.
"It's all overblown. What's our record? 13-6? So we've won 13 of our last 19 games. That's how I look at it."
Davis, on the other hand, thought that winning the last two games against the Indians will help the team's overall mood.
"That's what we want. Our goal is to win each series," he said. "That's big mentally for us. Obviously, when you have a good team, everyone else wants to take you down.
"And we've got a good team. We believe we have the best team in the league."
