Despite Sunday's loss, Tigers had successful weekend in St. Louis
It was a good weekend for the Detroit Tigers in St. Louis.
Despite falling 2-1 to the Cardinals on national television Sunday night, the Tigers won the series after winning the first two games.
The Cardinals maintain the best record in baseball at 25-12.
The Tigers are 23-15 and remain a game behind the Kansas City Royals in the AL Central.
If not for an ill-placed two-seamer to Kolten Wong in the sixth inning, Alfredo Simon would have had an outstanding outing.
Instead, Simon, who gave up two runs on seven hits while walking four and striking out four in six innings, had to settle for a very good outing.
It was Cardinals starter Lance Lynn who had the outstanding outing, allowing just one run on six hits while walking two and striking out seven in 7 1/3 innings.
Lynn also drove in the Cardinals' first run.
Not surprisingly, it was Miguel Cabrera who drove in the Tigers' only run, doubling home Ian Kinsler in the first inning.
Kinsler had two hits and leads the AL with 18 multi-hit games, including multiple hits in eight of his last 14 games.
Cabrera dominated weekend talk for good reason after hitting two home runs in Friday night's 10-4 victory and then hitting his 400th career home run in the first inning of Saturday's 4-3, extra-inning win.
Cabrera passed Andres Galarraga for the all-time home run leader among Venezuelan-born players.
ESPN showed that Cabrera's statistics at the time of his 400th home run are nearly identical to Hank Aaron's at the time of his 400th.
Both players had career .320 batting averages, Aaron's .566 slugging percentage was just a notch ahead of Cabrera's .564 and Cabrera's 1,398 RBIs (now 1,399) were 88 more than Aaron's 1,310.
Cabrera was 46 days younger than Aaron when he hit his 400th home run.
At 32 years, 28 days, Cabrera is the third youngest active player to reach the milestone and eighth youngest all-time.
Defensively, the Tigers were sharp all weekend.
On Sunday, Yoenis Cespedes made a nice catch on Matt Adams in the second and then threw out former Tiger Jhonny Peralta at home plate in the seventh.
James McCann made a nice scoop of Cespedes' throw on the play and also threw out Wong trying to steal in the second.
In other weekend happenings, Shane Greene, who left Friday night's game after five innings after feeling tingling in his ring and pinky fingers of his pitching hand, appears to be OK.
Greene underwent an MRI Saturday, which came back clean, and then threw without trouble Sunday, so Tigers manager Brad Ausmus said he would be shocked if Greene didn't make his next start Wednesday.
For the most part, Ausmus was able to avoid using Victor Martinez.
Martinez did pinch hit Sunday in the seventh inning with two out and a runner at third, but a nice running catch by third baseman Matt Carpenter in foul territory ended the threat.
Martinez continues to struggle batting left-handed because of his surgically repaired left knee but he says he does not intend to try batting right-handed all the time.
The Tigers next face the Milwaukee Brewers, who are starting three straight righties, Mike Fiers, Jimmy Nelson and Kyle Lohse.
If Martinez doesn't look good in those games, the Tigers might have to make a hard decision to put him on the DL.
