DETROIT — When the Detroit Tigers gave them an inch, the St. Louis Cardinals took the game.

With a series of misplays that might seem vaguely familiar for these two teams in cold weather, the Cardinals capitalized on a double play that didn’t happen and an error that certainly did to upend an early deficit. From there, the Cardinals’ bullpen held fast for a 5-3 victory Sunday night against Detroit at Comerica Park.

Ivan Herrera had the two-run single that put the Cardinals ahead. The Tigers had the two mistakes that allowed the Cardinals’ four-run fifth inning. And lefty JoJo Romero had the pivotal stretch of five outs to shift the late-game matchups in the Cardinals’ direction. All of that combined to salvage the final game of the Tigers’ season-opening series on NBC’s Sunday Night Baseball national telecast.

The Cardinals added some cushion for Riley O’Brien when JJ Wetherholt scored on a sacrifice fly ball by Nolan Gorman in the eighth inning.

O’Brien retired the side in order in the ninth to secure his second save.

The timely rally and the tight relief secured Kyle Leahy's first win as a starter.

Romero counters Tigers’ swaps

Fitting for Hockeytown, the Tigers will sometimes do the equivalent of line changes to get better matchups throughout the game. That can work against a team that doesn’t have the lefty relievers to counter what Detroit can do.

It worked for the Cardinals in the late innings Sunday.

When the top of the lineup came around in the bottom of the sixth, the Cardinals turned immediately to their high-leverage lefty JoJo Romero to hold the two-run lead. Due up was leadoff hitter Colt Keith, but true to their style the Tigers switched to a right-handed pinch-hitter, Jahmai Jones. He hit a ground ball that could have been a double play had Thomas Saggese not bobbled the exchange.

Still, Romero got the right-handed batter out and the maneuvers were afoot.

Romero walked a left-handed batter, rookie Kevin McGonigle, on four pitches only to face right-handed batter Gleybar Torres and get a ground. That set up the seventh for Romero with two left-handed batters due up. The Tigers had to choose between pinch-hitting for cleanup hitter Kerry Carpenter, who had a homer earlier, or No. 5 hitter Riley Greene.

Tigers manager A. J. Hinch replaced Carpenter Matt Vierling, and Romero dispatched him with a lineout to right.

That assured a matchup with Greene, and Romero struck him out.

Romero breezed through the bottom of the seventh by retiring all three batters he faced – two right-handed, one left-hand. And because of the swaps the Tigers made to face Romero, it set up the Cardinals’ right-handed relievers for the matchups in the later innings.

Carpenter, for example, was not at the plate in the ninth to face O'Brien with two outs.

Echoes of 2006 in Cardinals’ rally

The Cardinals didn’t get the 20-year reunion Sunday night with Justin Verlander that was originally scheduled because the veteran right-hander went on the injured list.

The Tigers created other ways to remind the Cardinals of the 2006 World Series.

The Cardinals upended the Tigers’ early 2-0 lead with some help from the kind of play that doomed Detroit two decades ago: a pitcher fielding error.

But first there was the missed play.

Nolan Gorman snapped a 0 for 7 stretch for himself with a single to lead off the fifth inning. Saggese followed with a walk. When Nathan Church chopped a ground ball to second base, the Tigers had a chance to spin a double play and unplug the Cardinals’ rally before it got going. Second baseman Torres misfired on the throw, and the only out the Tigers could get was at second thanks to Javier Baez’s adjustment.

The Cardinals pounced on the Tigers’ mistake.

Pedro Pages lifted a single to right that scored Gorman and cut the Tigers’ lead in half, and Church raced for third to get himself 90 feet away from a tie game. Pages entered the game on a 0 for 8 stretch, and Church has gone 22 at-bats without reaching safely. Yet, the rally that would flip the game began with them.

Cue the PFP.

The Tigers famously committed a series of poor plays on defense during the 2006 World Series, and it was such news that the following spring, reporters lined up to watch Detroit’s players going through Pitcher’s Fielding Practice, of PFP.

Detroit lifted starter Keider Montero for a lefty reliever, Enmanuel De Jesus, to face No. 9 hitter Victor Scott II. The Cardinals’ center fielder immediately tested De Jesus with a bunt back toward him. Church scored easily to tie the game, and when De Jesus tried to throw to first to get Scott, he channeled his inner 2006 Tiger. The throw bounced past first base and allowed Pages to reach third and Scott to arrive at second.

Two batters later, Detroit made the curious decision to have the lefty De Jesus pitch to Herrera with first base open.

Herrera laced a single to right to break the tie and push the Cardinals ahead, 4-2.

Each of the final three runs scored could be traced back to the Cardinals exploiting a miss by the Tigers. There was Church scoring on the bunt when he should have been out on the double play. There was Scott scoring on Herrera’s single when he should have been out at first. And there was Herrera singling when arguably he should have been put on first base to create a left-on-left duel for De Jesus against Alec Burleson. Three missteps and Cardinals led by two.

Leahy changes it up

In his second start as a full-time member of the rotation, Leahy improved on his previous start – not by pitching deeper into the game but by confounding the opponents more.

Both of the runs Leahy allowed came on Carpenter’s two-run homer in the third for the Tigers’ 2-0 lead. Leahy scattered four other hits through his five innings and mixed in three walks as well. That bloated his pitch count to 63 through three innings and that limited how deep into the game he could go.

Leahy struck out four, and he did so often with his changeup that upset the Tigers’ timing. Three of Leahy’s four strikeouts finished the changeup.

Of the nine times the Tigers swung at his changeup, they missed five times.

The mix of six different pitches and the ability to land each for a strike helped Leahy navigate a difficult Tigers lineup that was stacked with five left-handed batters to challenge him. Three of Leahy’s strikeouts came in the first inning, and from there he was mostly on the ground – except for the ball that Carpenter hit 425 feet to dead-center for a home run.

Leahy had just plotted a course out of trouble in the third inning when Carpenter struck. The Cardinals’ right-hander vexed rookie Kevin McGonigle with a changeup to get a strikeout with a runner on base. A meek groundout followed, and the Tigers were an out away from wasting a leadoff single. Carpenter fixed that.

And then Leahy settled.

He allowed only two more hits and only one other Tiger reached scoring position.

ABS challenges galore

From the start of NBC’s Sunday Night Baseball, neither team was hesitant at all to challenge balls and strikes at the home plate.

The Cardinals, the last team in the majors to get an overturned call using the new Automated Ball-Strike (ABS) system, got plenty of practice Sunday. Through five innings, the two teams had combined for seven challenges of calls by home-plate umpire Mark Wegner. Five of those calls were overturned. In the fourth inning, Herrera had a ball flipped to a called strike three by the Tigers’ ABS challenge.

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