Guardians 7, Tigers 6: Rocchio's grand slam and walk-off make history in Cleveland
Brayan Rocchio became just the sixth player in MLB history to hit a grand slam and a walk-off homer in the same game as Cleveland erased a 6-1 deficit against Detroit.
One swing tied a piece of baseball history that had stood since 1991. Brayan Rocchio's first-pitch homer off lefty Drew Sommers in the bottom of the ninth on Friday finished a 7-6 Cleveland comeback in Game 1 of a doubleheader at Progressive Field — and made the Guardians shortstop the sixth player ever to hit a grand slam and a walk-off home run in the same game.
How Detroit built the lead
The Tigers ambushed Guardians starter Logan Allen for four first-inning runs, with rookies Ben Malgeri and Max Clark each delivering two-run singles, and Spencer Torkelson's solo shot in the third — his 22nd of the season — helped stretch the lead to 6-1. Allen lasted just 2⅓ innings.
The Rocchio show
The game turned in the fourth. With the bases loaded, Rocchio jumped on a hanging curveball from Tigers starter Keider Montero and sent it over the right-field wall for a grand slam that cut the deficit to 6-5. Cleveland tied it from there, the bullpens held, and Rocchio ended it in the ninth with a 405-foot drive to left, per MLB.com. He joins George Kelly (1924), Hank Greenberg (1938), Minnie Miñoso (1960), Otto Vélez (1980) and Jack Clark (1991) in the slam-plus-walk-off club.
What it means
For Cleveland, now 72-70, the win nudged their hold on the final AL Wild Card spot to one game and kept them 2½ back of the AL Central-leading White Sox — every September game a swing game. For Detroit, it deepened a season-long wound: the Tigers fell to 13-24 in one-run games and have now lost 40 games in which they held a lead, a big part of why a team with a positive run differential sits fourth in the division at 64-77.