Rain delayed the first game of the Detroit Tigers and Cleveland Guardians doubleheader on Friday at Progressive Field, pushing back a start that had been set for 2:15 p.m. ET. The second game was still scheduled for 7:15 p.m., but more rain later in the day could affect that one too.
Keider Montero was supposed to take the mound for Detroit against Logan Allen in the opener, giving the day a clear baseball focus even before the weather intervened. Montero entered Friday at 9-8 with a 3.24 ERA, and he was the only pitcher in baseball to reach both 22 starts and six relief appearances this season.
That mix is unusual even by Detroit standards. Montero was the third pitcher in the last 40 years to make at least 22 starts and at least six relief appearances exclusively in a Tigers uniform entering September. Anibal Sanchez did it in 2016 with 22 starts and eight relief appearances, and Dan Petry did it in 1990 with 23 starts and six relief appearances.
The timing matters because the Tigers arrived in Cleveland trying to steady a stretch that has gone badly. Detroit had lost 14 of its last 18 games dating to Aug. 14, and the club’s last series win came on Aug. 13, when it beat the Cleveland Guardians in Detroit in the rubber match of a three-game series. That win moved the Tigers into sole possession of the third wild card spot in the American League and left them 2.5 games out of first place in the American League Central.
They have not looked like the same team since. The Tigers had also lost six series in a row dating to Aug. 14-16, their longest series drought since an eight-series losing streak from May 4-31. That slide gives a routine weather delay extra weight, because a mid-day window of dry weather was expected to open up while more rain was still forecast for Friday night.
So the day narrowed to a simple question: whether the weather would clear enough to get one game in, and whether it would leave enough room for the second. The first delay did not settle that, and the schedule still depended on how much of the dry window held before the next round of rain arrived.
