Rain pushed back the first game of the Detroit Tigers and Cleveland Guardians doubleheader on Friday at Progressive Field, delaying a 2:15 p.m. ET start and leaving Keider Montero and Logan Allen waiting for the weather to clear.
The delay landed on a day the Tigers badly needed to stop the slide. They had lost 14 of their last 18 games and had dropped six series in a row, a run that had already pulled them back from the surge they built in August. Montero was the scheduled starter for Detroit, and Allen was set to go for Cleveland.
What made Friday tricky was the forecast around the delay. A dry window was expected to open up mid-day, which could have been enough to get at least one game in, but more rain was still expected Friday night. The second game had been set for 7:15 p.m., so the margin for error was thin even before the first pitch was pushed back.
Montero’s start carried its own note of oddity. He entered Friday as the only pitcher in baseball to have reached both 22 starts and six relief appearances this season, a workload that put him in rare company among Tigers pitchers over the last 40 years. That kind of usage does not leave much room for a weather delay to help the schedule.
The Tigers had beaten the Guardians in the rubber match of a three-game series in Detroit on Aug. 13, a result that moved them into sole possession of the third wild card spot in the American League and 2.5 games out of first place in the American League Central. Since then, the baseball has been harsher, and the rain only added another layer of uncertainty to a Friday that was supposed to offer two chances to reset. Whether both games could still be completed that day was left hanging on the weather.
