Tigers hit 3 HRs and take Game 3

DETROIT -- Lamenting the two losses to open the series, Tigers manager Jim Leyland said it wasn't that his team had played poorly.

"We haven't been able to come up with any big hits,'' he said Monday.

Tuesday night the beat-up Tigers lineup came up with their share.

Those hits, which included three home runs, along with one enormous pitching performance from Doug Fister, saved this ALCS from becoming a rout as the Tigers beat the Rangers, 5-2, in Game 3 in front of a sellout crowd of 41,905 at Comerica Park.

Game 4 of the series, which the Rangers lead, 2-1, is Wednesday.

"I'm thrilled the way we played," Leyland said. "We're tough. These are two tough teams. Our guys are playing with some pain and some injuries. Both teams are showing what it's all about."

Fister, who beat the Yankees in Game 5 of the ALDS and was 8-1 with a 1.79 ERA in 10 starts for the Tigers since his acquisition from Seattle before the trade deadline, allowed two runs and seven hits in 7 1/3 innings.

"It was Fister that did the job out there tonight," Rangers manager Ron Washington said.

Fister, 4-0 with a 0.98 ERA in five regular-season starts at Comerica after he was acquired, left with one on and one out in the eighth, leading 5-1. Joaquin Benoit allowed an inherited runner to score to make it 5-2 but no more. Jose Valverde pitched a scoreless ninth for the save, retiring the side after allowing a leadoff double to Josh Hamilton.

"I thought he put on a pitching clinic," Leyland said of Fister.

The Tigers, 2-for-19 with runners in scoring position the first two games of the series and without Magglio Ordoñez and Delmon Young, had 11 hits.

They got solo home runs from Victor Martinez -- whom Leyland said suffered an intercostals muscle (rib cage) injury -- Jhonny Peralta and Miguel Cabrera, and three hits from beleaguered leadoff man Austin Jackson, who came into the game 3-for-25 with 14 strikeouts this postseason.

"You try not to let it weigh on you," said Jackson, the former Yankee who was part of the three-team trade that brought Curtis Granderson to the Bronx two offseasons ago.

Nor have the Tigers collectively tried to allow the slew of injuries they've suffered this postseason to weigh on them.

"He always tells us," Cabrera said of Leyland, "no matter how many injuries we have, you have to fight for nine innings."

The Rangers had their own injury as third baseman Adrian Beltre fouled a ball off his left knee in the fourth and didn't seem right the rest of the way. An MRI showed a contusion.

"Beltre said he could play," Washington said.

Jackson's two-out, RBI single in the two-run sixth made it 4-1. Peralta led off the inning with a solo blast to left on an 0-and-2 pitch.

The Tigers trailed 1-0 until the fourth, when Martinez lined Colby Lewis' 2-and-1 pitch into the seats in right-center for his second homer of the postseason. Martinez, who severely bruised his right toe just before the postseason, appeared to injure himself during the at-bat and, after a plodding trot around the bases, the designated hitter slammed his batting helmet down the steps leading to the Tigers clubhouse, pushing lightly at his side as he did so. Still, Martinez stayed in the game.

"That motivates you," Cabrera said.

"As of now, I'm playing tomorrow," Martinez told reporters after the game.

Cabrera doubled down the rightfield line off Lewis with two outs in the fifth, bringing in Jackson to make it 2-1. His solo homer in the seventh, off Koji Uehara, made it 5-1.

"Obviously, I think he'll be OK," Leyland said of Martinez. "And if he can't, you know what? We'll play somebody else. That's who we are. That's what we are and that's what you do this time of year."