Zach McKinstry ends Game 4 for the Detroit Tigers with a solo shot

The Detroit Tigers are just one win away from continuing their improbable run by reaching the American League Championship Series, but against their division rival Cleveland Guardians, they knew it would be anything but easy to take them down.

As expected, the Guardians were successful by driving traffic on the basepaths early before Reese Olson worked his way out of an early jam in the first inning by allowing just one run.

This gave the Tigers a sigh of relief as they have overcome the deficit over the last few months.

They evened things up in the second inning when Trey Sweeney scored Colt Keith with a sacrifice fly, but even though Detroit loaded the bases with no one out, it was up to Detroit not to take advantage of a situation where they had Jake Rogers to tie things up could have blown up lined up in a double play to end the frame.

That can come back to haunt teams in the playoffs, and it seemed like it might have when Jose Ramirez hit his first home run of the series in the top of the fifth inning to give Cleveland the lead.

But Zach McKinstry immediately responded with a solo shot of his own, tying the score.

For the 29-year-old, it was only the third shot in this series, which he scored in the opening game before he was only used as a defensive player in game 2.

McKinstry didn't see the field at all in Game 3, but that didn't stop him from delivering for his team when his name was called on Thursday.