DETROIT — It was a best-of-three now, the American League Championship Series, and it was supposed to only get tougher for the Boston Red Sox.

The Detroit Tigers could send out Anibal Sanchez, Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander. Against them, the Red Sox had seemed helpless while their own rotation had been hit or miss.

The Red Sox had little choice but to grind and muscle their way past the Tigers, which is what they did Thursday.

They knocked around Sanchez, the first of the three starters;
knocked the Tigers’ catcher, Alex Avila, out of the game; hindered Prince Fielder and a hurt Miguel Cabrera; and hung on against the Tigers, 4-3, to take a three-games-to-two
series lead.

“But no excuses,” said Jim Leyland, the Tigers’ manager. “Been good games, and so far they got the best of it.”

The Red Sox can close out the series Saturday in Boston, but they will have to do so against Scherzer. Of course, they fared just fine in their second game against Sanchez.

On Wednesday, Leyland dropped his leadoff hitter, Austin Jackson, to eighth in the order. The Tigers’ offense came alive, so he kept the lineup almost the same Thursday, only
flipping Avila and Omar Infante.

It appeared the Tigers would again strike first. In the bottom of the first, after Torii Hunter flied out, Cabrera drew a walk, and Fielder singled up the middle to bring up
Jhonny Peralta.

Peralta singled to left field, and Cabrera took off from second base. Tom Brookens, the third-base coach, began waving him home, even though he has been hobbled by injuries.

As Jonny Gomes fielded the ball and Cabrera rounded third, however, Brookens held his hands high, telling Cabrera to stop, having apparently changed his mind. It was too late.
Cabrera chugged home, where Gomes’s throw beat him by several steps.

“It was my fault,” Cabrera said later. Leyland, though, blamed Brookens for the first of several missed opportunities for the Tigers.

It seemed too early in the game for so much action.

Sanchez and Jon Lester had battled in Game 1 of this series. Sanchez held the Red Sox hitless for six innings, and Lester left in the seventh, having allowed one run. That lone
run would be enough as the Tigers’ bullpen carried the no-hitter into the ninth.

Sanchez struck out 12 batters in that game, but he walked six, too. Of his 116 pitches, only 66 were for strikes. Leyland was hoping Sanchez would manage his pitch count
Thursday. Perhaps then Leyland would not have to use his problematic bullpen. In four games, the Red Sox had scored all of three runs against Detroit’s starters.

“We’ve got to get a hit,” Boston’s Mike Napoli said before the game. “We’re not going to get out of our game plan.

“He pitched well,” Napoli continued, referring to Sanchez’s start in Game 1, “but we got him out after six innings.”

In the top of the second Thursday, Napoli smashed a Sanchez fastball into the ivy beyond the center-field wall. Gomes reached base on an error by Cabrera, and Xander Bogaerts
doubled two batters later.

David Ross also doubled, scoring Gomes, and Jacoby Ellsbury hit a comebacker at Sanchez, who knocked the ball down but could not stop it from trickling away. Ellsbury made it to
first safely as Bogaerts scored, and the Red Sox had a 3-0 lead.

The next inning, Napoli hit a Sanchez changeup for a ground-rule double. He went to third on a groundout by Gomes and then scored as Sanchez bounced a wild pitch a few feet in
front of home plate.

The Tigers had another chance in the fourth inning. Avila was scheduled to bat, but his backup, Brayan Pena, entered as a pinch-hitter.

Avila had had a rough night. As he blocked home plate in the second inning, Ross, the Red Sox’ catcher, lowered his shoulder and bowled Avila over. Avila held on to record the
out, and Ross smacked his backside as a sign of respect. But Avila, who missed time in August with a concussion, appeared shaken up.

Two innings later, Ross fouled a pitch off Avila’s mask. After that half-inning, Avila left with a patellar tendon strain in his left knee and was labeled day to day. Later,
Leyland said Avila’s knee was “pretty bad.”

So Pena came to bat in the fourth inning with two on and one out, got into a 3-0 count and gave the crowd hope. But Lester got him to ground into an inning-ending double play.

The Tigers finally got to Lester in the fifth. Jackson led off with a single, Jose Iglesias sacrificed him to second, and Cabrera singled him home.

Detroit chased Lester in the sixth, and Junichi Tazawa came on to face Pena in same situation Pena had faced in the fourth: two on, one out. This time, Pena hit Tazawa’s first
pitch for a run-scoring single. Jackson, though, grounded into a double play.

Sanchez’s night was over, too. He had thrown 108 pitches over six innings and struck out five batters, and the Red Sox had battered him for four runs. Lester had outpitched him
this time.

After all that, Cabrera had a chance to make up for Sanchez’s mistakes. He came to bat in the seventh representing the go-ahead run, with runners on first and third and no outs,
and if he failed, Fielder would be up next.

But they had hardly been themselves. Cabrera was not 100 percent, and Fielder had tallied one extra base hit and zero runs batted in this postseason.

The crowd chanted for Cabrera, but he grounded into a double play. A run scored, but Boston still led, 4-3. Fielder grounded out to a chorus of boos, and another chance slipped
away for the Tigers.