Jack Flaherty tied an American League record with seven straight strikeouts to open the game and finished with a career-high 14 before the St. Louis Cardinals rallied for a 2-1 win over the Detroit Tigers in a doubleheader opener on Tuesday.

Flaherty’s game-opening seven strikeouts matched the AL record shared by Joe Cowley of the 1986 Chicago White Sox, Carlos Rodon of the 2016 White Sox, Tampa Bay’s Blake Snell in 2018 and Seattle’s Luis Castillo two years ago.

Miami’s Pablo Lopez holds the major league record by striking out the first nine batters of a game in 2021.

Flaherty’s 14 strikeouts were the most by a Tigers pitcher since Max Scherzer had 14 against Pittsburgh on Aug. 14, 2014.

Detroit took a 1-0 lead into the ninth, but Nolan Arenado, Paul Goldschmidt and Alec Burleson had one-out singles before Pedro Pages followed with a go-ahead sacrifice fly for his first career RBI.

In the second game, Wenceel Perez homered from both sides of the plate, including a tiebreaking shot in the fifth inning, to lift the Tigers to an 11-6 win.

Streaking Twins beat White Sox

Max Kepler had a tiebreaking sacrifice fly in the ninth inning to lead the Minnesota Twins to their ninth straight victory, 6-5 over the Chicago White Sox.

Minnesota’s win streak is its longest since a 10-game run in June 2008. The Twins also have won seven consecutive games against the White Sox.

After Andrew Benintendi homered in the eighth to tie it at 5, Bryon Buxton led off the ninth with a walk and took third on Manuel Margot’s single. Kepler’s fly to center gave the Twins a 6-5 lead and Jhoan Duran pitched around a leadoff single by Tommy Pham in the bottom of the ninth for the save in his season debut.

Danny Mendick added his first home run of the season for Chicago, which dropped to a major league-worst 6-24.

Caratini, Hader lift Astros to wild win

Victor Caratini hit a pinch-hit, two-run homer with two outs in the 10th inning after Josh Hader pitched two innings for the first time since 2019 in the Houston Astros’ 10-9 win over the Cleveland Guardians.

David Fry’s RBI double in the top of the 10th put the Guardians ahead by one, but Caratini took Hunter Gaddis deep to give the Astros their third straight win.

Hader pitched a scoreless ninth before returning for the 10th. He got more than three outs in a regular-season game for the first time since getting four on Aug. 14, 2020, and had his first two-inning appearance in five years.

Josh Naylor and Estevan Florial hit three-run homers and Andres Gimenez also went deep for Cleveland, which rallied from an 8-3 deficit with a five-run sixth.