HOUSTON — The upstart Detroit Tigers figured they had nothing to lose. Maybe so. But now the series shifts dramatically. Now they have everything to win.

They battled the noise and the Astros and the thickening tension, all the way to the sweaty finish. The moment might’ve shaken them, except they’ve faced similar moments all season. With the bases loaded and two outs in the bottom of the ninth, Beau Brieske came up clutch again. He induced a looping lineout to first, and when Spencer Torkelson squeezed the ball to secure a 3-1 victory Tuesday, the roaring crowd went so quiet you could hear the odds drop.

The Tigers rode in on their pitching horse, Tarik Skubal, and played with unruffled precision. The playoff-savvy Astros were ambushed from the start, and all of a sudden, this short series is in the Tigers’ control, one victory from advancing.

Skubal did what he does, thoroughly dominant through six innings. And the Tigers did what they do, scrapping and scraping out runs, then turning the game over to their punishing bullpen. They won the wild-card series opener at Minute Maid Park, the one they had to win with Skubal on the mound, and it might take the Astros a moment to process it.

Timely hitting. Tight defense. Aggressive base-running. Unorthodox pinch-hitting. Clutch pitching. Here’s the most compelling example of the Tigers’ relentlessness: Despite only scoring in one inning, they put a runner on base in every inning.

“That's who we are,” manager AJ Hinch said. “I don't want to gloss over that because I'm proud of this group because it's exactly who we are and exactly how we talk. We talk about pressure on the bases. We talk about good at-bats. … I don't think it's a small thing in the first playoff game for a lot of these guys that it looked eerily familiar to the last two months.”

Much of baseball is getting its first good look at the rejuvenated Tigers, with their manically maneuvering manager and their free-wheeling style. They’re in the playoffs for the first time in 10 years. The Astros are in for the eighth consecutive year. If there’s a been-there-done-that feel in Houston, it was evident in the swath of empty seats in the stands, and in the occasional “Let’s Go Tigers!” chant from the Detroit visitors.

The Tigers promised they’d be loose and ready, and they were. Again, it’s no dream to them. No pinching, no flinching. The Tigers led 3-0 from the second inning on until the Astros awakened in the ninth. Brieske had replaced Jason Foley with two men on and the score 3-1, and after he walked a batter, he got Jason Heyward to foul off several pitches, then slap the ball directly to Torkelson.

“That was awesome, an incredible feeling to pull that one out, never a doubt,” Torkelson said with a smile. “Gosh, it was a collective team win. I couldn’t be happier, but we got a lot of work yet to do.”

Holton to start Game 2

The theory was that the favored Astros would feel the pressure against Skubal, the best pitcher in baseball, and perhaps they did. And they might feel it even more in Game 2 here Wednesday. If the Tigers clinch, they’ll advance to face Cleveland, and they’ll try to do it by unleashing another batch of arms in unconventional order. Hinch will open with reliever Tyler Holton, while Hunter Brown, who pitched at Wayne State, will start for Houston.

Skubal was the star of the game, but with these Tigers, it’s rarely about a singular star. Skubal mowed the Astros down on five pitches in the first inning, then mowed them down again on five pitches in the fifth. He knew Astros’ hitters like to attack early, and he beat them to the punch-(out). He left after six scoreless innings with six strikeouts, one walk, and four hits allowed.

Houston ace Framber Valdez was shaky from the start, and when he wasn’t missing the strike zone, he was hitting Tigers’ bats. The second inning featured a classic understated Tigers rally, with sharp RBI singles by Jake Rogers, Trey Sweeney and Matt Vierling to provide a 3-0 lead. Valdez struggled with command in his four-plus innings, giving up seven hits and two walks, and never looked comfortable.

From there, the game was turned over to Skubal and the Tigers’ endless march of relievers. It was Will Vest, then Holton, then Foley, then Brieske, who has been asked a couple times to close games out. He did it in Baltimore Sept. 21, escaping a ninth-inning jam to lift the Tigers to a huge victory. He did it again Tuesday, eerily familiar, almost as familiar as Skubal’s performance.

It was Skubal’s first postseason game, and on a Tigers roster that includes 11 rookies, it was everyone’s first playoff game except for Vierling. Skubal wasn’t immune to the size of the moment and admitted to a natural human emotion. Oh yes, he was nervous as hell.

“It's probably the most nervous I've been since my debut,” Skubal said. “But I think being nervous is good because it means you care about what's going on.”

You could tell he cares, and you really couldn’t tell he was nervous. He only had a couple shaky moments. One came in the second, when he took a hard-hit ball off his right (non-throwing) hand and shook it off. In the fourth, with two Astros on base, Skubal struck out Jeremy Pena and Victor Caratini, then stalked off with an exuberant scream into his glove.

Later, in the sixth inning, he stopped on the mound and started flexing his left leg. Hinch admitted he had “100% panic,” until Skubal said it was just a hamstring cramp.

“He's all in, he's so competitive,” Hinch said. “You see him screaming off the mound, and we see that every day. I'm glad the baseball world gets to see that on the biggest stage of the year so far because it's authentic, and it's a real impact to our club.”

Impressive timing

The Tigers play with a fearlessness that may be a product of their youth, or their ace, or their manager, or their complete belief in a collective group, in which every player contributes. Rogers, who was the Astros’ third-round pick in 2016 and came to Detroit in the Justin Verlander trade, doesn’t have impressive hitting numbers, but impressive timing.

He was 2 for 4 and hammered his RBI single on a 3-0 pitch. He almost never swings at a 3-0 pitch, but as we know, these Tigers are dangerously unpredictable.

“I swung 3-0 one other time this year and got out, and I told the guys, I don't think I'm ever going to do that again,” Rogers said. “But against Framber, I knew I was probably going to get a heater somewhere over the plate. So I was trying to be a little aggressive there and got a hit.”

The aggressiveness continued on the basepaths, as Rogers churned from first to third on Sweeney’s single, a catcher unlocking his wheels. By contrast, in the third, the Astros’ Mauricio Dubon jogged to second on a two-out hit by Jose Altuve, not forcing a throw.

Hinch said before the series the Tigers’ plan was “Tarik Skubal and then pitching chaos the rest of the way.” The Tigers are familiar with chaos, both weathering it and inflicting it. If they can do it one more time here in Houston, everybody in baseball will be familiar with who they are, and what they do.

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