CHICAGO >> Sometimes it’s a big hit. Sometimes it’s a dominant pitching performance. And other times, like Saturday in the Tigers’ action-packed, 7-6 victory over the Chicago White Sox, the game-changing event can be a defensive play.

The Tigers had just erased a 6-4 deficit with two runs in the top of the seventh. Tigers manager AJ Hinch gave the ball to right-handed reliever Alex Lange to face the Nos. 9-1-2 hitters. Lange ended up throwing 23 pitches to four hitters and just eight strikes.

He walked the bases loaded and left the one-out mess for Will Vest.

Vest got Eloy Jimenez to hit a hard bouncer at third baseman Zach McKinstry. The ball took a tough hop into McKinstry’s midsection. He stayed with it, stepped on third for one out and threw a seed in the dirt to first. Spencer Torkelson deftly scooped it up to end the inning and keep the score tied.

In the top of the 10th inning, catcher Carson Kelly lined his third hit of the day, a single up the middle, scoring free runner Mark Canha from second base and breaking the tie.

Veteran right-hander Shelby Miller, who had dispatched the top of the White Sox order in the bottom of the ninth, closed out the White Sox in the 10th, securing the Tigers’ second straight win to start the season.

Vest had gotten the Tigers through the bottom of the eighth, as well, navigating his way through three left-handed hitters, plus a single and an error. He punched out Korey Lee and stranded runners at the corners.

The Tigers surrendered a three-run lead early and, getting some big hits from Canha, Riley Greene and Kelly, fought out of a three-run deficit late.

Down 6-3 in the fifth, Canha delivered the Tigers’ first home run of the season, a solo shot to left. That triggered the first dugout home run celebration, which this year is Little Caesars’ pizza themed — the pizza-pizza triple-stacked on a pole.

It was a three-RBI day for Canha, who had a two-run single in the first inning.

The Tigers tied the score in the seventh.

White Sox manager Pedro Grifol summoned right-handed reliever Dominic Leone, even though the Tigers had left-handed hitters Greene and Kerry Carpenter coming up.

Greene torched a 3-2 fastball (94 mph) and hit it 398 feet over the wall in left-center.

Carpenter grounded out but Canha doubled, ending the day for Leone. Grifol then brought in lefty reliever Tim Hill to face lefty Colt Keith. Keith grounded out but Hill had to face right-handed hitting Kelly, who slashed the tying single. It was his second hit of the game.

Both starting pitchers got off to wobbly starts Saturday. One of them settled in. His name was not Kenta Maeda.

It was a rough debut for the veteran right-hander the Tigers signed for two years and $24 million. Staked to a 3-0 lead in the first inning, Maeda was bounced out of the game in the fourth inning, having been tagged for six runs and three home runs.

White Sox center fielder Luis Robert, Jr., accounted for two of those homers and four of the runs with two mighty swings. He won a 10-pitch at-bat in the first inning and hit a 449-foot, two-run homer to left. In the third, on another 3-2 count, he hit one 417 feet, also to left, also with a runner on.

If you are keeping score, that’s 866 feet worth of homers.

Maeda didn’t have much of a fastball. The velocity was down (89 mph) and he wasn’t commanding it well. As a result, the White Sox hitters were able to sit or spit on his slider and splitter. Rookie shortstop Braden Shewmake ambushed a first-pitch hanging slider for his first career hit and home run in the second inning.

The White Sox’ sixth run came on a curious play by the Tigers in the fourth inning. Alex Faedo had relieved Maeda with runners on first and third and one out. Nicky Lopez, the runner at first, attempted to steal second. Catcher Kelly opted to make the throw all the way to the base. Lopez was tagged out by shortstop Javier Báez but Shewmake, who was on third, scored ahead of Báez’s relay home.

The Tigers scored three first-inning runs against White Sox right-hander Michael Soroka, the former Braves starter who missed two seasons because of Achilles tendon injuries.

Parker Meadows, who made a couple of sterling defensive plays, led off with a triple and scored on a single by Torkelson. After Greene walked and Carpenter singled, Canha ripped a two-run single.

Statcast clocked Meadows at 11.6 seconds from home to third. That was the fastest home-to-third time to date this season.

Meadows, who also walked twice in the game, took at least a double away from Martin Maldonado in the fourth. He tracked Maldonado’s 404-foot drive some 100 feet to the wall in center, timed his leap perfectly and caught it level with the top of wall.

Meadows was busy. He made nine putouts in center.