DETROIT >> Sometimes it’s flat-out eerie the way manager AJ Hinch can see things before they happen.

He was asked before the Tigers beat the Royals 3-1 Saturday about putting Kerry Carpenter in the leadoff spot.

“He’s the biggest threat and it’s a really early decision for them with three lefties in their pen,” Hinch said. “I don’t know if all three are available but with (right-handed hitting) Gleyber Torres off, I wanted to separate Carp and (left-handed hitting) Riley Greene.”

Hinch talked about the 19th at-bat of the game being a big decision point, potentially, for Royals manager Matt Quatraro. That would be Carpenter’s third time through the order and Hinch was dead on.

The 19th at-bat came in the fifth inning of a scoreless game. With two outs and runner on, Quatraro stuck with his veteran right-hander Seth Lugo who had allowed just one hit coming into the inning and Carpenter kept the inning alive with a single.

That set the table for the Tigers’ hottest hitter.

Spencer Torkelson fought out of an 0-2 hole and slugged a three-run home run to left field, the kill shot that brought a large and enthusiastic crowed (32,043) to its feet.

“It’s amazing what we did today,” Hinch said.

It was Torkelson’s seventh homer and it upped his team-leading RBI total to 21.

He’s the first Tiger to get to seven homers in 21 games since Miguel Cabrera in 2012.

“The actual adjustment to me came in the uncomfortable swings Tork had in his early at-bats,” Hinch said, referencing especially his strikeout in the third inning. “That didn’t bleed into the next at-bat. Lugo was really tough on Tork. And to get that extra shot at him and be able to get a pitch deep in the at-bat and drive it out of the park at the most opportune time was huge.”

Not taking bad at-bats into the next at-bat, that’s evidence of Torkelson’s growth in the box this season.

“I know there was an opportunity and I’m not going let any past at-bat effect how good an opportunity it was to put some runs on the board,” Torkelson said. “Just simplify. The only thing that matters is that pitch. That was my focus.”

Lugo got ahead with two slurves and, after changing his eye level with a pitch above the zone, he tried to put Torkelson away with another slurve. It was perfectly located down and away, with a spin rate of 3,166 rpm — a devastating pitch — and somehow Torkelson fought it off.

Lugo came back with a 2-2 splitter that was in the middle of the plate and Torkelson scalded it. The ball left his bat at 106 mph.

“He’s really a good pitcher,” Torkelson said. “He put on a really good display today of how to pitch. He changed speeds and was hitting his spots. That at-bat, man, it might’ve looked like I was trying to do too much but I really wasn’t. He’s just nasty and I was trying to shoot something the other way.

“I just wanted to help Javy (Baez, who singled with one out) and Carp pay off those at-bats. He threw me some really good pitches and I tried to battle them off and I was able to capitalize on the one mistake he did make.”

It was the first time Lugo has lost a game to the Tigers in his career. He’d allowed just one run in 15 innings in two starts at Comerica Park last season.

Hinch afterward didn’t want to talk about the prescience of red-lettering the 19th at-bat. He wanted to talk about Casey Mize. As well he should. Mize put on the superman cape for this one.

“What Casey gave us today was exactly what this team needed and put us in position to win this game,” he said. “We knew runs would be scarce with Lugo and Casey was exceptional.”

With the bullpen running on fumes, the Tigers needed Mize to log some innings and he obliged against a team that has historically beat him around a bit.

The Royals averaged over five runs a game against him in 10 previous starts, but this is a very different version of Casey Mize.

“He was really good,” catcher Dillon Dingler said. “And the best part was, he was landing pretty much all of his pitches. I know we used some more than others but he had great control over all of his sliders and especially his four-seamer and split. He was able to keep them off-balance the whole game.”

Mize efficiently bulldogged his way through seven innings, spotting four-seamers and sinkers to open up the plate for a deft mix of traditional sliders, sweepy sliders and his splitter.

Impressively, too, given the state of the bullpen, he was pounding the strike zone — 20 first-pitch strikes in 27 hitters — and getting early outs, which kept his pitch-count low. He finished his seven innings in 88 pitches.

“The biggest thing is just protecting our bullpen after some of the hard work they’ve done over the past week or so,” said Mize, who improved to 3-1 and lowered his ERA to 2.22. “One of my goals was to take down as many innings as possible and help those guys. Certainly glad I was able to do that.”

It was comical when Mize came back to the dugout after the sixth inning. He was at 77 pitches and he and Hinch didn’t even look at each other.

“There was no question in my mind that I was coming back for the seventh,” Mize said. “I was more thinking, am I going to go back out for the eighth or not.”

He’d allowed just three, well-spaced singles before catcher Freddy Fermin ambushed a first-pitch sinker with two outs in the seventh and lined it over the wall in left-center. That was the only blemish.

“I talked to him after the outing and told him he did everything we needed him to do,” Hinch said. “He pitched extraordinarily well.”

It was not lost on anyone that the heroes in this win were two once-beleaguered No. 1 overall draft picks, a pair of one-ones — Mize in 2018 and Torkelson in 2020.

I’m just proud of them,” Hinch said. “There was a time in this organization when the whole world was on their shoulders. They were the guys the fans were waiting on, the guys this organization was waiting on. And it hasn’t been an easy road for either one of them. So to see them both now carrying us is a great testament to what they had to endure.

“This has been a rewarding path to date, to now look at them doing exactly what everyone has hoped they would do. They deserve a lot of credit.”

The Tigers at 13-8 are off to their best start since 2015. They’ve taken four of their last five series and have won six in a row against the Royals since last season. They are also 8-1 at Comerica to start the season, the best since 1993.

And bonus: They have reigning Cy Young winner Tarik Skubal going in the series finale Sunday.