DETROIT — The Tigers came into the rubber match against the St. Louis Cardinals on Wednesday afternoon with 17 wins. It’s the most wins the Tigers have had going into May since the 1984 championship team won 18 on its way to a 35-5 start.

Manager AJ Hinch, while certainly appreciative of the solid start, wasn’t going to throw a party.

“Our challenge is not milestones or creating a certain something, be it a winning month or a target of some sort,” he said. “The target is to win as many series as we can. … I don’t subscribe to spending a lot of time assessing things on a macro level.

“We have a chance to win a series today, which is the key to having winning months like we had in April.”

The players subscribe to that theory.

“Just wake up and try to win every day,” Riley Greene said before the Tigers did indeed win the series, beating the Cardinals, 4-1, at Comerica Park.

St. Louis native Matt Vierling put a hurting on his hometown team, knocking in three runs and scoring another.

He singled and scored from first base on a bullet double to the right-center-field gap by rookie Colt Keith in the second inning. It was just Keith’s second extra-base hit of the season. One inning later, Vierling lined his third home run, a two-run shot that left his bat at 106 mph and sailed over the bullpens in left-center field.

That damage was against Cardinals starter Miles Mikolas, who set down the last 10 Tigers he faced through the sixth inning.

In the eighth against lefty reliever JoJo Romero, Wenceel Perez singled and romped to third on a pinch-hit base hit by Andy Ibanez. Vierling sent Perez home with a sacrifice fly to right.

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