The Tigers and Astros meet in the first round of the Major League Baseball playoffs after the Tigers lost 9-5 to the Chicago White Sox in Sunday’s regular-season finale at Comerica Park.

The best-of-three series begins on Tuesday and continues on Wednesday and, if necessary, Thursday. All games will take place in Houston, and the only way for the Tigers to get a home playoff game this year is to make it to the second round under the expanded playoff format introduced in 2022 .

This series is a reunion, albeit a tainted one, between Tigers manager AJ Hinch and the team he led to the 2017 World Series championship. Hinch was fired and suspended for one year by the MLB in the fallout from the Houston sign-stealing scandal. The Tigers hired him at the end of the 2020 World Series after Hinch’s suspension was lifted.

It is, of course, also a reunion between the Tigers and their former ace Justin Verlander, who played in two World Series in Detroit and won two in Houston. Verlander spent his first 13 years in Detroit.