JaCoby Jones couldn’t resist.

After he rounded the bases on his two-run, tiebreaking homer off Reds closer Raisel Iglesias, he had to tweak his manager about the sacrifice bunt Ron Gardenhire twice called for, both of which Jones fouled off.

“I got back in the dugout and I told Gardy, 'Screw bunting. We're in Cincinnati. Let me hit,'” Jones said after the Tigers’ 6-4 win Saturday. “He started laughing.”

• Box score

That’s Great American Ball Park, where every big swing this weekend has looked like it could send a ball out. The Tigers hit three homers off Cincinnati’s bullpen, scoring five runs. An inning before Jones’ shot, the center fielder thought Nick Castellanos had bitten his old teammates with a go-ahead home run, until he tracked down the ball at the warning track.

“Off the bat? In Cincinnati? I thought it was a homer,” Jones said. “Maybe he caught it off the end [of the bat], I’m not sure. But off the bat, I thought it was a homer for sure.”

The game was that perilous once the shadows let up and the hitters had a better view. It was a dramatic turnaround to a contest that looked for six innings like another Detroit defeat in the making. And it might have been best summed up by Miguel Cabrera’s faces.

Cabrera’s reaction to Reds starter Luis Castillo’s changeup that he swung over as it dove out of the strike zone for a first-inning strikeout showed how nasty Castillo was. Four innings later, Cabrera’s face on another offspeed pitch for the first strike on his third strikeout to Castillo illustrated the Tigers slugger’s lingering frustration.

By contrast, Cabrera followed the path of his seventh-inning drive with pleading eyes, hoping it would stay inside the left-field foul pole. He was already elated to see anyone on the mound besides Castillo, who racked up 11 strikeouts over six innings of one-run ball. He had to be surprised when Michael Lorenzen left a 3-2 pitch within his reach with first base open and the go-ahead run on second base.

“Not to take anything away from Miguel Cabrera, everyone knows what phenomenal hitter he is,” said Reds manager David Bell. “With Michael pitching right there, he’s one of our best. We trust him against any hitter in the league. It’s a good question. It’s a good thought. You really don’t want to put baserunners on right there. We trust Michael to attack right there. Didn’t work out, but it’s how we would do it again.”

Lorenzen tried to get his full-count pitch up, but not far enough. Cabrera connected with a 104 mph exit-velocity blast, plenty to get the ball out, but the question was whether it would stay fair.

“I was watching Miggy,” Gardenhire said. “You can't see the dugout. So basically what I end up doing is watching the hitter. And the hitter just stood there and looked at it, and looked at it, and he took off running. And all the guys jumped and yelled.”

Cabrera’s 478th career home run pushed him past good friend Adrián Beltré and into sole possession of No. 30 on the MLB all-time list. His 1,696th career RBI moved him to 25th on that list, past Hall of Famer Cal Ripken Jr.

Former Tigers prospect Curt Casali tied the game in the bottom half of that seventh inning with a solo homer off Tyler Alexander. Castellanos, who made known his disdain for Comerica Park’s deep dimensions before his trade last summer, nearly powered the Reds in front in the eighth.

Austin Romine’s leadoff single in the ninth put the Tigers in motion against Iglesias. Jones tried twice to bunt pinch-runner Dawel Lugo into scoring position, but he fouled off both for a 1-2 count.

“That guy is throwing really, really hard,” Gardenhire said, “and it's not easy to bunt anyway when you're standing flat-footed. JaCoby's a good bunter, I knew that, and my thought process was to just get him over. He had a great at-bat after the fact.”

It was the kind of at-bat Jones talked about months ago in Spring Training. After laying off a changeup off the plate and fouling off a breaking ball, Jones connected with a 96 mph fastball up and in, sending it 408 feet to left-center field.

“I was frustrated with myself for not getting the bunt down and just doing whatever I can to put the bat on the ball,” Jones admitted. “He threw me a curveball that I was waiting for, and I missed it. He came back with a fastball, and I was ready for it.

“Heaters in are like my specialty.”