DETROIT — Fire up the plane. The Tigers are heading back to Seattle.

Riley Greene, who has scuffled throughout the postseason, broke a 3-3 tie in the sixth inning with a massive blast, sending the Tigers to a valiant, 9-3 comeback win in Game 4 of the American League Division Series at Comerica Park Wednesday.

The series will be decided on Friday at T-Mobile Park, with the Tigers sending ace Tarik Skubal to the mound.

Greene was in a 2-for-14 rut with five strikeouts against Mariners pitching. But lefty reliever Gabe Speier put a slider over the middle of the plate and Greene scorched it. The ball left his bat with an exit velocity of 111.9 mph and flew 454 feet deep into the seats in right-center.

His first career playoff homer was majestic.

And once the Tigers started hitting, they didn’t stop, as if making up for the three previous games.

They erased a 3-0 deficit with a three-run burst in the fifth. And then after Greene’s homer, they scored three more times.

Spencer Torkelson doubled and scored on a single by Zach McKinstry. And then with two outs, Wenceel Perez doubled and Javier Baez, who might be the Tigers’ MVP in this series, lined a two-run homer to left.

Seven runs in two innings, after scoring nine in the first three games.

Gleyber Torres added a home run in the seventh and Baez picked up his fourth RBI, beating out a double-play ball in the eighth to score McKinstry, who had collected his third hit.

The Tigers ended up with 13 hits, four fewer than in the first three games combined.

All that was left to send the series back to Seattle was to ride the power and exuberance of rookie right-hander Troy Melton.

The Tigers used leverage right-hander Kyle Finnegan to keep the game close in the fourth inning. The cost for that was having to ride the rookie for as long as he could go.

And he went three scoreless innings, energizing both the crowd and his teammates, especially when he struck out Julio Rodriguez and Jorge Polanco to end the seventh.

Tigers manager AJ Hinch said before the game that he would manage aggressively with the season on the line. And he was true to his word, for better or worse.

Starter Casey Mize stuck out six in three innings. He got four of the six with his splitter, which he was ripping between 90-92 mph. In the second inning, though, he left a couple up just enough.

Josh Naylor doubled and Dominic Canzone delivered an RBI single.

Hinch had lefty Tyler Holton warming in the third inning with lefty Naylor coming up again. And even after Mize struck out Rodriguez and Polanco to end the third, Holton was on the mound in the fourth.

“Well, where the game dropped us off, (they) had Naylor and Canzone in the same inning,” Hinch said, interviewed between innings by FS1’s Tom Verducci. “And if somebody had gotten on, I was going to take Mize out. So, I liked the pocket that it was at.

“We’re going to be aggressive with our bullpen usage. They put some at-bats together to create an inning.”

The Mariners foiled the strategy. Naylor and Eugenio Suarez singled and Holton walked Canzone to load the bases.

Hinch brought in right-hander Finnegan at that point. Finnegan limited the damage to a run, getting Victor Robles to it into a 6-4-3 double-play.

The Mariners scored again in the fifth. Randy Arozarena singled, went to second on a wild pitch and scored on a single by Cal Raleigh.

A 3-0 deficit had been death to the Tigers in this series. Until Wednesday when they broke out for three runs in the bottom of the fifth to tie the game.

Dillon Dingler lashed an RBI double to left-center, ending the day for Mariners starter Bryce Miller.

Seattle manager Dan Wilson summoned his leverage lefty Speier with one out in the fifth. The Tigers had lefties Parker Meadows and Kerry Carpenter coming up, with Baez in between.

Hinch used Jahmai Jones to pinch hit for Meadows. Jones ripped a first-pitch double to score Dingler. Baez followed with a game-tying single.

The seal, finally, was broken and the Tigers live to fight at least one more day.

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