2011 DETROIT TIGER SCHEDULE AND RESULTS

Tigers rout White Sox to complete sweep

By Mike Scott / Special to MLB.com | 9/4/2011 11:35 PM ET

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DETROIT -- The Tigers continued their offensive tear from the second half of Saturday's game by pounding out a season-high 24 hits and getting contributions from the entire lineup in an 18-2 victory over the White Sox on Sunday night.

Starter Max Scherzer (14-8) did his part as well, blanking the White Sox through seven strong innings, allowing just five hits and striking out six. The win kept Detroit 6 1/2 games in front of Cleveland in the American League Central, and increased its lead over the White Sox to 8 1/2.

Five different Tigers had multiple RBIs and not only did every starter get one hit but all but one finished with two hits. Alex Avila had his first career four-hit game and raised his average above .300. Miguel Cabrera hit a towering 425-foot home run and finished with four RBIs. Brandon Inge had three hits.

Detroit set the tone early when leadoff hitter Austin Jackson drilled Mark Buehrle's (11-7) first pitch into left-center field for a double. Victor Martinez made the White Sox pay for a four-pitch walk to Cabrera, drilling an RBI single to left for an early 1-0 lead.

Martinez was at it again in the third inning with a one-out RBI single. Avila followed with a run-scoring single and a third run came home on an errant throw by Chicago second baseman Gordon Beckham, caused largely by Avila's aggressive slide at second.

One inning later, the floodgates opened against Buehrle. Delmon Young delivered an RBI single and Cabrera a two-run double off the Chicago starter in the fourth. Buehrle's day ended after just 3 1/3 innings, allowing eight runs, seven earned, on 10 hits. By the time the five-run fourth inning ended, Detroit had a 9-0 lead.

The Tigers added seven more runs in the sixth against White Sox rookie reliever Shane Lindsay. Cabrera highlighted the frame with his 26th homer, a two-run shot to center.

Andy Dirks hit a two-run homer, his seventh, in the eighth. Dirks went 2-for-2 with four RBIs after entering the game as a pinch-hitter in the sixth inning.

Chicago's two runs came in the ninth inning against reliever Duane Below.

Mike Scott is a contributor to MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.

Fister's 13 K's help Tigers pad division lead

By Jason Beck / MLB.com | 9/5/2011 6:25 PM ET


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CLEVELAND -- No, Tigers hitters didn't have much to carry over Monday afternoon from their 18-run barrage against the White Sox the previous night. Thanks to Doug Fister, they didn't have to.

After a long Sunday night, Fister put the Indians offense to sleep, counting K's.

Whether the same can be said of the Tribe's playoff hopes will be clearer in the next couple days, but Monday's 4-2 win was big for the Tigers. This might've been Cleveland's best chance to take a game, not just with the matchup, but the circumstances of a quick turnaround for Detroit, as well.

Instead, it became a tutorial on how Fister makes Detroit such an improved team, and why Victor Martinez -- whose three-run homer proved to be the difference in the game -- has been such a clutch hitter for the club.

"You can't hardly pitch any better than he pitched today," manager Jim Leyland said of Fister. "That's Major League pitching at its best. It may not have been overpowering, but that's Major League pitching at its best. ...

"He's a pitcher. And that's why we wanted him."

Detroit didn't line Fister up to pitch Monday on purpose; that's just how the rotation worked out. But the timing couldn't have been better. The Tigers arrived in Cleveland just after 2 a.m. ET, got what little sleep they could, arrived at Progressive Field around mid-morning and took the field for a 1:05 p.m. matchup with Ubaldo Jimenez. Fister worked quickly and dominated.

In a Labor Day battle of Trade Deadline acquisitions, Jimenez was the power arm, blowing fastballs by five of the first seven batters he faced. But with a low 90s heater, a surprisingly nasty curveball and an array of pitches spotted for strikes, Fister -- who traveled ahead of the team -- outpitched his higher-profile trade counterpart.

In terms of strikeouts and efficiency, Fister would have outpitched pretty much anyone on this afternoon.

According to research from Elias Sports Bureau, no American League pitcher had struck out 13 batters and lasted eight innings with fewer than 102 pitches since at least 2000, when it started keeping pitch-count data with every game. Two-time National League Cy Young Award winner Tim Lincecum did it in 2009, as did Florida's Ricky Nolasco a year earlier, but nobody had done it against a lineup with a designated hitter.

The fact that Fister, of all pitchers, became the first AL hurler to accomplish the feat says plenty about the kind of groove he finds himself in these days.

"You know, what happened today is something that's a little different," Fister said. "But I still take the mentality of going out there and getting quick contact and using my defense."

Fister built his reputation as a low-strikeout, high-efficiency contact pitcher long before he arrived in Detroit. Yet with each outing in a Tigers uniform, he continues to defy it.

He tied his career high with his ninth strikeout by getting Jason Donald to swing and miss at a curveball for the second out of the seventh. The next batter, Lou Marson, took a fastball for a called third strike after seeing curveballs and a slider early in the at-bat.

At that point, Fister still hadn't hit 100 pitches. He went back out for the eighth and struck out the side, shrugging off a Kosuke Fukudome homer in between. He threw just 16 pitches in the inning.

At one point, he threw 13 consecutive first-pitch strikes. His only three-ball count resulted in his lone walk.

Against an Indians lineup that leads the league in strikeouts, that was a problem. When asked whether they could've been more aggressive at the plate, Shelley Duncan paused.

"Shoot, I tried that," he said. "The ball ran in on me and I shattered my bat."

That was the issue attacking Fister.

"The biggest thing to me is something I talk about all the time: He throws quality strikes," Leyland said. "Some pitchers throw strikes, but quality strikes and strikes are two different things."

Quality strikes, he said, don't hit the middle of the strike zone. That was the key early, when Fister got called third strikes on three of Cleveland's first six hitters.

"The pitches early on kind of set up the rest of the game," Fister said. "Whether I'm looking in or looking away, it just kind of keeps the hitter thinking. That's part of my game is just making the hitter think, and thinking about different pitches that could possibly be thrown."

Fister (7-13) ended five of his eight innings on strikeouts, including a swing and miss from Asdrubal Cabrera with the bases loaded in the third. A half-inning later, the Tigers struck for the bulk of their damage.

Jimenez (2-2) allowed one baserunner through his first 11 batters, a Miguel Cabrera walk. After Delmon Young singled with one out in the fourth, Cabrera walked again on a full-count pitch. That brought up Martinez, who feasted on a 2-2 fastball over the middle of the plate and sent it 420 feet to right field.

"I was looking for the fastball," Martinez said. "He was really aggressive early in the game with the fastball. He was throwing fastballs pretty much to everybody. He just threw me one right down the middle and I put a good swing on it."

Considering Martinez was one of the most popular Indians when he was traded two years ago, the smattering of boos was telling as he rounded the bases. His ninth home run of the year provided that much damage to the Tribe's hopes. And though Ramon Santiago doubled and scored to add an insurance run in the eighth, it was all the damage Fister needed.


Jason Beck is a reporter for MLB.com. Read Beck's Blog and follow him on Twitter @beckjason. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.

Given opportunity, Tigers open chasm in win
Young's walk opens gates for six consecutive hits in five-run first

By Jason Beck / MLB.com | 9/7/2011 12:03 AM ET

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CLEVELAND -- Good teams make rallies out of opportunities, big or small, obvious or unlikely. Tuesday was one of the least likely of all, and the Tigers turned it into a game-changer before they had to take the field on defense.

They've had plenty of big innings on their way to taking command of the American League Central, but they hadn't seen a Delmon Young walk since he came over from the Twins 22 games ago. He drew a walk Tuesday, his first since Aug. 10, and the Tigers turned it into a five-run inning on six straight two-out singles. They turned a shutdown inning from Rick Porcello into three more runs in the second, and they turned the second game of this AL Central showdown into a 10-1 runaway win over the Indians at Progressive Field.

And it all started with a two-out walk.

"Crazy, huh," said Don Kelly, who had one of the RBI singles. "It's a crazy game."

That's the kind of baseball the Tigers are playing these days. It's a long way from late April, when they came to Cleveland and lost three consecutive late decisions.

As a result, they're turning the division race into an anticlimax. They hold an eight-game lead on the White Sox, the team they swept over the weekend with 18 runs in the finale. They're 8 1/2 games up on the Indians with Justin Verlander taking the mound against them Wednesday.

"As a team, we have to feel great. I'm not going to lie to you," said Victor Martinez, who combined with fellow former Indian Jhonny Peralta to drive in half of Detroit's runs. "But at the same time, we still have some work to do, and you just don't know what can happen. This is baseball. That's why you never take anything for granted."

They're confident, but they're building off it rather than resting on it. They're showing the kind of late-season drive not seen in Detroit since their great teams of the 1980s.

They know what's ahead if they keep playing like this. They're just not looking towards it. They were just looking towards the chance they have Wednesday.

"I like our chances," said Ramon Santiago, who had the last of the first-inning hits. "I think everybody in the clubhouse knows it's a big series. We just come here and take care of business."

They all know Fausto Carmona. Martinez and Peralta played with him the last time the Indians went to the postseason in 2007. The rest have played against him long enough, including Young.

When Young stepped to the plate, Carmona was an out away from retiring the side in order, and Young was 90 games into his Tigers tenure without ball four. Considering he has batted third since his arrival Aug. 15, directly in front of Miguel Cabrera, pitchers have a motivation not to pitch around him.

He was just 5-for-23 off Carmona entering the night, but Carmona lost him on five pitches. His demise by small ball followed from there.

Carmona forced Cabrera into an 0-2 count, but Cabrera got a breaking ball he could handle and lined it into left. After a balk moved up both runners, Martinez sent them both in with a simple ground ball through the middle.

"I caught Fausto for a long time," Martinez said. "I'm going to have an idea what to expect when I go up there. Definitely, when he keeps the ball down, he's one of the toughest pitchers in the league. When he gives you a pitch to hit, you have to make sure you don't miss it."

None of them did. Alex Avila singled Martinez over. Peralta sneaked a ball down the left-field line to plate Martinez. Kelly and Santiago sent successive pitches into the outfield from there, with Kelly plating Avila.

"He was throwing a lot of fastballs early," Santiago said. "He was throwing strikes, so you need a good approach to make him bring the ball up. When we see that pitch, we were being aggressive."

Second-inning doubles from Andy Dirks and Cabrera chased the sinkerballer with his shortest outing in two years. Once wild pitches from Chad Durbin brought Cabrera around to score, Carmona's line was complete with seven runs on eight hits over 1 1/3 innings.

"After two outs and nobody on, he just couldn't make pitches after that," Indians manager Manny Acta said. "He left the ball out over the middle of the plate and left-handers went 5-for-6 against him and just killed him."

For Porcello, it was eerily reminiscent of his last meeting with the Indians on Aug. 21, when a seven-run third inning put him in command. He didn't get out of the fourth inning in that game. He remembered that, and he wanted to pitch aggressively.

If he was going to get hit again, it was going to be on his sinker, not his second- or third-best offering.

"That's my pitch, and that was pretty much the key to the game is just trying to locate that thing," Porcello said. "It was sinking pretty good, and we were able to get some quick outs, a lot of ground balls. It was nice that it worked out the way we wanted to."

Porcello (13-8) allowed one hit over his first six innings before Kosuke Fukudome's second homer in as many days led off the bottom of the seventh. In between, Porcello retired 13 straight batters, 10 of them by groundout. Just as impressive, he used just 62 pitches through six.

Though Fukudome's homer broke up the shutout, it was an Asdrubal Cabrera single and Jim Thome walk that sent Tigers manager Jim Leyland to his bullpen after Porcello threw 75 pitches. Phil Coke struck out Jason Kipnis, then sent down Lonnie Chisenhall as well before retiring the Tribe in the eighth.

Jason Beck is a reporter for MLB.com. Read Beck's Blog and follow him on Twitter @beckjason. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.

V-Mart's slam helps Verlander win No. 22

By Jason Beck / MLB.com | 9/7/2011 3:14 PM ET

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CLEVELAND -- Justin Verlander showed Wednesday he is still human. The verdict is still out on Victor Martinez.

On an afternoon when Verlander gave up a pair of two-run home runs to Shelley Duncan, Martinez put the fireballer back in front with a seventh-inning grand slam against his old team. The resulting 8-6 win completed a three-game series sweep at Progressive Field for Detroit, which moved 9 1/2 games ahead of Cleveland.

The Tigers hold an 8 1/2-game advantage over the second-place White Sox, who were scheduled to play in Minnesota on Wednesday night.

It was the fate many expected once the Tigers took the first two games, and it made Verlander the club's first 22-game winner since Mickey Lolich won 22 in 1972. It just took a couple crazy turns to get there.

The only multihomer game off Verlander this year had belonged to White Sox slugger Carlos Quentin. That was in April, before Verlander went on his midseason tear that included a no-hitter in May and a near no-hitter against the Tribe in June.

Duncan entered the day 2-for-11 with four strikeouts off Verlander, including an 0-for-3 effort last month at Comerica Park. Once Duncan battled his way to a 2-2 count and got a 96 mph fastball, however, he had the speed to turn on it and send it to the far reaches of the left-field pavilion, a 396-foot shot for his seventh home run in the second inning. The blast gave Cleveland a 2-0 lead.

Verlander retired seven straight Indians from there, which enabled Alex Avila's sacrifice fly and Wilson Betemit's double off Justin Masterson to tie the game. Verlander struck out four of five batters at one point, using sharp breaking balls to fan Asdrubal Cabrera and Carlos Santana at the start of the fourth inning. Once Jim Thome barely missed what would've been his eighth career homer off Verlander -- Thome settled for a double -- up came Duncan again with an RBI chance.

Verlander tried to overpower Duncan with three straight fastballs at 96 mph or higher. Duncan took the first and swung late at the second. He did not miss the third, sending it to nearly the same spot as his earlier homer to give Cleveland a 4-2 lead.

That was the last hit Verlander allowed, but a 27-pitch sixth inning cost him a chance at a deeper outing. Still, he was the pitcher of record when the Tigers rallied in the top of the seventh.

Detroit built the rally without a hard-hit ball, from Austin Jackson's leadoff grounder through the middle to Will Rhymes' grounder off Duncan for an error. Andy Dirks' sacrifice-bunt attempt was so well-placed that he beat out the throw for a single to load the bases for Miguel Cabrera and chase Masterson from the game.

Sidearmer Joe Smith approached Cabrera as best he could, but the slugger reached for a pitch around his ankles and grounded it through the left side for an RBI single. Indians manager Manny Acta went to lefty Tony Sipp to turn Martinez around to bat right-handed. When Sipp's 89 mph first-pitch fastball found too much of the plate, it didn't matter.

Martinez watched the ball on its trip to the left-field bleachers, then rounded the bases as the Tigers fans who made the trip roared. Martinez's second career grand slam -- with his other also coming against the Indians, two years ago for Boston -- was his first at Progressive Field. It was also the 10th RBI of the series for Martinez, who accounted for more runs than the entire Cleveland lineup throughout the three-game set.

Verlander (22-5) allowed four runs on just three hits over six innings, striking out eight. Lonnie Chisenhall's two-run homer off Phil Coke brought Cleveland back within a run in the seventh, but Jose Valverde tied a club record by converting his 42nd straight save to seal the sweep.

Jason Beck is a reporter for MLB.com. Read Beck's Blog and follow him on Twitter @beckjason. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.

Tigers rally for Penny, win seventh straight
Detroit shakes off four-run first inning, scores eight unanswered

By Chris Vannini / MLB.com | 9/10/2011 12:35 AM ET

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DETROIT -- In Brad Penny's last start, the Tigers rallied from a seven-run deficit to win.

The deficit wasn't as large this time around, but the Tigers did come back from a four-run, first-inning hole, defeating the Twins, 8-4, on Friday night for their seventh straight victory.

"We give it what we've got each and every night," Tigers manager Jim Leyland said. "You can see that, coming back from four down tonight after a day off. Sometimes you come back sluggish. The guys bounced right back, got some runs and we got another nice win."

The seven-game winning streak matches a season high. It also was the Tigers' 17th win in 21 games, moving them to 20 games over .500 for the first time since July 2007.

The Tigers have now had a winning season in four of Leyland's six years in Detroit.

More importantly, the magic number to clinch the American League Central is down to 10, with the Indians' win over the White Sox on Friday.

But early on, it seemed like it was going to be a long night for the Tigers.

After a 51-minute rain delay before the game started, it seemed like Penny wasn't going to be able to get out of the first. After a groundout to start the inning, Penny walked Trevor Plouffe. That was followed by back-to-back singles from Joe Mauer and Jason Kubel as the Twins opened the scoring.

A two-run triple from Danny Valencia and RBI single from Chris Parmelee opened the lead to 4-0 by the end of the inning, and the boos were ringing loudly for Penny.

Earlier in the week, Leyland had told Penny to work on speeding up his typically-slow pace on the mound. Penny couldn't get timing down at the start, and the result was a 44-pitch inning in the first.

"After the first, I know I have to go throw zeroes up, no matter what our offense does, to even have a chance of being in this game," Penny said. "This team, they've been doing this all year. They're going to score a lot of runs. If you can keep them somewhat close, you've got a chance to win."

Penny did just that.

The second inning began with more of the same. But after a walk and a single, Penny found his groove. After a flyout, Penny got what might have been the biggest outs of his night when Mauer grounded into an inning-ending 4-6-3 double play. After Mauer had singled to the left side the previous inning, Penny set up for Mauer to pull the ball on a curveball, which the Minnesota catcher did.

Penny faced the minimum number of batters after that through the fifth, not allowing another hit.

"It felt good except for the two-hour inning I had out there," Penny said. "I was feeling better and switching some things with my hands, trying to be a little quicker, and I think, for the most part, I was."

As Penny settled in, so did Detroit's offense. A three-run home run from Alex Avila brought the Tigers to within one in the bottom of the second.

In the fourth, Wilson Betemit hit an RBI triple and Ramon Santiago hit a two-run homer -- his fourth since Aug. 14 -- as the Tigers took a 6-4 lead.

Delmon Young hit his second home run against the Twins since being traded over, as he extended the Tigers' lead to 7-4 in the fifth inning.

"[Pitching coach] Rick Anderson and I were talking in the dugout about we've kind of been that way over the last however many years," Twins manager Ron Gardenhire said. "If we get behind early, we don't have much fear because we know we're going to score. And I think that's where they're at now. They don't panic too awful much."

Between Penny and reliever Daniel Schlereth, Tigers pitchers retired 13 straight batters from the third inning to the seventh, when Tsuyoshi Nishioka reached on a bunt single. Schlereth followed that by hitting Ben Revere with a pitch. But Ryan Perry came in and got out of the jam.

While many Detroit coaches and players aren't trying to think about -- or talk about --- the magic number to clinch, Penny, who is never afraid to mince words, knows what the Tigers need to do the rest of the way.

"I think our goal was to win the division this year, and everybody puts on a uniform to play in a World Series," he said. "We've still got a lot of work to do, but the sooner you can clinch this thing the better, to set your rotation up for the postseason."

Over the course of this seven-game winning streak, Detroit has scored 65 runs. Leyland often says momentum is as good as the next day's starting pitcher, but with the way the Tigers have been swinging the bat, they've been overcoming poor starts, as well.

"Our starting pitching's been doing well. Shoot, if we give up six runs it's not like an automatic loss because we've got guys who can put up runs," Schlereth said. "We put 18 on the White Sox and crushed Cleveland. I don't think it matters. ... Our offense is just sweet. There's really no other way to put it.

"We just hit the [tar] out of the ball, and we've got some good pitching. That's a good recipe going into the playoffs, in my opinion."

Chris Vannini is an associate reporter for MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.

Inge, Tigers walk off with eighth straight win
Two-out homer in ninth inning cuts Detroit's magic number to nine

By Jason Beck / MLB.com | 9/10/2011 7:13 PM ET

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DETROIT -- Max Scherzer has given up his share of hits, but he has allowed precious few of them when opponents have a scoring opportunity.

On the other hand, while Brandon Inge doesn't have nearly as many hits or home runs as he would like, he has an uncanny sense of timing with them.

Two of Inge's three home runs this season have been walk-off shots at Comerica Park. The other was his home run in his first game back from Triple-A Toledo. Saturday's two-out, ninth-inning blast off Minnesota's Glen Perkins to pull out a 3-2 Tigers win over the Twins was unquestionably the biggest.

"If I knew I could do that on demand, then I wouldn't be hitting like .190," the .194-hitting Inge said with a smirk.

The fact that he did it now fits right in with the dramatics that have helped assemble the Tigers' longest winning streak in four years when they need it the most. Ramon Santiago's walk-off homer a week and a half ago, Ryan Raburn's game-tying shot last weekend, Victor Martinez's go-ahead grand slam in Cleveland on Wednesday and now Inge's blast after entering Saturday's game as a defensive replacement keep building the sense with this team.

The Tigers' season-high eighth straight win extended what is their longest winning streak since 2007. It marks their longest winning streak in September since 1968, when they won a World Series title.

More relevant now, it leaves their magic number at nine towards their first division crown since 1987. Alex Rios' walk-off grand slam in Chicago to beat Cleveland allowed the White Sox to stay 9 1/2 games back.

The way the Tigers are playing now, though, they're not focusing on that. Even if some fans might be using 2009 as a reason to stay nervous until the end, Inge said they're using it as a lesson.

"We're just trying to play hard, trying to win every game we can, learning from '09. That's probably the biggest difference," Inge said. "If we would've won one more game at any point in that season, then we wouldn't have had to have gone to [game] 163. We would've had a much different outcome. Everyone who was here knows that. Now, we just keep pressing on. We just keep playing. Because if we keep winning, no one can catch us. That's a fact. We've learned from that mistake."

The Tigers went 17-16 from Sept. 1 on in 2009, but the Twins went on a tear, going 21-11, resulting in a one-game tiebreaker. This September, Detroit has won eight out of nine games.

Again, the Tigers have a sense of timing.

Inge is 6-for-13 since Sept. 1, but in sporadic play. He was the defensive measure Saturday to help Detroit's bullpen. After the Tigers left two men on against Matt Capps in the seventh, Detroit was settling in for a battle of relievers with Minnesota, which retired six straight batters until Inge came on in the ninth and worked a 2-1 count against lefty Glen Perkins.

Inge was 2-for-9 off Perkins, but homered off him in 2009.

"I threw him a slider on [a] 1-1 [count] and I should've thrown it again, so it's my fault," Perkins said. "[Catcher] Drew [Butera] called a fastball, but I didn't shake to throw a slider. I wasn't trying to set anything up. I just wanted to throw a pitch he couldn't hit. And the pitch I threw him was the only one he could hit out."

It was really the only pitch he was looking to hit. Asked about his approach, Inge smiled.

"Swing as hard as you can, in case you hit it," Inge said. "No, I mean, I was just looking for a pitch up in the zone. Since I've come back from Toledo, the way I swing may look weird, but I'm trying to swing hard."

Early in the year, he said, he was looking more for opposite-field hits, trying to improve his average, and it clearly didn't work. His aggressiveness will yield feast-or-famine results, but it fits what he does.

It did not fit Perkins, who had allowed only one home run this year until that.

"It kind of ran into his bat," Perkins continued.

It couldn't make a winner out of Scherzer, who left the game after seven innings of two-run ball. But with a handful of key pitches and at least two superb plays behind him, Scherzer was able to keep the Tigers from another deficit.

After a Chris Parmelee walk and Joe Benson single put runners at the corners with nobody out in the second, Scherzer picked off Benson at first, got a Brian Dinkelman groundout and watched Luke Hughes drive a ball to left that Delmon Young caught over his shoulder.

A similar mad dash in the sixth from Austin Jackson turned what would've been an RBI extra-base hit from Danny Valencia into a game-tying sacrifice fly. An inning later, Scherzer summed a 97-mph fastball on his 114th delivery, then a 96-mph heater on 117, to help strike out Hughes and Rene Tosoni.

The Twins went 0-for-5 with runners in scoring position off Scherzer, who's now holding opponents to a .182 average in those situations. Joe Mauer's third homer of the year accounted for Minnesota's other run.

"It's just the way that things have worked out," Scherzer said. "It still comes down to execution throughout the whole game."

Still, the way things are working out, it figures.

Jason Beck is a reporter for MLB.com. Read Beck's Blog and follow him on Twitter @beckjason. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.

Fister, Tigers sweep Twins, win ninth straight
Starter, Benoit, Valverde throw four-hitter; magic number at seven

By Jason Beck / MLB.com | 9/11/2011 6:15 PM ET

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DETROIT -- When Doug Fister looks back and remembers more broken bats around the infield than baserunners, he has had a good day.

When the Tigers can look at the standings and see a double-digit lead in the American League Central where there was half that margin a week and a half ago, they've had a very good stretch. Judging by the franchise standards, it's a historic one.

The stretch isn't just about the nine straight wins, the latest being a 2-1 win over the Twins on Sunday afternoon at Comerica Park. It's also about the teams they beat, rivals in a division they're suddenly commanding with no signs of pity.

Not since they joined the AL Central in 1994 have the Tigers swept through three straight division opponents. The last time they won nine straight was 1984, part of the 35-5 start that put them in command of the AL East from April onward. They can't rival that, but their 19-4 record since Aug. 19 has them on a pretty comparable closing run.

"It just matters whether you get hot at the right time," Delmon Young said. "You just want to keep it going as long as you can."

As of late Sunday afternoon, their 10 1/2-game lead was the largest of any Major League team other than Philadelphia. Their gap on the Yankees for the AL's best record was less than half that. Their magic number is down to seven, with a chance to take chunks out of that with three games against the White Sox starting Monday night in Chicago.

They could be celebrating their first division title since 1987 by next weekend, depending on what happens at U.S. Cellular Field and what the Indians do in Texas. They might actually prefer if Cleveland sticks in the race a while longer, if they can beat the Rangers and move the Tigers closer to home-field advantage for the AL Division Series.

They got a rehearsal for a celebration Sunday afternoon, when Miguel Cabrera slammed a pie in Jose Valverde's face. That was for Valverde's team-record 43rd save, not for anything beyond that. But October was more on Valverde's mind.

"It's good for me, my family and all my friends," Valverde said of his record. "But what I want is to compete all the time, be in the field, save the game for my team to go to the postseason. That's what I want. It's good, but I want to go to the World Series."

That's a long way off. The first step isn't.

"Everybody's playing together, everybody's playing well together and playing for one another," Fister said. "That's what good ballclubs do, and that's what we're focusing on, playing for one another."

Once Austin Jackson and Magglio Ordonez singled and scored in the opening inning, Fister (8-13) had his lead. With an injury-riddled Twins lineup not showing much proven offense beyond Joe Mauer, Fister took care of the rest with seven scoreless innings. He didn't last longer because broken-bat foul balls and five strikeouts pushed his pitch count to 108.

While the strikeouts Fister has been racking up lately are an unexpected new facet to the contact pitcher's game, the broken bats are not. He snapped several Tigers bats in a start earlier in the year while pitching for the Mariners. He cracked three in one inning Sunday as the Twins tried to do something with his pitches on the corner.

It's more about location, Tigers manager Jim Leyland said, than velocity.

"He's staying out of the middle of the plate," Leyland said. "He broke a lot of bats today. He takes that ball in and out, off the corner, back in on the corner, real good. It's a tempting pitch to swing at. It's pretty good."

For a Twins lineup that featured just two hitters with an average over .250, albeit limited playing time in the Majors for many of them, it was all too tempting.

"Fister was very tough," Minnesota manager Ron Gardenhire said. "He was throwing hard inside. Our guys really battled to get him out of there and we really never mounted much."

Once Joaquin Benoit tossed a perfect eighth ahead of Valverde's save, Fister improved to 5-1 with the Tigers. He has allowed just three earned runs on 22 hits over 36 2/3 innings in his last five starts, all of them Detroit victories.

When he compounded his pitching with two defensive gems, a diving stop and a leaping grab that used all of his 6-foot-8 frame, it seemed to fit the roll the Tigers are on. Fister takes pride fielding his position, but he also takes advantage of being tall.

Depending on how the week unfolds, he could pitch Friday in Oakland with an opportunity to clinch the division. Considering how much his arrival has meant to the Tigers since his July 30 trade from Seattle, it might be fitting if he did.

"Sometimes you make those moves like we did with [Jarrod] Washburn and [Aubrey] Huff [two years ago], [and it] didn't work out," Leyland said. "We made some moves this year, and up to this point, they've worked terrific. You never know how that stuff's going to play out."

These days, things are playing out perfectly, even the magic numbers.

Jason Beck is a reporter for MLB.com. Read Beck's Blog and follow him on Twitter @beckjason. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.

Tigers thump White Sox for 10th straight win

By Paul Casella / MLB.com | 9/13/2011 1:22 AM ET

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CHICAGO -- It hasn't taken the Tigers long to turn a potential postseason race in the American League Central into their largest division lead of the season.

Detroit routed the White Sox for the second time in eight days on Monday, beating Chicago, 14-4, to extend its winning streak to 10 games and its division lead to a season-best 11 1/2 over both the White Sox and Indians. The 10-game run, which started with a three-game sweep of the White Sox in Detroit, is the team's longest since an 11-game streak from Sept. 9-21, 1968.

"I don't even think about stuff like that," Tigers manager Jim Leyland said. "That's nice to read in the newspaper and for people to talk about, but I don't think about that stuff. We're just playing good baseball right now and getting some timely hits."

The Tigers recorded 21 hits against the White Sox on Monday and -- including Detroit's 18-2 victory on Sept. 4 -- have outhit Chicago 45-17 in the last two meetings. The Tigers left little doubt in this series opener, putting up at least one run in each inning from the second through the sixth and chasing White Sox starter John Danks after just five innings.

After Tigers starter Rick Porcello escaped a bases-loaded jam by allowing just one run in the first, his offense quickly bailed him out by hitting Danks early and often. Shortstop Jhonny Peralta and second baseman Ryan Raburn got the Tigers going with back-to-back home runs in the second, and Detroit went on to batter Danks around for eight runs, seven earned, on 11 hits.

"It's huge against, Danks because once he gets on a roll -- if he can get through the first three innings without much damage done -- you know he's going to go out there and try to pitch all nine," said left fielder Delmon Young, who went 3-for-3 before leaving the game for precautionary reasons with a sore hip from a first-inning dive. "Because he gets better as the game goes on. But you get him rattled early, it's a lot better to score some runs on him early and just keep attacking him."

The Tigers not only attacked Danks, but they capped their 14-run night by tacking on six more runs on eight hits against reliever Josh Kinney in the sixth. They welcomed Kinney to the game with five straight singles, including RBI knocks by Miguel Cabrera, Victor Martinez and Alex Avila. Raburn added an RBI single and Ramon Santiago wrapped up the rally with a two-run single, stretching the lead to 14-2.

In all, 10 Tigers recorded at least one hit and seven turned in multihit efforts led by Raburn, Young and Brandon Inge. Raburn went 4-for-5 and finished a triple shy of the cycle, while Young and Inge both recorded three-hit nights.

"I've been feeling good," Raburn said. "I hadn't had a whole lot to show for it, but I guess there's no better time than now to have balls start falling in. So hopefully, it'll keep going my way."

"Guys are pretty hungry and guys are grinding out at-bats," Leyland said. "When you grind them out, good things happen. Like I said tonight, when we hit one hard, it fell in and when we hit one soft, it fell in. Sometimes when you grind them out, you get those hits. We had a bunch of real good hits tonight."

With his offense pouring it on, Porcello found it easier to find a rhythm after a shaky first two innings. The right-hander gave up two runs and three walks in those two frames, but didn't walk another batter while allowing just three runs in 6 2/3 innings.

"You've still got to be aggressive and make pitches, but at the same time, you know in the back of your mind that you've got a big lead," said Porcello, who had been battling a fever entering Monday's start. "You still have to make pitches, though, that's the only way you can get guys out."

And with the Tigers clicking on all cylinders, outscoring opponents 84-31 during their 10-game winning streak, Leyland's club is finally starting to live up to the expectations it had set for itself before the season. With just 15 regular-season games left and the Tigers holding their largest division lead of the season, Inge said this season is starting to have a different feel to it than past seasons.

"I think in years past we've kind of looked behind us and seen the people that are trying to catch us and given them an opportunity to catch back up to us," Inge said. "But this year, we don't really care what the other teams are doing. We're just taking care of our own business."

Paul Casella is an associate reporter for MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.

Verlander's 23rd win cuts magic number to four

By Paul Casella / MLB.com | 9/14/2011 1:25 AM ET

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CHICAGO -- All season the Tigers have played with a No. 11 patch on their right sleeves to pay tribute to their late former manager Sparky Anderson.

On Tuesday, that number took on added significance as the Tigers won their 11th straight game in a 5-0 shutout of the White Sox at U.S. Cellular Field. Led by Justin Verlander's 11th straight victory and designated hitter Victor Martinez's 11th home run of the season, the Tigers matched their longest winning streak since Sept. 9-21, 1968.

The win also extended Detroit's lead in the American League Central to 12 1/2 games, its largest advantage since holding a 15-game edge to close out the 1984 season. Anderson, whose No. 11 jersey was retired earlier this season by the Tigers, led the club to its last World Series title that season.

While the World Series is still a long way off in the Tigers' minds, they took another step toward clinching the Central against the White Sox, lowering their magic number to four games. And even more important, perhaps, is that Verlander said Tuesday's outing was the best he's felt in about the last month.

Though the ace found himself in some early trouble, he battled his way through it, throwing 106 pitches over seven scoreless innings. The right-hander used a double-play ball to strand a runner at third in the opening frame, then came through a two-on, two-out jam in the second and a bases-loaded situation in the third unscathed.

"There's positives and there's negatives," said Verlander, who improved to 23-5 on the season and 14-1 with a 2.54 ERA in 15 starts against the AL Central. "The positives are there were no runs on the board; the negatives were I was just a hair off. However, it's probably the best I've felt in the last few starts. I really felt like I was getting back into that rhythm I've been trying to find for a while now."

Through five innings, however, White Sox starter Gavin Floyd seemed up to the task of trying to hand Verlander his first loss since the White Sox defeated him back on July 15. In the second inning, Floyd gave up a leadoff double to Miguel Cabrera, who later scored on an Alex Avila fielder's choice to second baseman Gordon Beckham, but then silenced the Tigers until the sixth.

Clinging to that 1-0 lead, Verlander forced Beckham to fly out with two on and two out in the second and then retired Beckham in a bases-loaded jam in the fourth. After walking Brent Morel for the second time, Verlander struck out Beckham on what manager Jim Leyland called "unhittable pitches" from the "best pitcher [he's] ever managed."

After two fastball strikes topped 100 mph on the radar gun, Verlander got Beckham looking at a 1-2 pitch on an 85-mph curveball that caught the low outside corner.

"Well, we got first and third early in the game and we couldn't score," White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen said. "We got bases loaded a couple of times and we don't have the big hit. When you face a pitcher of that caliber, you got to get it done before he starts making his pitch."

With the White Sox missing out on those opportunities early, Martinez finally gave Verlander a little more breathing room in the sixth. Following a one-out intentional walk to Cabrera to put runners on the corners, Martinez fouled off six pitches before depositing Floyd's ninth pitch of the at-bat into the right-field seats, extending the lead to 4-0.

"Well, he made good pitches in that at-bat, and I was kind of lucky to get a hit," Martinez said. "At least make contact and get it foul. He made some tough pitches to me, and he just left one up over the plate and I just put a good swing on it."

"That was huge," Verlander said. "1-0 is a lot different than four. It's not too hard to score one run, but four is a little bit different, so that definitely allowed me to go out there and be more aggressive. That's probably the reason I was able to go seven innings."

Verlander retired six of the final seven batters he faced after Martinez's long ball before turning things over to reliever Joaquin Benoit in the eighth. Benoit retired his first two batters, but then gave up a walk and a base hit before issuing another walk to load the bases. The right-hander struck out catcher Tyler Flowers to preserve the 5-0 shutout.

While the Tigers have outscored their opponents 89-31 during their best run in 43 years, Leyland isn't paying too much attention to his club's September surge.

"It's nice, don't get me wrong," Leyland said. "I certainly can't say we haven't gone on a nice run at the right time, because we have. They're going about their business like pros and, right now, winning games. That's what it's all about."

Paul Casella is an associate reporter for MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.

Rally trims Tigers' magic number to two
Twelfth straight win is franchise's longest since 1934

By Paul Casella / MLB.com | 9/14/2011 9:55 PM ET

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CHICAGO -- With the clock about to run out on their longest winning streak in 43 years, the Tigers decided they weren't ready for the fun to end.

Staring at a three-run deficit with just two outs to work with, Detroit tied the game with a pair of ninth-inning homers and went on to beat the White Sox, 6-5, in 10 innings. The come-from-behind victory extended the Tigers' winning streak to 12 games -- the club's longest since winning a franchise record-tying 14 straight in 1934 -- and lowered their magic number to three. Cleveland's loss to Texas on Thursday night lowered that magic number to two.

Manager Jim Leyland left literally no stone unturned in the series finale at U.S. Cellular Field, using every available position player in one facet or another. His two biggest substitutions may have come in the top of the ninth inning when both Ryan Raburn and Alex Avila connected on pinch-hit home runs to force extra innings.

Trailing 5-2, Raburn started the rally with a solo home run against Chris Sale, who then walked Magglio Ordonez before turning the game over to closer Sergio Santos. Avila welcomed Santos to the game with a game-tying two-run blast on the second pitch, and Carlos Guillen later delivered the game-winning RBI single off Santos in the 10th.

"Normally when you're pinch-hitting, you're facing their best pitchers, and after sitting for the entire game, it's something that's extremely difficult to do," Avila said. "In learning from other guys that are successful pinch-hitting, they're pretty aggressive early in the count. I was just trying to be aggressive and hit a ball hard somewhere."

"I didn't have anybody left," Leyland said. "I used everybody. I was just trying to figure out what pitcher I was going to put out in the outfield if I had to. I asked [utility player] Danny Worth if he could catch and before he answered, I said, 'If you're smart, you'll say yes.' "

As it turns out, Leyland ended up using Worth at third base for the bottom of the 10th and leaving Avila behind the plate. As for which pitcher would have taken over in the outfield if the situation arose?

"I'll never tell," said a joking Leyland. "But I will tell you this much, it was not going to be [Justin] Verlander."

It was a bit easier for Leyland to joke, given the fact that his team had just turned in its second ninth-inning rally against the White Sox in less than two weeks. Similar to Wednesday's series finale, the Tigers also slugged a pair of ninth-inning home runs in a Sept. 3 victory over the White Sox in which Detroit overcame an 8-1 to defeat Chicago, 9-8. And just like on Sept. 3, starter Brad Penny was the one being bailed out by the late-game heroics.

The mood wasn't as upbeat down the hall at U.S. Cellular Field, as the White Sox watched another late lead slip away in losing to the Tigers for the sixth straight time. Even after squandering the 5-2 advantage, the White Sox put runners on the corners with only one out in the bottom of the inning. They couldn't come away victorious, though, as reliever Phil Coke ended the threat by getting A.J. Pierzynski to ground into a double play.

"You can pick that game apart and find all kinds of different things that happened, but that was a heck of a win," Leyland said. "Regardless of what it is and regardless of what we have to do yet, that was a heck of a win."

"I'm out of words," Pierzynski said. "It's just one of those things you can't stop. You play a really good game and have a three-run lead in the ninth, lose it. We just keep finding new things to happen and it keeps snowballing and growing on us. It has been that way for a long time."

On the other hand, things seem to be going the exact opposite way for the Tigers, especially Penny. For the third straight outing, Penny found himself in an early hole. The right-hander gave up four second-inning runs after Guillen had staked him to a 1-0 lead with a homer, but his offense came to his rescue yet again.

"It's happening a lot here, this team just doesn't quit," said Penny, who hasn't taken the loss in any of those three subpar outings. "Our lineup is just unbelievable."

The month of September started with three teams -- the Tigers, White Sox and Indians -- all in contention in the AL Central. But after two weeks, during which the Tigers have notched four consecutive divisional sweeps, Detroit has turned that three-team race into the largest divisional lead in all of baseball.

"I will say one thing," Leyland said. "Up to this point, we're certainly not backing our way in. We're not backing anywhere up until this point. And I do emphasize up until this point." a 13-5 record to complete their second straight winning season against the White Sox.

Paul Casella is an associate reporter for MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.

Tigers' streak snapped, clinch on hold

By Eric Gilmore / Special to MLB.com | 9/16/2011 2:05 AM ET


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OAKLAND -- The Tigers will have to keep the champagne on ice for at least one more day.

The A's made sure of that Thursday night, beating the Tigers, 6-1, to snap their 12-game winning streak and keep them from clinching the American League Central crown.

Detroit's magic number fell to one when Cleveland suffered a 7-4 loss to Texas in a game that ended when the Tigers and Oakland were still in the third inning. By then, the White Sox had been eliminated with a 7-2 loss to Kansas City.

Detroit can win the AL Central on Friday with either a win over the A's or an Indians loss at Minnesota.

"We just have to go out and win a ballgame," manager Jim Leyland said. "That's just the way it is. It's down to one, but we did catch a break. We went from two to one even though we didn't win the game. Somehow we've got to get the one now. That's really where it stands. That's what we want."

Tigers right-hander Max Scherzer faced the A's for the first time this season Thursday, and the second time in his career. In his first start against the A's last year at Comerica Park, he struck out a career-high 14 in just 5 2/3 innings, allowing two hits and no runs while earning the victory.

This time, the A's got even.

Scherzer gave up seven hits -- three of them home runs -- and five runs in five innings. He struck out eight, walked one and hit two batters, taking the loss to fall to 14-9.

A's right-hander Brandon McCarthy, meanwhile, allowed just one run and five hits over seven innings, striking out eight and walking two.

"Obviously, you're aware of the situation," Scherzer said. "We want to clinch for the playoffs. That's the No. 1 goal. At the same time, I'm going out there trying to execute pitches. I'm out there trying to pitch my game. There's no external surroundings there that's affecting my game at all. It just came down tonight [that] when I needed to execute a pitch, I didn't and made a mistake, and that's what cost me."

The A's jumped to a 3-0 lead with two outs in the first inning when David DeJesus launched a three-run homer off Scherzer into the right-field seats. DeJesus, a former Kansas City Royal, worked a 2-2 count then hammered a changeup that Scherzer left over the plate for his ninth home run of the season.

"Right before I hit the homer, I just missed two fastballs straight back," DeJesus said. "I felt good on my swings, and he threw a changeup, and my thought process was going the other way, and I was able to stay through the ball and get it over the wall. It was a big inning, kind of get it going in the right direction early on. You want to put them in a hole early on."

Leading off the second, A's catcher Kurt Suzuki crushed a fastball to left off Scherzer for his 14th long ball, making it 4-0. Eric Sogard and Coco Crisp followed with back-to-back singles, but Scherzer retired the next three batters.

"Max just didn't keep the ball in the ball park, and we didn't do much," Leyland said. "McCarthy pitched really well. I saw him as a young kid with the White Sox. He's learned the art of pitching. He pitched. He threw some balls out of the strike zone with late life. He used both sides of the plate. He pitched very, very well. And Max just didn't keep the ball in the ballpark."

Detroit cut the lead to 4-1 with one out in the third when Delmon Young hit a home run to deep left off McCarthy. It was Young's ninth blast of the year, and fifth since being traded to the Tigers from Minnesota.

When Young's blast cleared the wall, Scherzer said he thought the Tigers might keep their streak alive.

"Yeah, I thought if I could go out there and throw up some zeroes and work some quick innings and kind of give our offense a chance to be in the dugout and get some rhythm and momentum going, we could scratch and claw back," Scherzer said. "I just wasn't able to do that, and their guy threw pretty well too."

Oakland struck back for a run in the fifth. Leading off, shortstop Cliff Pennington homered to right-center, the ball landing on top of the wall then bouncing over. Like DeJesus, Pennington hit a changeup.

The Tigers' 12-game streak was their longest since 1934, when they tied the franchise mark with 14 consecutive victories. Detroit was beaten for the first time since a Sept. 1 loss to the Royals.

The Tigers led the AL Central by 5 1/2 games when their streak began on Sept. 2 with an 8-1 win over the White Sox. Now they're 13 1/2 in front of the Indians and White Sox. They swept three games from Chicago, three from the Cleveland, three from the Twins and three more from the White Sox, burying their division foes.

"I think the thing that impressed me about the streak is the fact that a lot of that streak was the White Sox and Indians at a critical time in the season," Leyland said. "The two teams that were right behind us, we stepped up to the plate during that period of time. That to me makes it a pretty impressive streak. That's the way I look at it."

Eric Gilmore is a contributor to MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.

Fister leads the way as Tigers clinch Central

By Jason Beck / MLB.com | 9/17/2011 3:11 AM ET

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OAKLAND -- Doug Fister was a good pitcher on a last-place team for most of the season before the Tigers targeted him at the Trade Deadline. He was at the heart of Friday's win that clinched the American League Central title, and in the middle of the celebration that followed it.

Wilson Betemit was a utility man who had outlived his role on the Royals before the Tigers traded for him in July. His go-ahead RBI triple stood up in Detroit's 3-1 win over the A's.

Don Kelly was part of the 2009 Tigers team that suffered heartbreak at the hands of the Twins. He scored the go-ahead run in the tiebreaker that year, only to see the lead vanish. He scored a key insurance run Friday night that ended up being the final tally.

Ramon Santiago was part of the 2003 Tigers team that lost 119 games, and his was the run that got the Tigers going against Oakland, continuing the key role he has played for at least a month at second base.

They all played their parts in the run that brought the Tigers to the cusp of their first division title since 1987, and they all had their hands in Friday's clincher. So did many more in a game capped by Jose Valverde's 45th save in as many chances. That made it all the sweeter for manager Jim Leyland, who teared up talking about it in his office while his players celebrated as a group down the hall.

"That's why you coach a team," Leyland said. "I think, to me, this is so good, because Fister was a pickup, but this is something that Donnie Kelly will never forget. That's what makes it special to me. Here's a guy that a lot of people don't really know about. And to come up like he did tonight, this goes in a heckuva memory bank for him.

"That's worth its weight in gold. That's why you play them all."

With their magic number at one, the Tigers needed to either win Friday night or have the Indians lose in Minnesota. They were going to get it at some point, but considering how all they needed was a win to wrap it up two years ago, getting that last victory was going to be special.

After Josh Willingham's homer to straightaway center pulled the A's ahead leading off the bottom of the second inning, it was all Tigers from there.

Once Tiger nemesis David DeJesus followed Willingham's homer with a single, Fister recovered with some help. Jhonny Peralta ranged deep into the hole at shortstop and rifled a throw to first to retire Cliff Pennington for the first of 17 straight outs recorded by Fister (9-13).

Just two Athletics in that stretch got a ball out of the infield against Fister, whose career-best fifth straight win ranked among the sweetest. Less than two months after he was a Mariners starter with the lowest run support among AL starters, he was a division champion. He was conscious of how close he was to the latter when he was on the mound.

"Definitely a world of emotions out there, trying to stay kind of composed and under control, still having a job to do," Fister said. "That's the main focus. Luckily tonight it was able to be done. It was a team effort. Offense came out and put together a lot of good at-bats and battled, and then the defense really picked everybody up. That's what it's all about."

Fister's five wins over his last six starts included two gems against the Indians. His eight innings of three-hit ball Friday eliminated Cleveland from the division chase.

"He certainly met the challenge tonight," Leyland said. "He's been fantastic for us. When you talk about a clinching game, you can't ask for any more of a performance than he gave us tonight. I mean, that's almost spotless. That's pretty impressive."

Fister's offense made sure he didn't trail for long. Santiago's triple leading off the third inning set the table for the top of the order to drive him in. After A's starter Trevor Cahill struck out Austin Jackson, up came Kelly, who's made many of his contributions recently as a defensive replacement, but started Friday.

Kelly's ground ball through the right side tied it. His fifth-inning sacrifice bunt moved two runners into scoring position before Cahill escaped, but once Cahill fell behind on a 2-0 count to him in the seventh, he pounced on a hanging sinker and drove it deep to right field for his fifth home run.

"This is the perfect example of how this team has won," Kelly said. "You had the two big hits. Fister, the new guy, goes eight. ... Everybody steps up and then you you've got Papa Grande at the back end closing it out. It's an amazing feeling. It's a fun night."

Valverde, as he has been for more than half of the Tigers' wins this year, was the exclamation point. He has been more and more animated in recent saves, and this seemed set to be his biggest celebration of all. But when Willingham grounded to third for the final out, he went to his catcher, Alex Avila, and gave him a big hug. Then the dugout emptied.

Nearly a quarter-century of frustration in the standings among Tigers fans poured out with it.

"It's an unbelievable feeling," Fister said. "A great group of guys to be around, a great group of guys to fight tooth and nail with. This is what we're living for, this is what we're playing for. Every drop of sweat, every drop of blood, tear, whatever, is what it's all about right now."

Jason Beck is a reporter for MLB.com. Read Beck's Blog and follow him on Twitter @beckjason. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.

Tigers can't back solid Porcello against A's

By Eric Gilmore / Special to MLB.com | 9/17/2011 9:07 PM ET

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OAKLAND -- Some 14 hours after their American League Central-clinching party ended, the Tigers went back to work Saturday afternoon against the A's.

Talk about a buzz kill.

The Tigers lost, 5-3, to Oakland, and they had the perfect excuse, having to play a game so soon after an emotional night in which they won a division crown for the first time since 1987 and celebrated in their clubhouse with champagne, beer and cigars.

The Tigers refused to use it.

"We don't worry about that," Tigers first baseman Miguel Cabrera said. "We came in prepared to play today. We didn't have a lot of luck."

It's not as if the Tigers mailed this game in. Manager Jim Leyland gave a handful of regulars the day off, but most of the hitters who powered the Tigers' playoff push, including Cabrera and Victor Martinez, were in the lineup.

According to Leyland, both of them either told him face-to-face Friday night or relayed word that they wanted to play Saturday.

Left fielder Delmon Young, third baseman Wilson Betemit, second baseman Ramon Santiago and catcher Alex Avila -- all in the lineup Friday night -- got the day off, with Ryan Raburn, Brandon Inge, Danny Worth and Omir Santos starting on Saturday.

Leyland found a handful of positives, including a two-run rally in the ninth and right-hander Rick Porcello's performance, allowing three runs over seven innings. Porcello struggled early before settling down in his ongoing audition for a spot in the postseason rotation.

"It was still a good day for me, because I thought Porcello pitched pretty well," Leyland said. "He got a little shaky there early with command, but he got going pretty good, and I thought he actually pitched well. He got some good work in. I was happy with that. He pitched good. He certainly gave us a chance. If we don't have the add-on runs, who knows? It might be different, but you never know."

Porcello left the game trailing 3-1, but the A's scored twice in the eighth off reliever Ryan Perry, who replaced Phil Coke with two outs and none on. Leyland said if the Tigers hadn't already clinched, he probably would have left Coke in, but he wanted to see how Perry responded with two right-handed hitters coming up. Perry walked Kurt Suzuki and gave up a single to Scott Sizemore. Then he gave up back-to-back RBI singles to Jemile Weeks and Coco Crisp.

"You clinched, so you think it's the perfect time, really," said Leyland, who has decisions to make on his postseason roster. "You've got two outs and a couple right-handed hitters coming. But that's OK. We just didn't get the big hits today."

The Tigers had eight hits and some loud outs against A's left-hander Gio Gonzalez, an AL All-Star this season, but he held them to a lone run over seven innings, striking out four and improving to 14-12.

Porcello gave up two runs in the second and one in the third before getting into a groove and blanking the A's for the next four innings. He gave up nine hits, walked three and struck out four over seven innings, throwing 110 pitches.

"Obviously, the first couple innings were a little rocky," Porcello said. "I think I settled down after that and was able to pitch pretty well. Got those two runs on some hits -- a broken-bat hit and that stuff. There's nothing you can do about that. For the most part it was OK. It wasn't terrible, but it wasn't outstanding either."

Porcello joined in the celebration Friday night, but he said he still got enough rest before his start.

"When I went out there to get ready for the game, last night was over with," Porcello said. "We still got some baseball to play. We're still trying to win games and better our position going into the playoffs."

The Tigers looked like they were headed for a big inning in the first after Ordonez and Raburn hit back-to-back singles with one out and Cabrera scorched a line drive to right. But Cabrera's laser went right to David DeJesus, and he doubled off Ordonez, who had rounded third. Cabrera ripped another line drive to right with two runners on in the sixth, but DeJesus made a diving catch.

"When you see that, you start thinking, 'Oh, no, it's going to be a tough game,'" Cabrera said of his first-inning out.

The A's took a 2-0 lead in the second. With one out, first baseman Brandon Allen lined a single to center, then Porcello walked Suzuki. Sizemore lined a single to right, scoring Allen. Porcello struck out Weeks, but Crisp blooped an RBI single to center.

Porcello got into more trouble in the third but limited the damage to one run. Josh Willingham and DeJesus opened the frame with back-to-back singles, and Cliff Pennington reached on what was intended to be a sacrifice bunt, barely beating Inge's throw. With one out, Suzuki brought Willingham home with a sacrifice fly to center, making it 3-0.

The Tigers finally got to Gonzalez for a run in the sixth, cutting the lead to 3-1. Ordonez led off with a single and moved to second on Raburn's bunt single. With one out, Martinez hit a soft single to center, loading the bases. Jhonny Peralta brought Ordonez home on a sacrifice fly to left, but Gonzalez retired Inge on a fly to center for the third out.

"Everybody came here ready to play," said Ordonez, who had three hits and extended his hitting streak to 14 games. "Gio pitched a good game. It had nothing to do with last night or what happened last night. We're professional. We try to win."

The Tigers rallied in the ninth off A's closer Andrew Bailey. Pinch-hitter Don Kelly hit a two-run double, but Bailey struck out pinch-hitter Avila and Austin Jackson to end the game.

"I thought this was a pretty good game, actually," Leyland said. "We had guys out there. We didn't get them in. They had guys out there, too. They found a way to get a couple more of them in. I thought Ricky pitched very well. The two add-on runs were killer."

Eric Gilmore is a contributor to MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.

Verlander's latest gem results in 24th win

By Jason Beck / MLB.com | 9/18/2011 9:19 PM ET

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OAKLAND -- Guillermo Moscoso was no-hitting the Tigers through five innings Sunday. Yet Justin Verlander was controlling the game. Always was. His toughest opponent might have been himself.

That's the impact Verlander has on a contest. The first base hit Moscoso allowed was the only one the Tigers needed. Once Austin Jackson homered leading off the sixth inning, Verlander had the A's where he wanted them. The other runs in Sunday's 3-0 Detroit victory -- Brandon Inge's pinch-hit double in the eighth inning, then Ramon Santiago's squeeze bunt in the ninth -- were extra tallies, just cushion to keep Jose Valverde in position for his 46th save and punctuate Verlander's 12th straight win.

Verlander has the first 24-win season in the Majors since Randy Johnson in 2002, and the first in the American League since Bob Welch won 27 in 1990, many on this same field at Oakland Coliseum as a member of the A's. Verlander is the first pitcher in the Majors to win 12 consecutive starts since Johan Santana in 2004; only five pitchers in Major League history have longer streaks, none since Ellis Kinder won 13 straight in 1949.

And yet he still wasn't completely happy with it.

"Better today," Verlander said. "Obviously, I'm somebody who's always striving for perfection. That's never going to quite be the case, so there's always going to be things to work on. I felt like the last two have definitely been trending the way I'd like."

He keeps finding points to pick. His teammates keep running low on things to say.

"Outstanding. Unbelievable. Great. Pick one and write it down," catcher Alex Avila said. "This has been typical Verlander."

Still, Avila catches every Verlander start, so he knows his thought process.

"This start, he had a lot better command of his fastball than his previous couple outings," Avila said. "It's just minor adjustments as the season goes on, but he's such a focused and determined individual right now that even when he's not on his A-game, he's tough. Today, he was, and he really made some pitches when he needed."

Get Verlander a 1-0 lead, and it feeds into his mentality to focus and fight for every pitch in every game. This kind of contest set him up beautifully. It came two days after the Tigers had clinched their first division title since 1987, but the standings didn't matter a bit.

He wanted better fastball command and he found it, spotting about 60 percent of his fastballs for strikes, including seven swings and misses according to MLB.com Gameday and brooksbaseball.net. He wanted a better overall mix, and he got that, too.

And he wanted the curveball. Oh, he really wanted it. The 2-2 curveball he threw to Brandon Allen with two outs and the potential tying run on base, he wanted enough that he discussed it with home-plate umpire Mike DiMuro on his way off the mound after Allen lined out to right on the next pitch. It eventually took manager Jim Leyland out of the dugout to break it up.

It wasn't a heated exchange, but it was animated.

"Of course I [wanted it]," Verlander said. "Called a ball. I just spoke my mind to Mike, and he let me know what he thought. Most of the time, when pitches are close but called balls, we think they're strikes.

"I was probably a little bit more animated because it's a 1-0 game. A situation like that, I know that every pitch is crucial. It's amplified, really. You never know what'll happen on the next pitch. Thankfully, I got an out, and it was a moot point."

Said Leyland: "We talked to him about it. There's a lot of emotion there, obviously."

The exchange highlighted Verlander's attention to detail, but it was about as high stress of a situation as he faced.

For just the second time in A's history, Oakland didn't have a plate appearance with a runner in scoring position. The only runner to step on second base was Josh Willingham, and he was supposed to be at first, having strayed too far on David DeJesus' second-inning fly ball that Delmon Young tracked against the sun for a flyout double play.

Verlander had just a pair of 1-2-3 innings, but he never had more than one baserunner in an inning. Willingham was the only leadoff hitter he allowed to reach base. Many of his outs came early in the count.

"He's not just a thrower," A's manager Bob Melvin said. "He wasn't just pitching 97, 98 [mph] and blowing everybody away with his fastball. He pitched with his breaking ball and tuned it up a couple times but for the most part was using that breaking ball in off counts, using all four pitches. That's what makes him tough to deal with. You know the plus-velocity is there, and he's throwing other pitches in those counts when you have to look for his fastball."

When Verlander's on, that' s how he wants it -- any pitch located at any time.

"Getting there," Verlander said.

Jason Beck is a reporter for MLB.com. Read Beck's Blog and follow him on Twitter @beckjason. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.

Penny's scuffles hurt Tigers' quest for home field
Right-hander allows seven runs on 10 hits in four innings vs. Royals

By Jason Beck / MLB.com | 9/21/2011 12:39 AM ET

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KANSAS CITY -- At some point, the Rally Cats were going to fall short for Brad Penny. When they finally did, the result was a long night for the Tigers.

"They've got a bunch of young, aggressive hitters. And if you don't make good pitches, they're going to whack it real good," said manager Jim Leyland, setting the theme for Tuesday's 10-2 loss to the Royals.

"We didn't make very good pitches. That pretty much sums it up."

The Tigers have trailed by at least three runs in Penny's last five starts. They had come back to win his previous three, including a seven-run deficit they erased Labor Day weekend. This was the wrong team to have to try for a comeback, and the wrong time for the struggles that would necessitate one.

It's not that the Tigers can't rally against the Royals' young arms. Though Luis Mendoza quieted Detroit bats with seven innings of two-run ball, they had chances for more.

The problem with rallying against the Royals, the problem that's going to make them a dangerous team in the American League Central in the very near future, is that they don't stop hitting. Once the Royals stretched their lead to seven with a six-run fourth Tuesday, the Tigers were out of rallies. The Royals were not.

Eric Hosmer never stopped hitting after his three-run homer, and he ended up with a 5-for-5 night. Combined with the series three weeks ago at Comerica Park, and he's 11-for-12 with four home runs over his last three games against the Tigers. Salvador Perez isn't far off.

"They're real energetic," Leyland continued. "They're having fun. They look good. They feel good about themselves, and they should."

The Tigers, meanwhile, have mixed emotions. They want to get players some rest over this final week, as they'll do with Miguel Cabrera on Wednesday. Once the Royals stretched their lead, Leyland rested some regulars, replacing Cabrera and pinch-running for Alex Avila. He could sense a comeback wasn't coming.

On the other hand, the Tigers reiterated Tuesday that they badly want home-field advantage, at least for the Division Series. With Texas' win at Oakland later Tuesday night, the AL West-leading Rangers have the same record as the Central champion Tigers. Detroit owns the tiebreaker that would earn them the second seed in the playoffs, but Texas has won three straight games.

Then there's the postseason roster. Down big, Tuesday's bullpen became a procession of relievers with a chance to make it to the Division Series. Duane Below, David Pauley, Daniel Schlereth and Luis Marte all pitched an inning, with Perez's two-run homer off Below the one major blow.

"There's some situations right now where a lot of people are involved," Leyland said. "We're just watching, and then we'll make our decision."

Penny's start was going to be tough to overcome. He has spent his last few starts trying to get back into the form that saw him outpitch David Price in Tampa Bay a month ago. But for most of his season, when he has missed location, he has the potential to miss by a lot. Tuesday was one of those nights.

"When he hit his spots, he was pitching well," Avila said. "When he didn't, that's when they got the hits. They didn't miss any mistakes.

"Tonight, we didn't really pitch too well and didn't really swing the bats too well, either. It was just one of those nights."

Alex Gordon's leadoff home run, his second this year against Detroit and fifth leadoff shot overall, put Kansas City on top. But it was the fourth inning, and Hosmer's homer, that really sank them. A four-pitch walk to Mitch Maier set up RBI singles by Perez and Alcides Escobar. Penny recovered to retire Gordon, but Melky Cabrera's single through the middle built Kansas City's lead to 4-0.

It also extended the inning for Hosmer, who pounced on a hanging curveball and sent it deep to left for his 18th home run and a 7-0 lead.

"He could've come out of there at 4-0," Leyland said, "but I wanted to put that little challenge out there for him. Normally, I would've brought in the lefty for Hosmer and Francoeur. Just find out."

They're certainly finding out about Hosmer.

"He's gonna keep getting better and better," Royals manager Ned Yost said. "He's that special type of player. He's really starting to get comfortable here, he's seeing the ball well."

Said Avila: "I'm sure he wishes he played us all the time."

Penny's line showed it, with seven runs on 10 hits over four innings. Add up his last five starts, and he has given up 31 runs, 23 earned, on 41 hits over 25 innings, bumping his ERA a half-run to 5.31.

"It's frustrating," Penny said. "I'm just going to keep working, keep going out there and trying to improve every time out. Tonight I didn't give us much chance to win."

Time is running out to improve. Leyland hasn't announced his postseason rotation, but Penny's struggles can't help his cause. Justin Verlander is already set to open the Division Series, while Doug Fister and Max Scherzer are all but certain to join him. Rick Porcello, meanwhile, has shown recent improvement after his August struggles.

Penny's struggles counter the experience that should be in his favor.

"I'm not worried about that right now," he said. "That's not something I can concern myself with. I've just got to go out and pitch every fifth day and whenever I get the opportunity."

Jason Beck is a reporter for MLB.com. Read Beck's Blog and follow him on Twitter @beckjason. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.

Miggy delivers in pinch to lift Tigers late
First baseman hits go-ahead double, Kelly homers in decisive eighth

By Jason Beck / MLB.com | 9/22/2011 12:54 AM ET

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KANSAS CITY -- These are the games that challenge the Tigers in the final week of the regular season. The fact that they got out of town with a 6-3 win over the Royals on Wednesday night made it slightly easier, thanks to their .333-hitting, 98-RBI pinch-hitter.

"I think this is the best day off I ever had," said Miguel Cabrera.

If not, it was certainly his quickest day at the office: one eighth-inning pitch, one go-ahead double, one base to round, one trot back to the dugout. That's all manager Jim Leyland wanted out of him on this night.

"We had to do what we had to do," Leyland said.

His team has had its playoff spot wrapped up since clinching the American League Central last Friday, and Leyland has been trying to take advantage and rest a regular or two each day. Wednesday was Cabrera's turn for just his third game out of the starting lineup all season. Leyland was limiting Max Scherzer to five innings so that he could fit in Doug Fister in relief, which would put him on turn to potentially start Game 2 in the Division Series.

That was Leyland taking care of errands. What followed was Leyland taking care of the business at hand.

As much as Leyland wants to use this time to prepare his players, he wants to earn home-field advantage for the ALDS more, and he has made no secret about it. Part of it is about the extra game at Comerica Park for the home fans. Part of it is about the first two games at home for his players, and sending their opponent on the road with only one off-day before the ALDS begins.

After a week and a half on the road for this trip, Leyland would love to keep his team home for a week and a half.

"Truthfully, I want that game bad, that extra game at home, for a lot of reasons," Leyland said Sunday.

The Tigers control their destiny to get it, since they own the tiebreaker over head-to-head meetings with AL West-leading Texas -- the teams are currently tied with 90-65 records. So when he talked about Cabrera's day off, he put a condition on it.

"Trust me, if it means winning the game by pinch-hitting him, I will do it," Leyland said before the game.

He waited as long as he could. But if he was going to do it, it had to be a spot where he could hit.

"He told me if there was going to be a big situation, he might put me in the game," Cabrera said. "After six, he told me to be ready, try to get my swings in the cage, try to get loose and get ready for that situation."

He waited as long as he could, but once Ryan Raburn took the first pitch of the eighth inning -- the first Major League pitch of reliever Kelvin Herrera's career -- off his shoulder, that had to be the chance. It was the one time he could just about guarantee something to hit.

"I had to do it then, because you had first base occupied," Leyland said. "There's no sense putting Cabrera up there with a guy on third and one out, or a guy on second. He's not going to hit.

"So I made up my mind: If Raburn got on to lead off the inning, I was going to hit for [Ramon] Santiago. If Santiago got on, I was going to hit for [Brandon] Inge with Cabrera."

Cabrera stepped off the bench and into the batter's box. Royals manager Ned Yost gave his young reliever, fresh off a Triple-A title at Omaha, a test.

"Herrera came in, threw the ball OK," Yost said. "A little nerves, I think. [He] hit the first hitter. Then [he] faced one of the best hitters in the American League in Cabrera."

Cabrera promptly lined Herrera's next pitch into the right-field corner, sending Raburn around with his 98th RBI of the year to break a 3-3 tie.

"I had to be aggressive," Cabrera said. "Fastball there, I can't take that pitch."

Three batters later, Don Kelly provided some much-needed cushion, driving another offering from Herrera (0-1) 396 feet into right field for his sixth home run of the year and a three-run lead. It was the Tigers' third two-out RBI hit of the night, following first- and seventh-inning singles from one-night cleanup hitter Victor Martinez, who drove in three.

All the while, Fister (10-13) was waiting for his second inning of work. His first relief appearance since his Major League debut in 2009 improved him to 7-1 as a Tiger.

It ended up being another instance of postseason planning giving way. Though Leyland originally planned on Fister pitching four innings, the eighth-inning rally put closer Jose Valverde in motion to ready for the ninth. Part of it was about not letting a lead get away. Another part was respect.

Preparation or no, he wanted to give Valverde a chance at his 47th save in as many chances.

"If we added on another run in the top of the ninth, we were going to let Fister go out," Leyland said. "But we just felt that with everything that Valverde has done -- Fister got his work in -- that Valverde deserved to have a shot at a save. We think he's earned that."

Valverde earned the save, and the Tigers promptly earned a long-awaited flight home. As much as they want to prepare for the playoffs, they'd like to stay there for a while.

Jason Beck is a reporter for MLB.com. Read Beck's Blog and follow him on Twitter @beckjason. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.

Rusty motor: Turner struggles in Tigers' loss
Righty allows five runs over three-plus frames in final start of year

By Chris Vannini / MLB.com | 9/23/2011 12:17 AM ET

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DETROIT -- The last time Jacob Turner took the mound for the Tigers, Detroit held a 5 1/2-game lead in the American League Central.

Since that start on Sept. 1, the Tigers went on a 12-game winning streak and cruised to the division title.

Shaking off the rust, Turner struggled against the Orioles on Thursday night, as the Tigers fell, 6-5, to the Orioles at Comerica Park.

The Rangers also lost earlier in the day, meaning the teams still are tied in the standings in the race for home-field in the American League Division Series, but he Tigers hold the tiebreaker because they won the season series 6-3.

Turner gave up five runs -- four earned -- in three-plus innings to a red-hot Orioles team that has won eight of its last 10 games.

"Don't read anything into that tonight," manager Jim Leyland said of Turner. "That was just quite a bit of rust on him. We decided to go that way because we felt like that was the perfect candidate to pitch this game because of what we did last night. I just discard that totally."

The Tigers used starters Max Scherzer and Doug Fister on Wednesday night to help set up the rotation for the postseason. Needing a starter and wanting to get their top prospect some more big league experience, Turner was called upon to make his third Major League start.

Along with the line, the rust showed in Turner's velocity. His fastball --- which was the only pitch he could consistently locate on the day -- was fairly slower than in his previous start. His four-seam fastball averaged at 92.6 mph Sept. 1, compared to 89.9 mph Thursday.

"Obviously you could see the rust on Jacob, and that was OK. We didn't expect much different," Leyland said. "The only pitch he was getting over was the fastball, and it's pretty hard to pitch like that up here. He just couldn't get his breaking ball or anything else over the plate."

The Orioles jumped on Turner early and often.

J.J. Hardy scored on a sacrifice fly from Vladimir Guerrero in the top of the first, and then Hardy belted a solo home run in the third inning to extend the lead to 2-0.

In the fourth inning, Turner gave up a single and then a two-run home run to Adam Jones. After walking Mark Reynolds and having Chris Davis reach on a Miguel Cabrera error, Turner's day was done.

"He couldn't locate a breaking ball," catcher Omir Santos said. "They waited for the fastball. ... Today, he wasn't Turner."

Al Alburquerque relieved Turner and gave up a sacrifice fly to Nolan Reimold, but he then struck out the next two batters.

Leyland had said prior to the game that he wanted Alburquerque to pitch Thursday night. He hadn't pitched since Sept. 14 while dealing with a sore hip and quadriceps.

"He was a little rusty to start with, but he picked up the last hitter pretty good," Leyland said. "He hasn't pitched that much lately, so we expected him to be a little rusty as well."

The Tigers put the leadoff man on in five of the first six innings, but they weren't able to take advantage early. The comeback began in the bottom of the fourth. Delmon Young led off the inning with a walk and scored two batters later when Victor Martinez grounded into a double play.

In the fifth inning, Brandon Inge led off with a walk and scored on a single by Ordonez three batters later. The hit extended Ordonez's hitting streak to 15 games -- all of which have come since the trade for Young.

Young then blasted a three-run homer over the left-field wall to tie the game at 5.

But the Orioles regained the lead in the sixth when a check-swing infield single from Reimold scored Jones from third.

"I got the ground ball and it was a tough play," Tigers pitcher David Pauley said. "That's kind of the way it goes sometimes."

Orioles manager Buck Showalter didn't care how the winning run came in.

"We are due for a few things to come our way," he said. "We earned most of our things tonight."

The Orioles' bullpen shut the Tigers down the rest of the way. Joaquin Benoit pitched in the ninth inning for the Tigers, crossing another item off Leyland's to-do list. Benoit hadn't pitched since Sept. 13.

"We got some things out of this that we wanted to, we just didn't get the win," Leyland said, "and we had a shot at that, too."

Thursday night was Turner's last Major League appearance for the season. Leyland said a decision hadn't been made yet as to where Turner would go from here, but the next time he will be in a Tigers uniform likely will be Spring Training.

Turner went 4-5 with a 3.44 ERA in 20 Minor League starts between Double-A Erie and Triple-A Toledo. In Detroit, he struggled to an 0-1 record with a 8.53 ERA. He finished the season with 143 2/3 innings pitched across all levels.

The Tigers got some glimpses of the future with Turner this year, but the focus now is on the present and getting ready for the postseason.

"It's tough for a 20-year-old kid to be up-and-down," Pauley said of Turner. "I give him a lot of credit. At 20 years old, he's a lot more mature than a lot of kids should be."

Chris Vannini is an associate reporter for MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.

V-Mart sends Tigers to walk-off win

By Jason Beck / MLB.com | 9/24/2011 12:15 AM ET

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DETROIT -- Don't bother telling the Tigers they clinched a division title a week ago. They're having too much fun.

Victor Martinez had his fist raised as soon as he saw his 11th-inning line drive hit just inside the left-field line, and kept it raised as he trotted to first base and Danny Worth came home with the winning run. He saw Miguel Cabrera and his big frame running towards him, readying for a flying leap, and jumped into him. After his teammates mobbed him near the mound, he threw some playful punches at the television camera.

The 4-3 win over the Orioles kept Detroit on pace with AL West-leading Texas, which keeps the Tigers in line for home-field advantage in a Division Series since they own the tiebreaker on head-to-head matchups. Yet it felt like it meant more than that.

"Every win is important," Martinez said. "It doesn't matter if we're in it already. Every win is important. Believe me, nobody wants to give anything away. We just come here ready to play every day and play the game hard."

The fact that everyone else believes the same reflects the influence Martinez has had in the clubhouse. His hit reflected the influence he had in the lineup.

Oh, there were probably some personal postseason berths that were helped. Rick Porcello continued what he feels is his strongest stretch of the season with seven quality innings, nine groundouts and his final seven batters retired in order. He didn't get a win, but he received a major vote of confidence from manager Jim Leyland, who saw plenty he liked from his young pitcher against a dangerous offensive team with three left-handed power hitters and at least two others from the right side.

"I was really happy with what I saw out of him tonight," Leyland said. "He threw balls that were really diving. He made some really good pitches. I was really tickled to see that, obviously, against a real good hitting team. This is a very good offensive team that can pound the ball."

Leyland confirmed Porcello will start the regular-season finale Wednesday night on his regular rest, which would put him on turn to pitch a potential Game 4 of a Division Series on five days' rest. Leyland didn't announce anything beyond Wednesday, but his encouragement on Porcello did not sound like a manager putting a bow on a pitcher's season. On the contrary, Leyland gave him a pep talk after a pair of ground-ball singles led to two third-inning runs and a 3-2 O's lead.

For Porcello's part, he feels better now than he did when he went 5-0 in July.

"I think I feel good," he said. "I've got much better life on my fastball. I feel strong, I feel confident. I'm just trying to keep it going."

So is Ryan Perry, who looked like he was on the ropes after a double, a four-pitch walk and a 2-0 count to switch-hitting Matt Wieters with nobody out in the 11th. Two pitches and two ground balls later, he was out of it, having gotten a double play from Wieters and a groundout from Adam Jones.

"I threw six bad pitches in a row," Perry (1-0) said, "and was able to know what I was doing and come back and make some good ones."

Their causes were big. The cause to win seemed bigger. Once Brandon Inge drew a five-pitch walk from Scott Eyre (2-2) leading off the bottom of the 11th, they had a direct path to victory.

Delmon Young's popout behind home plate on a 3-1 pitch seemed to calm down Eyre, who put Cabrera behind fouling off back-to-back pitches. But he left a fastball high, and Cabrera grounded it through the right side.

A year ago, without an established hitter backing up Cabrera in the Tigers' lineup, that single might have been a moral victory, keeping him from ending it with one swing. This year, with Martinez behind him, it seemingly just delayed the inevitable.

Just two AL hitters entered Friday owning a better average with runners in scoring position than Martinez's .380 clip, and one of them was Cabrera. He's calm enough in pressure situations that even with an 0-2 count and a pitch that crosses him up, he's able to get a good swing.

"You'd rather be lucky than good," Martinez said. "I wasn't really expecting that pitch. [An] 0-2 [count], he really hung that pitch and I just put a good swing on it."

Nobody in these parts is calling him lucky.

"If we can get a walk or a base hit up there, we know we can score him," Cabrera said.

It was Martinez's 98th RBI of the year. With five regular-season games left, his fourth career 100-RBI season looks like a matter of time. Eighty-two of those RBIs have come with runners in scoring position.

Cabrera got his 100th RBI for the eighth straight year earlier in the game on his first-inning, two-run homer. In so doing, he became the fifth Tiger in history to reach triple digits in RBIs, runs and walks in the same season. With four more doubles, he'd be just the eighth Major League hitter ever to reach those marks along with 50 doubles, joining a group that includes David Ortiz, Edgar Martinez, Todd Helton, John Olerud, Stan Musial and Lou Gehrig.

Cabrera could easily be thinking stat-building at this point. He isn't allowing it. None of them are.

"We're not talking about personal stuff here," he said. "We're trying to win games. I've got a lot of time in the offseason to look at numbers."

Jason Beck is a reporter for MLB.com. Read Beck's Blog and follow him on Twitter @beckjason. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.

Verlander denied 25th victory by Orioles

By Jason Beck / MLB.com | 9/25/2011 12:35 AM ET

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DETROIT -- Sometime Sunday morning, Justin Verlander will roll out of bed, roll into Comerica Park and begin his normal pre-start routine, preparing for a nameless, faceless opponent he might not know until Wednesday night, two days before he starts Game 1 of the American League Division Series. He could be facing any one of five teams on Friday. All he can control for now is what he does, now that his regular season is over.

He does know that his opponent will not be Orioles outfielder Matt Angle, which, after Saturday, might be a good thing.

For the first time since July 15, Justin Verlander didn't get a win. The fact that he didn't get the loss in Saturday's 6-5 defeat to the Orioles after being down five runs after three innings wasn't much consolation.

"Obviously, it's nice to battle back," Verlander said. "We've done it all year. But we didn't win. That's the bottom line."

Verlander will be able to put this game behind him, because that's his job. For the 5-foot-10 Angle, author of 11 Minor League home runs before Saturday, it's a game he'll never forget. The same man who led off the game with a first-inning home run off Verlander ended it with a ninth-inning suicide squeeze bunt.

For the Orioles it's more than another piece of damage they've inflicted on the AL playoff race, with the win allowing the Rangers to move ahead of the Tigers for the AL's second seed. Baltimore basically wrecked history, and reminded the rest of baseball that Verlander can make mistakes.

"He's human," O's manager Buck Showalter said. "He's one of, if not the best, pitcher in the league this year. It's not like we exactly opened him up. I think you have to approach him with almost nothing to lose."

The matchup certainly suggested it.

It wasn't just a date with history for Verlander, who was vying to become the Majors' first 25-game winner since Bob Welch in 1990, and the first to 25 wins in 34 starts since World War II, according to STATS. This was a the Majors' wins leader and potential AL pitching Triple Crown winner against baseball's only 17-loss hurler, Jeremy Guthrie.

The Tigers had never lost to the Orioles with Verlander on the mound. He had a 6-0 record with two no-decisions that eventually went in Detroit's favor. Seven of those eight outings were quality starts.

But once Angle turned on a Verlander fastball and sent it deep to right, the date with history had an awkward silence.

"He's in the big leagues for a reason," catcher Alex Avila said of Angle. "That's probably not his game, but even guys that you don't expect hit home runs every once in a while. It was a 2-1 count, a 91-mph fastball right down the middle, and he hit it hard."

Verlander was fidgety, looking for command, needing quality strikes. O's hitters, who have been aggressive all month, picked up on the hint of mortality and pounced.

"I know he's been a great pitcher all year," Angle said, "but you try to not be too intimidated, and you just try to play the game."

The Orioles played it beautifully, first while Verlander was trying to find his form and again after he left. They watched Austin Jackson make an over-the-shoulder catch in deep center field that manager Jim Leyland compared with Willie Mays' highlight catch, then shrugged and picked apart Verlander with four two-out singles and a walk for a three-run second inning.

"It was just kind of a case of being out of sync early and not quite executing my pitches, [being] a little up in the zone," Verlander said.

It wasn't nerves, both he and Avila said. It was simply execution.

"He was just falling behind a lot today, a lot more than what he's been used to this year," Avila said. "We had to make an adjustment, try to be able to keep him in the game after his pitch count got real high, and ended up throwing a lot of fastballs in the middle of the game."

The best sign of how unusual that is might be best reflected in the pitch data. When Mark Reynolds hit his 37th homer to give Baltimore a five-run lead in the third, the pitch registered as an 89-mph changeup, which makes sense for a guy with a 100-mph fastball. In this case, the 89-mph pitch was his fastball.

"I was trying to find a rhythm," Verlander said. "I was easing way off and tried to get a five- or six-pitch inning. That Reynolds ball, if I had made a better pitch with him swinging, that would have been a four-pitch inning, which was exactly what I was trying to do."

The Tigers slowly rallied back, mainly on the hitting of Miguel Cabrera and Victor Martinez. They both scored in the fourth before Cabrera homered in the sixth to make it a 5-4 game. Once Jhonny Peralta singled in Will Rhymes with two outs in the eighth, the Tigers had added to their rash of September comebacks and gotten Verlander off the hook.

Still, his streak of wins in 12 consecutive starts was over. He finished his regular season with a 24-5 record, joining Randy Johnson (2002) and John Smoltz (1996) with the highest single-season win totals in the last 21 years. His 2.40 ERA and 150 strikeouts still put him in position for a Triple Crown, depending on the final start of the Angels' Jered Weaver.

He could have lived with that had the Tigers won, but Angle ruined that, too, once a wild pitch from Daniel Schlereth (2-2) moved Tyler Hudson from first to third with one out.

"I heard somebody yell 'squeeze,'" Schlereth said, "so I tried to throw it pretty hard, and I did. It was down, and [Angle] made a great bunt on it."

Jason Beck is a reporter for MLB.com. Read Beck's Blog and follow him on Twitter @beckjason. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.

Tigers belt four home runs to back Penny

By Jason Beck / MLB.com | 9/25/2011 6:33 PM ET

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DETROIT -- This is what the Tigers signed Brad Penny to do: pitch some innings and give them a chance to win games. Winning those games is what Detroit has Miguel Cabrera and Victor Martinez here to do.

If Sunday's 10-6 victory over the Orioles is the last of those wins for Penny, he'll gladly take it. Then he'll root like crazy for them in the postseason.

"I want this team to win, with or without me in the playoffs," Penny said. "I'd like to pitch in the playoffs, but if it doesn't happen, it doesn't happen."

The Tigers are taking a similar approach these days with home-field advantage for the American League Division Series, once within their control but now in the Rangers' hands after another Texas outburst against Seattle on Sunday.

The Rangers finish against the Angels, who will trot out Dan Haren and Jered Weaver for their best shot at the AL Wild Card. The Tigers get the Indians, who are fighting to stay over .500 for their first winning season since 2007.

The Tigers want to open the postseason at Comerica Park. They don't feel they need to.

"It's not the end of the world," manager Jim Leyland said. "I know there are some people screaming that [we] have to get home-field advantage. We'd like to have it, but we didn't have home-field advantage in 2006. We went to New York.

We're going to do the best we can to get it, but it's not a negative if we don't. To me, it's a bonus if we do."

If they don't get it, the Tigers will be back in Yankee Stadium. If they get it, they have no idea who they'll meet, depending on the newly scrambled Wild Card race.

They'll have a clearer idea of their pitching staff for that series after coaches and front-office staff meet on Monday.

If Penny doesn't crack the pitching staff -- the momentum of Rick Porcello would seemingly work against him on that -- he'll have at least played some part in helping them get to October. His start to outduel David Price at Tampa Bay last month stands as one of the key games in the Tigers' season, the swing game in a four-game series. He had some forgettable outings after that, though.

Sunday worked in the reverse. The Tigers staked him to a three-run lead, then watched the Orioles tie it on him. Then came Cabrera and Martinez, first and third in the American League in batting average with runners in scoring position.

Cabrera's hit created the scoring chance in the fifth inning. Martinez's three-run homer delivered it.

"Jimmy [Leyland] has a lot of great weapons that he uses," O's manager Buck Showalter said earlier in the series. "And when you pay the kind of money that they pay for those two guys, they get that type of return. And Victor is the perfect guy to sit there behind Cabrera."

A three-run homer from Don Kelly an inning later and a solo shot from Jhonny Peralta padded the lead and ended up being the difference in the game, but five RBIs combined from Cabrera and Martinez provided the bulk of the damage. They made a winner out of Penny (11-11), whose best outing since that battle with Price on Aug. 28 got him back to .500.

It could only lower his ERA so far, down to 5.30 on the year, but with a potent offense, it was good enough.

"We signed Brad to give us innings and hopefully win 10 games," Leyland said. "He gave us a little more than that. He gave us a lot of innings. We kept him healthy all year. I'm proud of that. And he got 11 wins. That's pretty good for a guy that we signed to be our fifth starter."

Cabrera was nine points back in the AL batting race heading into the weekend. He was one point back Sunday morning, before he homered off O's starter Brian Matusz in his first at-bat. His fifth-inning single not only put him in front of Red Sox slugger Adrian Gonzalez, but also forced Matusz into a no-win situation with runners at the corners and two outs for Martinez.

V-Mart had a bases-loaded chance in the third and grounded the first pitch into an inning-ending double play. Once Matusz (1-9) dropped two curveballs into the strike zone, Martinez had to defend the plate.

Matusz threw a better curveball after that. Martinez didn't let it get past.

"I was just trying to react," Martinez said. "I was in the hole with two strikes. I thought the pitch was a little down maybe, but I was just trying to battle there and ended up getting a big hit."

He's had plenty of those this year, and this one got him to 101 RBIs. Yet he has just 12 home runs. For a season, no Tiger has driven in that many runs with so few homers since George Kell in 1950.

Batting .384 with runners in scoring position will do that.

"He's so consistent," said Kelly, whose third homer in 10 days was his first three-run homer in the Majors. "I think him and Miggy are both hitting close to .400 with guys in scoring position. That's unbelievable, but that's what they do. That's why they have 100 RBIs each."

Cabrera eventually left with dizziness, but the Tigers medical staff said there's no situation there. Come Monday, he's expected back at the plate against Cleveland, with Martinez behind him.

Jason Beck is a reporter for MLB.com. Read Beck's Blog and follow him on Twitter @beckjason. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.

Fister proves his value to Tigers in victory

By Jason Beck / MLB.com | 9/27/2011 12:24 AM ET

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DETROIT -- There's no need to remind the Tigers what a deal they got by trading for Doug Fister. They know. Monday's 14-0 win over the Indians was simply an exclamation point.

Nearly two months after the Tigers and Indians made their moves a day apart to improve their pitching staffs for their best shot at winning the American League Central, the differences stand out. They didn't need another set of pitching lines from one more meeting between Fister and Indians acquisition Ubaldo Jimenez to spell it out.

Jimenez got the headlines, and rightfully so. Fister got the Tigers to the division title and earned his ticket to the playoffs.

Miguel Cabrera's reaction Monday when asked about Fister's impact summarized it all.

"Oh my God, man," Cabrera said. "It's unbelievable. He guarantees six or seven good innings. He guarantees to keep you in the game. He's a reason we won the division. He's another reason we are going to the playoffs."

Cabrera wasn't going to play any what-if game. He doesn't want to think about what might have happened had Fister ended up in Cleveland.

"I don't know," Cabrera said. "Thank God we got this guy."

Truthfully, the roles couldn't have been reversed. The Tigers never had the prospects to meet the Rockies' demands for Jimenez. The Indians needed a front-line starter, had a deep farm system and grabbed Jimenez. Detroit focused in on Fister at a more reasonable price, in part because it already had an ace in Justin Verlander. The Tigers didn't expect Fister to slot in right behind him.

Combine their records, and Verlander and Fister are 14-0 since mid-August. They'll take that record into an AL Division Series that would see them pitch three times in a five-game series.

"They're two of the best pitchers in baseball right now," catcher Alex Avila said. "That's pretty good."

The Tigers were up a game and a half on July 30, the day they announced their deal for Fister. A day later, the Indians swung their deal for Jimenez. While the Tigers have gone 36-16 since the July 31 non-waiver Trade Deadline, the Indians are 27-28.

The two hurlers aren't the only reasons for that. Injuries, bullpens and All-Star hitters came into play. But head to head, they were a swing factor.

Monday's win improved Fister's record to 8-1 since the trade, including eight straight wins and a 0.65 ERA since mid-August. Three of those wins have come against Cleveland, totaling 23 innings of two-run ball on 13 hits and 29 strikeouts for a 0.78 ERA. He might have had a chance at a fourth win had rain not stopped his Aug. 9 outing at Progressive Field after two innings.

Jimenez, meanwhile, fell to 4-4 with the Indians. Three of those losses have come to the Tigers, two of them opposite Fister. The first was a 4-2 pitching duel on Labor Day. Monday's rematch was no contest.

If not for that Labor Day performance, with 13 strikeouts over eight innings, Fister's nine strikeouts Monday would've tied a career high. He racked up three strikeouts among the first 11 batters he retired, then fanned four straight Indians in the sixth and seventh innings amidst a roll of eight straight outs before he stranded a runner in his eighth and final inning.

"Fister continues to pitch very well against us," Indians manager Manny Acta said. "We couldn't do anything against him. He threw over 70 percent of his pitches for strikes, which he does usually. He used both sides of the plate and just carved us up pretty good."

He has done that against a lot of teams this year, before and after his trade to Detroit.

"He's been pitching like that the whole year," Victor Martinez said. "It's just his record doesn't show it because he was on a team that wasn't winning."

The strikeout totals are different. The stinginess is the same. The run support is vastly different. On Monday, he had two touchdowns in his favor.

More than half of those runs came off two relievers, but the six runs off Jimenez in five innings would've been plenty. All six of them scored on two-out hits -- two of them from Avila for three RBIs, another on a Ryan Raburn triple, another on a single from AL batting leader Cabrera, another on a Martinez double.

"I lost the control of everything," Jimenez said. "I lost the command of the fastball and breaking ball. I started falling behind in the count and most of the time got in some hitter's counts. They took advantage."

The harder-throwing Jimenez struck out three, struggling to finish off hitters. On several of those key hits, the Tigers didn't let him get to two strikes, taking the same aggressive approach they had in a matchup here in August.

"I pitched against these guys four times this year," Jimenez said. "I had two bad games and I had two good games. It's something that, next year, I have to probably watch more tape. I'm going to get to know the hitters more. I'm going to have everything 100 percent. I'm going to have my velocity. I'm going to have my breaking ball. It's going to be a different season."

That's a key point. The Indians acquired Jimenez as much for the next couple of years as this one. Get him back in his form from the first half of last year, and the comparisons could look vastly different. But the Tigers have the same outlook with Fister.

"At this point," Tigers manager Jim Leyland said, "we've caught lightning in a bottle."

Jason Beck is a reporter for MLB.com. Read Beck's Blog and follow him on Twitter @beckjason. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.

Miggy, Young power Tigers past Indians
Club remains one game behind Texas for No. 2 seed in AL

By Jason Beck / MLB.com | 9/28/2011 1:32 AM ET

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DETROIT -- Miguel Cabrera continued his charge toward his first batting crown. Delmon Young continued his final-week hit barrage with his second home run in as many days. Wilson Betemit played for the first time in almost two weeks and hit a tape-measure homer. Max Scherzer said he feels as good about his pitches as he has all year.

As playoff tuneups go, the Tigers are feeling pretty good. They'd feel better if they could open those playoffs at home, obviously, but Tuesday's 9-6 win over the Indians on Tuesday kept those chances alive.

They'll come to Comerica Park on Wednesday with suitcases in tow and destination unknown. If the Tigers win their regular-season finale and the Angels can somehow muster a win over the Rangers -- and with Jered Weaver scratched, those chances could be slim -- the Tigers can bring their suitcases back home and work out Thursday at Comerica Park, where they would host the Red Sox or Rays on Friday afternoon. Otherwise, they'll have a late-night flight to New York and a Thursday afternoon workout and Friday night opener at Yankee Stadium.

At this point, the Tigers are ready to play anywhere. They're more focused on their play on the field than what field they're on.

"It's good," said Cabrera, whose sixth-inning home run clinched his fifth straight 30-homer season. "Our minds have to be fresh. Our bodies have to be ready for the playoffs. When we do well and we play a game like this, it's exciting.

"We have to get ready. You don't want to go in unfit. You have to prepare. We have to go out there and do our job and play and try to win some games. I think that's the best way we can try to prepare for the playoffs."

Cabrera is batting 16-for-28 over his last eight games, including five straight multihit efforts. He's hitting .425 in September with just four hitless games over the last 30 days. He's ready.

"Well, he's locked in pretty good, obviously," manager Jim Leyland said. "So that's good news. He's swinging really good. His concentration level is tremendous right now. Hopefully, that'll keep up."

Leyland has wanted to get guys time off to ease the strain of a full season and prepare for the playoffs. But he also wants his team peaking at the right time. The Tigers won 12 straight earlier this month, obviously, but they had been alternating wins and losses since. Tuesday marked their first set of back-to-back wins since they swept the White Sox in Chicago two weeks ago.

The wins and losses aren't quite as important as they were before. The quality of play still is.

"So far, knock on wood, we've been fortunate," Leyland said. "I think we're getting guys ready halfway decent and we've won a couple games. You can't ask for much more than that."

He certainly can't ask for more from Cabrera, whose seems poised to give Venezuela its second batting title in five years, joining teammate Magglio Ordonez. Cabrera went 2-for-5 on Tuesday to keep his average at .343, five points ahead of Boston's Adrian Gonzalez and Texas' Michael Young.

Cabrera's double helped fuel a three-run opening inning in a long night for Cleveland starter Jeanmar Gomez (5-3).

Gomez regrouped from Ordonez's two-run double to strike out the first two batters of the second. But when he fell behind on Betemit, making his first start since Sept. 16, he left a pitch over the plate for Betemit to belt 423 feet to right field for his eighth home run of the season and a 4-0 Tigers lead.

Delmon Young had hits in both innings, including an RBI single in the first. Once Gomez put another two-out batter on base by walking Betemit in the fourth, Young jumped his first-pitch sinker for a line drive that sneaked over the left-field fence for his 12th home run on the year.

Gomez, who had given up just six earned runs in five starts since his return to Cleveland's rotation, allowed eight runs on 10 hits over 4 2/3 innings, capped by RBI doubles from Ordonez and Ryan Raburn in the fifth. Chad Durbin ended the threat in the fifth before falling behind on Cabrera in the sixth and paying for it with a drive to left.

Not since Norm Cash's batting title in 1961 has a Tiger hit for this high of an average with the run production of Cabrera, now with 30 homers and 105 RBIs. Ordonez came close in 2007, but finished with 28 homers.

"I credit the year to [hitting coach Lloyd] McClendon. The whole year, I haven't been getting hot like I'm getting right now," Cabrera said. "The last two months, I've started getting good. That's a good thing, when your team needs you to do something and you're coming through."

The offensive support was enough for Scherzer (15-9) to become the first Tiger other than Justin Verlander to win 15 games in a season since Kenny Rogers did it in 2006. He allowed four runs on seven hits over 5 2/3 innings in his regular-season finale, but racked up seven strikeouts in his final tuneup before his Game 3 assignment in the Division Series.

The pitches, Scherzer said, felt better than the results. The strikeouts seemingly back it up.

"Where my stuff is right now, it feels as good as it has all year," Scherzer said. "I have confidence in all three pitches. I was locating pretty well tonight. There's nothing more you can be ready for. This is [going to be] the biggest start of my career."

He's ready. Cabrera's ready. Their teammates are joining them, wherever they're going.

Jason Beck is a reporter for MLB.com. Read Beck's Blog and follow him on Twitter @beckjason. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.

Peralta blasts Tigers toward postseason

By Chris Vannini / MLB.com | 9/28/2011 10:00 PM ET

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DETROIT -- Jhonny Peralta's solo home run in the bottom of the eighth helped give the Tigers a 5-4 win against the Indians on Wednesday night, keeping alive hopes for home-field advantage in the American League Division Series.

The Tigers need the Rangers to lose to the Angels in order to host the Game 1 of the ALDS on Friday.

Tigers starter Rick Porcello retired the first seven batters he faced, but a walk to Matt LaPorta and a triple from Ezequiel Carrera gave the Indians a 1-0 lead in the third inning.

In the fourth, Porcello found more trouble. Asdrubal Cabrera and Travis Hafner led off the inning with singles and Carlos Santana was walked to load the bases with no outs. The Indians were able to plate two runners on a Jack Hannahan single and LaPorta reached on a fielding error from Wilson Betemit.

The Tigers' comeback began in the bottom of the fourth, when a single from Victor Martinez scored Delmon Young from third base.

In the fifth, Miguel Cabrera, Martinez and Alex Avila hit three straight singles to cut the deficit to 3-2, and a sacrifice fly from Jhonny Peralta tied the game at three.

After allowing a leadoff double in the seventh, Porcello's day was done. But Al Alburquerque was able to strand the runner, making it the fifth straight start in which Porcello gave up three earned runs or fewer.

The Tigers took the lead in the seventh, when Wilson Betemit scored on a wild pitch after leading off the inning with a triple.

But Ryan Perry blew the lead in the eighth. After getting a groundout, Perry gave up a double to Hafner and walked Santana and Shelley Duncan to load the bases. A sacrifice fly from Hannahan tied the game at four before a groundout ended the inning.

Miguel Cabrera went 2-for-4 in the game, raising his batting average to .344 as he looks to win the American League batting title.

Jose Valverde closed out his 49th straight save.

Chris Vannini is an associate reporter for MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.

Rain suspends ALDS opener in Bronx
Game 1 tickets honored Saturday; Game 2 tickets good Sunday
By Barry M. Bloom / MLB.com | 09/30/11 10:45 PM ET

NEW YORK -- Game 1 of the American League Division Series between the Tigers and Yankees at Yankee Stadium on Friday night was suspended because of rain and will resume on Saturday at 8:37 p.m. ET in the bottom of the second inning with the score tied at 1.

Game 2, weather permitting, has been rescheduled from Saturday night to Sunday at 3:07 p.m. Ivan Nova -- originally scheduled to pitch Game 2 -- will be on the hill for the Yankees when Game 1 resumes, and Doug Fister will pitch for the Tigers. New York will start Freddy Garcia in Sunday's Game 2, and Detroit will counter with Max Scherzer. Tigers manager Jim Leyland said after the game was suspended that Justin Verlander -- who started Friday's game -- will pitch Game 3 on Monday in Detroit.

Tickets for Game 1 can only be used on Saturday, while tickets for Game 2 can only be used for Sunday's game. There are no refunds or exchanges for tickets to either of these games.

The game was suspended at 10:24 p.m. ET after a delay of one hour and 17 minutes. It began pouring in the top of the second as Yankees left-hander CC Sabathia set the side down in order, whiffing Alex Avila and Ryan Raburn to end the inning.

"On the fair side, both clubs have to deal with the same issues," said Joe Torre, Major League Baseball's executive vice president of baseball operations.

The weather report is not good for Saturday, either, Torre was told.

"If that's the case, we're going to have to look at Sunday in a different way," Torre said.

The Tigers scored in the top of the first on Delmon Young's two-out homer. And against Verlander in the bottom of the first, the Yankees tied the score on a groundout by Alex Rodriguez.

Once Sabathia struck out Ryan Raburn for the third out, the Yankee Stadium grounds crew began to jog out of the dugout to begin some cleanup work on the infield in the middle of the inning. They stopped when crew chief Gerry Davis and the rest of the umpires gathered on the pitching mound with Yankees head groundskeeper Dan Cunningham.

Davis stopped the game at 9:07 p.m., as Verlander stood at the top of the visitors' dugout steps.

The game was suspended based on a rule change after the 2009 World Series. Game 5 between the Rays and Phillies at Philadelphia was stopped amid a downpour after the top of the sixth with the score tied at 2. Commissioner Bud Selig suspended the game, and it concluded two days later with the Phillies winning, 4-3, to lock up their second World Series title.

That rule was memorialized for all postseason games only a few months later.

Barry M. Bloom is national reporter for MLB.com and writes an MLBlog, Boomskie on Baseball. Follow @boomskie on Twitter. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.

Fister's gem, Tigers' chances unravel in sixth
Tight ALDS Game 1 becomes Yankees' rout in six-run inning

By Jason Beck / MLB.com | 10/2/2011 1:15 AM ET

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NEW YORK -- For a brief while, America got its Tigers-Yankees pitching duel after all. Justin Verlander and CC Sabathia just weren't involved in it.

The duel, however, didn't last long enough for Detroit. By the time Robinson Cano's sixth-inning grand slam powered the Yankees out of the Tigers' reach for a 9-3 Detroit loss in Game 1 of the American League Division Series, Doug Fister's gem was statistically a distant memory. Yet it was a game that seemed tantalizingly close for the Tigers to take for the first five innings.

They can look at their 2006 Division Series and an opening thumping from the Yankees as an example that Game 1 doesn't determine everything. The Tigers won seven straight after that to reach the World Series. But just four Tigers on this roster were part of that team. They'll take more solace in how close this game was.

It was close enough that Alex Avila thought a hesitation at second base might have cost him the extra step that might have gotten him home with the go-ahead run. It was also close enough that he felt two pitches turned it after that.

"We made two mistakes in the game: The breaking ball, the hanger, to [Brett] Gardner [for a two-run single], and the hanger to Cano [for the grand slam]," Avila said. "That was the ballgame right there."

The hit from Gardner, manager Jim Leyland felt, was the one mistake Fister made. The swing that followed left the pitcher with his first loss since Aug. 14, and more earned runs than he suffered in his eight games since then.

Nearly 24 hours after Verlander and Sabathia threw their final pitches in Game 1, Fister and Ivan Nova literally picked up where they left off and mowed down opposing hitters. But once Cano's RBI double off the top of the left-field fence pulled New York ahead, the spell Fister had on the Bronx Bombers appeared to vanish. So did the chances Detroit had to pull ahead and steal a game on the road.

"Alex and I were trying to keep them off-balance," Fister said. "They just kept attacking. We tried doing our best to mix them up and put the balls in the right location. I missed my location on a few of them, and obviously they made me pay."

Fister denied the Yankees a chance in his first inning -- the game's second -- once the game resumed from Friday night's rain-forced suspension, stranding runners at second and third with back-to-back strikeouts of Derek Jeter and Curtis Granderson. From there, he found his rhythm on a cool New York night: 11 consecutive outs, five on swinging strikeouts, and only one ball hit out of the infield.

Fister had a fastball that was darting in on right-handed hitters and off the corner on lefties, and he threw it time and again early.

"I wouldn't necessarily say we got to him," Jeter said. "He was outstanding. I don't think he threw any balls over the middle of the plate, with the exception of Robbie [Cano's RBI double]. We really didn't hit too many balls hard. I wouldn't necessarily say we had success against him. We were fortunate."

Nova, whom the Tigers didn't see in either of their two regular-season series with the Yankees, did his best to match Fister, retiring the first seven Tigers he faced and fulfilling Leyland's fear that their unfamiliarity with the rookie right-hander would hamper them. Once Avila drew a one-out walk in the fifth, though, Detroit nearly broke through with back-to-back singles from Ryan Raburn and Jhonny Peralta.

Once Raburn sent his line drive through the middle, third-base coach Gene Lamont sent Avila home, challenging former Tigers center fielder Granderson to make a play. Jeter's pivot and catcher Russell Martin's tag provided the play the Yankees needed.

"Knowing that Granderson's a good outfielder, but he doesn't have the best of arms, knowing a lot of times if you get a good jump you can score on base hits to center -- if I would've probably gone right off the bat, I probably would've made it without a play," Avila said. "But having hesitated a little bit to make sure he didn't catch it, it made it a lot closer. Then Jeter relayed it and made a perfect throw."

Said Miguel Cabrera: "That was the difference in the game. If we score that run, we go into the lead right there, but they made some plays."

Granderson's one-out single in the bottom of the inning ended Fister's streak at 11 straight outs. Starting with him, seven of Fister's final 10 batters reached base safely. Cano was the next, barely missing a home run with his shot off the top of the fence. Granderson was the last, working out of an 0-2 hole to draw a walk that loaded the bases following Gardner's two-run single and Jeter's hit-and-run grounder through an open right side while Raburn covered second.

"I thought he pitched very, very well," Leyland said. "The numbers won't look like that, obviously."

At that point, Fister had a 4-1 deficit, but the bases-loaded jam. Leyland turned to his high-strikeout rookie, Al Alburquerque, to face Cano. Alburquerque had allowed just three of 31 inherited runners to score in the regular season, and he hadn't allowed a home run in his 43 1/3-inning Major League career.

Once the reliever's 0-1 slider hung on the inner half of the plate, Cano matched that total.

"Normally, it goes straight down," Avila said of the slider. "That one didn't really do anything. Tough spot for him to come in, but he's got the stuff to be able to get guys out there, and he will. It's part of the game."

By then, the momentum had swung. Austin Jackson led off the top of the inning with a walk out of an 0-2 count, but he was helpless on a hit-and-run play after Magglio Ordonez's sharp grounder went straight to Cano to start a double play. Nick Swisher made a sliding catch for an inning-ending out on Delmon Young, whose first-inning home run Friday night before the rain stood as Detroit's lone run until a two-run ninth.

"We played hard," Raburn said. "We battled. Just a matter of a couple hits that got them rolling. Just got too big a lead and we just couldn't battle back."

Jason Beck is a reporter for MLB.com. Read Beck's Blog and follow him on Twitter @beckjason. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.