It was the kind of night that Max St-Pierre pinch hit in the eighth inning to "Don't worry, be happy."
That summed things up pretty well for St-Pierre, happy just to be in the major leagues at last, and the Tigers, not at all worried as they led the Twins by a 10-0 score at that point.
Detroit teed off on Minnesota pitcher after Minnesota pitcher, as Miguel Cabrera, Jhonny Peralta and Casper Wells all homered. Wells also tripled, and the Tigers put together seven extra-base hits overall for the night.
Justin Verlander cruised through nine innings, allowing only an unearned run after a pair of errors in the ninth inning. Oh, and he rang up rung up ringed up struck out 11 and allowed just four hits. With his 10th strikeout of the game, the Tigers had their 11th season with at least 1,000 K's in a season. Verlander accounts for more than a fifth of those, as he's now sitting at 209.
And just to continue the facts and stats, he's the first Tigers pitcher since Jack Morris in 1986-87 to strike out more than 200 batters in back-to-back seasons.
So he's pretty awesome.
So are the Tigers lately. Winners of seven of their last 10 games, they're now three games over .500. A quick glance at the schedule shows that unless something really weird happens, they ought to finish in the 84-85 win range. If you'd told me that in early August when things were at their worst, I'd never have believed you. So it's nice to see a strong finish to the year. Just have to keep it up for about one more week.