MILESTONE STAT
Jim Leyland earned win No. 500 in the Tigers uniform
KEY STATS
21: Justin Verlander won his 21st game of the year by allowing one run in 7 1/3 innings. He has now won nine consecutive starts.
3-for-5, HR: Austin Jackson is really hitting well lately.
KEY PLAY
I don't mean to go all re-runs on you, but the Tigers won 8-1 so I feel I have to:
Writing Justin Verlander's name on the lineup card.
KEY THOUGHTS
76 wins for the Tigers, 21 wins for Justin Verlander with four games left in the season. Wow. Quite the memorable season. We're really blessed as fans this year and we should make sure to remember it. Of course, we are blessed every day that is JV day and we all know it.
Pretty blessed to have Alex Avila, too, who has been starting daily and still went 1-for-3 to raise his average to .299 while also taking a walk.
Pretty much everything went fine in the game. Top of the lineup did well, middle of the lineup did well, bottom of the lineup did well. Detroit led 8-0 after Jhonny Peralta cleared the bases with a double in the fifth.
Credit Don Kelly for his hustle in the ninth. (Video) He made a nice running and sliding catch in doing his part to keep a 0 on the board in the ninth inning and help keep David Tokarz from worrying about run differential for another day.
I didn't even mention Miguel Cabrera stole a base! (Video evidence).
Magglio Ordonez made a nice play in the outfield, too, but we have no video evidence on that one sadly.
OTHER NEWS
In the post game Jim Leyland said Carlos Guillen would start in Saturday's game.