Verlander was roughed up for seven earned runs in five innings of work against the Toronto Blue Jays his last time out. After retiring Danny Santana on a groundout, Brian Dozier poked a seeing-eye single into right field to score Rosario. “Tonight was much better than last time”.
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It took him all of two pitches to hit his third homer of the season, turning around a 1-0 fastball from Twins right-hander Mike Pelfrey and putting it in the left-field seats. “You wonder if that’s going to cost you in the long run”. The Tigers and Twins will continue their four-game series today at Target Field. The Rays scored two runs on RBI groundouts in the sixth to take the lead, adding a run in the seventh on a solo home run by Brandon Guyer.
Dozier’s RBI single in the eighth chased Verlander, who had the best outing of his truncated season.
Trevor May (6-7) pitched a scoreless ninth inning to pick up the win in relief.
Closing in on the All Star break the Detroit Tigers are in a far worse position then they could have ever imagined after coming out of the gate with a 15-8 record in April.
After allowing seven runs in the ninth in Friday’s game, I don’t trust the Tigers confidence heading into this matchup on a quick turnaround.
In the fourth, Detroit got a pair of runners on in front of Cespedes, who bashed Santana’s 69th pitch of the night into the Tigers’ bullpen in left center, extending the lead to 5-0.
That night, a Twins team on its way to 92 losses pulled within one run against Soria, but Dozier struck out and Kurt Suzuki grounded out as they fell 5-4.
Not only is Friday’s game important for the standings, but it is also vital that right-hander Justin Verlander gets back on track.
After missing out on an All-Star nomination earlier in the day, Dozier had two hits and four RBIs, and hit his second game-winning homer of the week.
Mike Pelfrey started for Minnesota and gave up four runs on eight hits. Price won six of his last seven outings against the Twins with a 1.87 ERA over that span.
Marc Krauss went 1-for-3 in his second start at first base for the Tigers.
For the second time in five days, Dozier’s teammates spilled from the dugout and mobbed him at home plate as he completed the sweetest trot in the game.
Even with just a 43-41 record the under achieving cats still have one of the strongest starting lineups in the AL, leading the league in batting average (.281), hits (824), and in OBP (.339), and are ahead of both the Twins and Royals in every major hitting statistical category.
In Chicago, pinch hitter J.B. The southpaw struck out eight in the win.
After a leadoff single by left fielder Yoenis Cespedes, designated hitter Victor Martinez homered over the wall in right field, giving Detroit a 2-0 lead. Those three and Ian Kinsler all had multi-hit games and were a combined 9-for-18.
Alex Rodriguez hit his 55th career home run against the Red Sox.
The Twins are fresh off a sweep of the Baltimore Orioles and now are 4 ½ games out of first place in the division, behind the Royals.
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Through eight innings, the Tigers were in full control.
