Two nights. Two games. Two poor pitching performances. Two Tiger losses

The starting pitching has been the strength of the team this year, as starters have pitched a ton of quality starts. Not the last two nights though.

Last night, Max Scherzer easily had his worst outing of the season. He got battered by the Red Sox for 7 runs on 7 hits in 3 innings pitched. Detroit got blasted 14-1, and the game was even shortened by rain to 7.5 innings. Scherzer has lost 2 straight decisions and is 6-2 on the season. Alex Avila had the lone Tiger RBI.

Earlier tonight, Rick Porcello got smacked around for 6 runs on 6 hits in 3 innings pitched. He fell to 4-3 on the season.

Charlie Furbush kept Detroit in the game by pitching 5.2 innings of shutout 2 hit ball. He struck out 6 and hasn't give up a run in 8.2 innings of relief work this year. He may be making a strong claim to stay on the roster, if he can actually come out of the pen and get outs. Contrast that with Ryan Perry who gave up 4 more runs last night. He now has an ERA over 12 in 10 innings of work this season.

Detroit couldn't manage enough offense though. Jhonny Peralta hit his 8th homer of the season and had 2 RBIs. Miguel Cabrera had an RBI. But in general Detroit was baffled by Tim Wakefield and his knuckleball. They allowed 5 hits. Wakefield went 7 innings. He's 44 years old but still fluttering it up to the plate. The final was 6-3 Boston.