Justin Verlander is dominant again to win his 24th game.

Verlander pitched 8 innings of shutout 3-hit ball to improve his record to 24-5 on the season.  He's now won 13 straight starts.  He'll get one chance to win 25 I'd say.  Other than Bob Welch winning 27 games for Oakland during their late 80's/early 90's little dynasty during the Canseco and McGwire Bash Brothers Days, I can't think of any other pitchers exceeding 24 wins.  I recall Roger Clemens and Dwight Gooden both going 24-4 but nothing else better than that other than Welch.

Detroit was being no-hit until the top of the 6th.  Austin Jackson broke that up with a solo home run, his 10th of the year, to dead center field. It wasn't a cheapie - it went over the 400 foot sign.   Jackson ended up being 2-4 on the game with 2 runs scored.  That's good because his bat has cooled off again after he went on a 5 or 6 tear that pushed his batting average over .260. It' s now back below .250 again.  They need him to help fuel the offense if they're going to make some serious noise in October.

Brandon Inge had a pinch-hit RBI double.  Ramon Santiago added an insurance run by executing a suicide squeeze in the 9th inning on a very tough high and away pitch to bunt.  It looks like Oakland detected the squeeze after the pitcher started his motion and he tried to adjust the pitch to something impossible to bunt to either get a popup, a foul ball, or a chance to tag out the runner, but Santiago got it down.

Jose Valverde locked down the 3-0 victory.  He closed out the 9th for his 46th save of the season.  He now has 48 straight dating back to the end of last season.  That gives him sole possession of the third longest consecutive save streak in baseball history.

Only Flash Gordon, with 54 straight in 1998-99 and Eric Gagne's unreal streak of 84 straight for the Dodgers from 2002-2004 have been longer.

These games are still important.  Detroit holds a 1 game lead over Texas right now.  Keeping that lead would give them home field advantage over the wild card winner out of the AL East.  Boston's lead in that department has been trimmed to two as Tampa Bay completed winning 3 out of 4 against them in a weekend series today.  Detoit is 2 games back of the Yankees for the American League's best record, which would give them outright home field advantage until the World Series.