Coming off of last night's crushing win to sweep Chicago in a game that perhaps made a huge statement about the rest of the AL Central race, Detroit had to make a quick turnaround for a day game at Cleveland. Three more good games and maybe, just maybe, Detroit can put the race away.
Mission accomplished in game one, in another very satisfying win. Doug Fister, who Detroit acquired after their negotiations to get Ubaldo Jimenez fell apart, outdueled Jimenez today in a battle of trading deadline starting pitcher acquisitions. Fister struck out a career high 13 in 8 innings pitched. He allowed 2 runs, 1 earned, and improved his record as a Tiger to 4-1. He's now 7-13 on the season and has won more games for Detroit in 5 weeks than he did with Seattle in over 3 months.
Detroit beat Jimenez for the second time since he was acquired, this time by a score of 4-2. Victor Martinez hit a 3-run homer off of Jimenez, his 9th of the season. It's the second homer that V-Mart has hit off of Jimenez in those two games.
Miguel Cabrera also drove in a run. Delmon Young was 2-4 and Ramon Santiago was 2-3 with a double.
Jose Valverde pitched a perfect 9th for his 41st save of the season. Detroit is now 14-4 since the first game of the last Cleveland series, when the Indians came to Detroit only 1.5 games back. Now Detroit is 7.5 games up, its largest lead of the season.
In one piece of bad news, it was announced that Brennan Boesch will be having surgery scheduled to repair a torn thumb ligament in the next few days. He's played only once since August 24th as the trainers worked to get him and the thumb through the rest of the season. It's become apparent that won't happen and the surgery will end his season.
Boesch's bat will certainly be missed. Delmon Young will certainly help fill that gap, but that means that Magglio Ordonez will be getting alot more at-bats. Maggs is hitting .375 over the last 3 weeks or so. Hopefully he can find some of his old magic for one final run with the Tigers.
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