Miguel Cabrera was 2-3 with his 29th home run of the season.and 2 RBIs. He raised his batting average to .341 to pass Boston's Adrian Gonzalez for the AL lead with 3 Tigers games to play.
Victor Martinez hit his 12th homer of the season, a 3-run shot that pushed him to 101 RBIs, joining Cabrera at the 100 RBI plateau. Don Kelly hit a 3-run home run, his 7th of the season (I think I'd credited his last homer as 7 but it was actually 6). Jhonny Peralta added his 20th homer of the season.
Delmon Young drove in a run. Austin Jackson was 2-5, and Magglio Ordonez added a hit to extend his hitting streak to 17 games. Detroit won 10-6.
Brad Penny labored his way to his 11th win. He allowed 3 runs on 5 hits in 5.1 innings pitched. He was victim to 1 poor inning once again. He leveled his record at 11-11 in his final regular season start.
This could be Penny's last start as a Tiger, since he's likely to get bumped from the shortened Tigers post-season rotation and isn't expected to re-sign for next season.
He wasn't great, but he stayed healthy and pitched 187.2 innings this season, his most since 2007. So he did add stability to the rotation and didn't wear out the bullpen too badly overall since he usually made it 6 innings at least. They didn't sign him to an expensive contract and only expected him to provide stability to the 4 spot in the rotation and if they were lucky catch lightning in a bottle. They didn't get lightning but they at least got a spark. He gave them more than Armando Galarraga would have likely.
It's not going to be a smooth transition to one of the young arms in waiting for next year, as was hoped. Phil Coke looks like he's going to be a bullpen ace rather than a starter. He was too poor in his turn as an early season starter and too sharp when they moved him back to the pen. Jacob Turner doesn't seem ready yet. Andy Oliver is walking many batters in Triple A so he doesn't seem ready. I doubt Penny would take less money to re-sign. He probably wants a raise and I doubt Detroit will do that.
In other news David Pauley surrendered a 3-run homer. His ERA is nearly 5 since he came over, after being right around 2 as a Mariner. It doesn't seem like he'll be a factor in the playoffs other than in a mop up role if at all. That's probably okay with Coke, Alburquerque, Benoit, and Valverde all providing solid work, with Daniel Schlereth and Ryan Perry being pretty solid more often than not lately, though I wouldn't bring either in with the bases loaded and one out and the World Series on the line at this point.
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