Josh Tomlin cruised through the five innings, not allowing any runs, and not really ever allowing the Tigers to get anything started. He had good movement on his pitches and had his usual pin point control. But he wasn't striking anybody out, and was getting most of his outs on flyballs. Then in the bottom of the sixth, he allowed a two run homerun to Austin Jackson right after Ryan Raburn singled. He got out of the inning, and then started the seventh with only 85 pitches. He got the first two outs, but then gave up consecutive homeruns to Alex Avila and Jhonny Peralta.
Max Scherzer was impressive tonight. He went seven innings, giving up five hits while walking one and striking out six. The only run he gave up was when Carlos Santana scored on a wild pitch. The inning should have been over already though, because with two outs Lonnie Chisenhall hit a ground ball to first baseman Miguel Cabrera, who then stumbled and threw a wild toss over to Scherzer who was covering the base, and pulled him off. The play was rules a hit, but I think that it should have been an error on Cabrera. The Indians lineup contained 8 left handed or switch hitters against Scherzer, in an effort to neutralize Scherzer's slider. Scherzer used his changeup more than I've ever seen tonight, and it was a good pitch for him. He threw it often, and kept it in the bottom of the strike zone. Scherzer's uses a max-effort delivery, and it looked like his arm slot would vary from pitch to pitch between a three quarters delivery and a delivery only slightly above sidearm. I don't know how Scherzer keeps control of his pitches throwing like that, but he's walking only 2.7 batters per nine innings this year.
Detroit is now 2.5 games ahead of the Indians, and it looks like Chicago is going to lose at the moment, so they'll be five games back. Game two of the series is tomorrow and matches David Huff against Doug Fister in a game I think that they should and have to win.
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