To Avoid Collapse, Tigers Need to Follow Verlander's Example

MINNEAPOLIS -- If the rest of the Tigers have as much heart as Justin Verlander, Detroit will hang on in the AL Central.

But they still have to prove it.

Oh, Zack Greinke may deserve the AL Cy Young Award. But he never had to pitch a game like this.

A packed house (largest crowd at the Metrodome since Opening Day). His team having lost eight of 11 to turn a 6 1/2-game lead into three. His offense unable to get a big hit off Twins right-hander Carl Pavano, who has tamed more Tigers this year than Siegfried and Roy combined.

Yet Verlander did absolutely everything he could, putting on as impressive a performance as there has been this season considering the circumstances.

And he lost.

The Tigers have to be hearing the pitter-patter of little feet (Twins, of course).

"I think everybody else," Minnesota's Jason Kubel said after his team climbed within two games of Detroit, "especially them, is starting to -- I wouldn't say get worried -- but know that we're here for real and trying to get this thing."

Verlander stayed expressionless throughout the game.

Then, after throwing his 128th pitch of the night 101 mph to break Kubel's bat, and seeing the ball drop into left field for a two-run single that put the Twins ahead, Verlander finally smiled.

One of those "You've got to be kidding me" smiles. Or "What else could go wrong."

"I'm not worried," manager Jim Leyland said, "because either you play good enough to win, or you don't. If we don't start getting some big hits and knocking some people in and hitting some in the gap with men on, we'll have a problem."

Verlander went into the eighth inning with a 2-1 lead and 108 pitches. And he dug deep for more.

After Denard Span's one-out single, Orlando Cabrera battled Verlander for nine pitches, fouling off full-count fastballs of 99, 98 and 97 mph.

Then he popped up a 98 mph fastball -- pitch No. 121 -- to left field, where defensive replacement Don Kelly lost the ball in the lights and the translucent roof for a double.

"I didn't take my eyes off it," said Kelly, who before yesterday had played 20 innings of defense in the Metrodome. "I didn't see it once it got above the lights.

"I take plenty of [practice] fly balls out there. I just happened to lose this one. ... It's [a] terrible [feeling]. Absolutely terrible."

(Said Kubel: "I don't understand why we play with the roof the same color as the baseball. I don't get it. It just makes no sense.")

Leyland went to the mound, and he could have brought in lefty Bobby Seay to face Joe Mauer. But Leyland instead told Verlander, "This is your game," and had him intentionally walk Mauer.

Up came Kubel, and down went the broken-bat hit, and there went Detroit's lead.

Told the pitch he hit was clocked at 101 mph, Kubel said, "It probably was."

Michael Cuddyer followed with a three-run homer off Brandon Lyon, and that was that.

Verlander declined to talk to the media.

"It's ridiculous," Cuddyer said of Verlander's endless reserve of velocity. "It's not fair. ... We scrapped it together, for sure.

"The guy's a stud. He is."

As Leyland said, the Tigers lost the game well before Kelly's miscue or Kubel's hit, when they got 11 hits (all singles) off Pavano in the first five innings and only two runs.

"We should have scored a lot of runs," Leyland said. "We didn't do it again.

"We didn't do much with our hits. We didn't get really big hits."

Detroit could use a win Sunday to stem the tide. And even then, it now looks like the division will be decided when Minnesota visits Comerica Park for four games, Sept. 28-Oct. 1.

Saturday showed us what Verlander is made of. The next 14 games will show us about his teammates.

"I said from the beginning of the season it was going to come down to the last week," Detroit center fielder Curtis Granderson said. "And sure enough, we're pacing ourselves to put ourselves right in that situation where it does come down to the last week."

He meant that as a positive spin. But it isn't.

"There's always pressure when you're on the top," Cuddyer said. "But they're still in the driver's seat. There's no doubt about that."

Actually, there is doubt about that.