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Verlander's pitching keeps Tigers sizzling

Posted on: Thursday, 18 May 2006, 00:10 CDT

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Rookie Justin Verlander pitched eight shutout innings to give the Detroit Tigers a 2-0 win over the Minnesota Twins on Wednesday, their sixth straight American League win.

Vance Wilson hit a two-run homer in the bottom of the eighth inning to break a scoreless tie and help Detroit improve to 26-13, tied for the best record in the major leagues.

It was Wilson's first home run of the season and just the 21st of the catcher's career.

"That's my first game-winning homer since probably Little League," Wilson told reporters.

Verlander (5-3) allowed just six hits and get the ball in plays, allowing no walks and failing to record a strikeout as the Tigers continue their early season domination of the Twins.

"That's usually not my style of pitching," Verlander told reporters. "But they were aggressive on the fastball.

"They were putting them in play, just not very solid most of the night. It worked well for me. I'll take no strikeouts, no walks, no runs anytime."

Detroit is 5-0 against the Twins in Detroit this season, out-scoring them 42-5.

Todd Jones came on in the ninth and allowed a hit and a walk but closed out the game for his 11th save of the season.

Johan Santana (4-4) allowed just the two runs on four hits with 12 strikeouts and one walk and was virtually un-hittable until the eighth, when Chris Shelton led off with a walk and with one out Wilson drilled his homer over the left field fence.

HARD-LUCK LOSS

It was a hard-luck loss for Santana, whose four-game winning streak was snapped despite a season-high in strikeouts.

Carlos Guillen had two of the four hits the Tigers managed in the game off Santana.

The Twins slipped to 17-23 and are buried in fourth place in the AL Central, nine games behind the Tigers and defending World Series champions the Chicago White Sox, who are tied for first.

In New York, Jorge Posada drove in a pair of runs as the Yankees moved into a first-place tie in the AL East with a 4-3 win over the Texas Rangers.

New York (23-15) is now tied with Boston for the lead after the Red Sox lost 4-3 in Baltimore.

Posada had an RBI single in the first and fifth innings after a walk-off homer completed a comeback from a 9-0 deficit to give the Yankees a wild 14-13 win on Tuesday.

Bernie Williams and Robinson Cano drove in the other New York runs and Chien-Ming Wang pitched eight solid innings.

Wang (4-1) allowed three runs, two earned, on six hits with three strikeouts and one walk before Mariano Rivera pitched the ninth for his eighth save.

Kameron Loe (2-4) allowed four runs on nine hits over five innings and was the loser. Gary Matthews Jr. hit a two-run homer for Texas.

(Writing by Roger Lajoie in Toronto)

Source: REUTERS

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