The Defending American League Champion Detroit Tigers beat the Yankees tonight 8-5 behind Carlos Guillen’s first inning grand slam and a good, if not great, pitching performance by Justin Verlander, who’s my Tiger.

The victory puts the Defending American League Champion Detroit Tigers back into sole possession of first place in the AL Central and knocks Jason Giambi’s team out of the wild card lead.

It also brings the Defending American League Champion Detroit Tigers’ record to an even .500 over the last 10 games. Ordinarily, that wouldn’t be anything to celebrate, but the Defending American League Champion Detroit Tigers have been down for the last month or so.

They are now a quarter of the way through what’s probably the toughest, most important 12-game stretch of the season (6 vs. CLE, 6 vs. NYY). Sure, it’s only 3 games, but they’ve been able to pull out two victories and get a strong pitching performance in the loss. Optimistic signs, all.

My dad thinks they only need to go 7-5 during this stretch and he’s probably right. I’d very much like to see 8-4.

Go Defending American League Champion Detroit Tigers.