http://www.mlive.com/tigers/index.ssf/2011/06/tigers_justin_verlander_strike_1.html DETROIT -- National League hitters have had a difficult time figuring out Josh Collmenter this season. No one has been able to solve Justin Verlander in quite some time. Verlander struck out a career-high 14 batters and allowed just four hits hits in eight innings as the Tigers rolled to 6-0 victory Saturday night over the Arizona Diamondbacks. The Tigers scored four runs in the fourth inning on their way to handing the loss to Collmenter, a rookie who played previously for Homer High School and Central Michigan University. Mickey Lolich, the all-time strikeout leader among Tigers pitchers with 2,679, holds the franchise record for strikeouts in a game with 16. Verlander fell short of that, but he struck out the side in the eighth inning to reach 14 for the game. His previous career-high was 13, which he accomplished twice, most recently on July 29, 2009. The strikeout stats for Verlander were impressive: -- Verlander moved into 10th on the Tigers career strikeout list with his fifth strikeout of the game. That gave him 1,080 career strikeouts, one more than Bill Donovan. He finished the game with 1,089. -- Verlander had nine strikeouts while facing 18 batters through the first five innings. At that point, each Diamondbacks player had struck out in one of his first two at-bats. -- It was the third time in his past four starts that Verlander has had 10 more more strikeouts. The Diamondbacks put runners on second and third with no outs in the eighth, but Verlander (10-3) struck out the next three batters he faced. He threw just one fastball to Justin Upton, his third strikeout victim of the inning and 14th of the game, but it went for 100 mph. That fastball was Verlander's 116th pitch of the game. He left after the eighth inning, having thrown 119 pitches. Verlander issued just one walk and now has a 0.72 ERA in his past six starts with 51 strikeouts and just six walks during that span. Tigers manager Jim Leyland is always a bit concerned when his team faces a pitcher it hasn't seen before. Collmenter, with his quirky delivery and tough changeup, was an unknown to Tigers hitters and carried a 2.09 ERA into the game at Comerica Park. “He's a little bit different – a little bit funky, kind of,” Leyland said before the game. “We don't have anybody that's seen him. I don't like that. But that's the way it is.” Leyland noted that, heading into the game, left-handed hitters were hitting .224 against Collmenter, while right-handers were hitting just .155. “I hope my guys don't know that,” he joked. His guys didn't have much trouble in the fourth inning. The Tigers scored a run in the second inning on an RBI double by Alex Avila, then added four in the fourth. Miguel Cabrera and Victor Martinez got things going in the fourth with back-to-back singles with nobody out, and Jhonny Peralta made it 2-0 with a double into the corner in left. Avila then followed with a three-run home run to right field to make it 5-0. The Tigers scored a run in the sixth that was charged to Collmenter, who left with no outs and two runners on base. Those six runs matched a season-high for Collmenter, who allowed just seven runs – four earned – in 26 innings pitched during the month of May. Collmenter (4-4) gave up 10 hits, walked two and struck out four. It was the second sellout of the season for the Tigers, the first since the April 8 home opener. There were orange shirts throughout the stadium with “Collmenter” and his number “55” on the back of them. The support for Collmenter was clear when he received nice ovations from the crowd during pregame introductions and when he was removed from the game in the seventh inning.
