You know it is a weird year when the Yankees at Tigers is a marquee game. Detroit started out the season on fire and quickly rocketed to a first place lead in the Central Division. However, this week has shown us that perhaps the Tigers are not for real after all—shocker. Sure, the Tigers quickly dispatched sub-par teams like Kansas City, Minnesota, Seattle, Oakland and so forth, but against top caliber, they still have a lot ot prove.

Don’t look now, but Detroit appears to be freefalling and is now only 1.5 games ahead of the White Sox in the Central Division. Thanks to the Yankees coming to town, Detroit has lost 4 row and appears to be cooled off. In fact, if you look at the season, here’s their record against teams above .550: 3-3. Ok, maybe that’s not fair. Aside from NY, who destroyed them, they have played recent series against Cleveland, Kansas City (4 games), Minnesota, Cincinnati and Baltimore. Not exactly a stellar lot of teams there.

Today’s pitchers are Chien-Ming Wang for the Yankees and Justin Verlander for the Tigers. Verlander is the reason why Detroit is favored today (-136). He has an overall ERA of 2.55. Impressed? I sure am not. Here’s why. In all of his starts this year, he has faced one strong team, the White Sox. In that outing, he gave up 7 hits, 7 runs, one walk and two home runs in just 2 and 2/3rds innings pitched. Don’t believe me? Here is a listing of the other teams he faced: Texas (start of the year), Oakland, Seattle, Minnesota, LA Angels, Baltimore, Minnesota again, Cleveland. Do any of these teams remind you of the Yankees? Pretty much every one of these teams has a losing record.

Texas should not count since that was the first outing of the year and they were putting things together. Pitchers usually have an edge early on. Against these weaker teams he has averaged 6 hits per game. It would be something if he can hold the Yankees to 6 hits today. Today’s game could very well become a hit fest. Speaking of scoring, the under/over on this game is 9. The over is -120 and might be a great play since Wang has shown tendencies of giving up many hits and runs also.