DETROIT—Justin Verlander struck out A.J. Pierzynski and headed toward the dugout, and his team’s head trainer saved the ball for him. It was his 1,000th strikeout.Verlander pitched seven impressive innings through a misty rain, and Ryan Raburn drove in four runs to lead the Tigers over the White Sox 9-3 on Friday night. Verlander reached his milestone with his eighth strikeout of the game – against his final batter before he left after seven innings.Verlander (2-2) allowed four hits, including two home runs by Carlos Quentin and another by Paul Konerko. He didn’t walk a batter.Raburn hit a two-run homer for the Tigers, who have won seven straight over the White Sox.The Sox have lost eight of nine overall. Mark Buehrle (1-2) went 5 2/3 innings, allowing six runs and eight hits. He struck out five and walked two. Detroit scored two runs each in the second and third, and Verlander retired the first 11 batters before Quentin hit his first of two long home runs, an estimated 427 feet over the left-field wall.Verlander breezed through spring training with a 0.96 ERA, determined to avoid another rough start after enduring difficult Aprils in past years. He threw 117 pitches Friday, laboring only after Detroit had taken a big lead.The start of the game was delayed 12 minutes because of rain, but that didn’t seem to bother Verlander. He struck out Juan Pierre to begin the night, and Detroit broke through early against Buehrle. After Miguel Cabrera singled in the second, Jhonny Peralta hit a triple past a diving Alex Rios in right-center. Peralta scored on Brennan Boesch’s sacrifice fly to make it 2-0.Raburn’s homer in the third doubled the lead.Rain was clearly visible up near the light fixtures in the third and remained throughout the rest of the game, although it was never hard enough for another delay.Alex Avila’s RBI double in the fourth made it 5-1, and Avila doubled and scored on a single by Casper Wells in the sixth.Quentin led off the seventh with his sixth homer of the season, this one a 409-footer. Konerko followed with a shot to left that might have gone just as far had it not hit the pole to make it 6-3. Verlander recovered and eventually struck out the last two batters of the inning, getting Pierzynski swinging for No. 1,000.Joaquin Benoit pitched the eighth for the Tigers, and Detroit added three more runs in the bottom of that inning on an RBI double by Wells and a two-run single by Raburn.

NOTES—Although the save situation was long gone, closer Jose Valverde worked the ninth. It was Quentin’s 11th career multihomer game….Cabrera made a diving stop on Omar Vizquel’s grounder behind first base and flipped the ball to Verlander to end the top of the sixth…..Quentin has 24 hits this season, 17 of which went for extra bases.