"Justin Verlander did some amazing work to get out of a jam in the eighth inning.

Miguel Cabrera made a winner out of Verlander in the ninth.

Cabrera hit a two-out, two-run home run in the ninth inning Saturday night to give the Detroit Tigers a 4-2 victory against the Chicago White Sox.

The home run came on a 1-2 count and broke a 2-2 tie that had stood since the fifth inning.

"Two-out hits are golden, and when you hit it over the fence they're really golden," Tigers manager Jim Leyland said. "That was a nice win for us."

Verlander got out of a jam in the eighth inning in impressive fashion to set up Cabrera's heroics. The White Sox put runners on the corners and had Carlos Quentin, who has 14 home runs, at the plate with one out.

Verlander appeared frustrated after his 2-2 pitch was called for a ball, but he followed that up with a 100-mph fastball - on his 109th pitch of the night - that Quentin took for strike three.

"I felt like it was a strike," Verlander said of the 2-2 pitch. "He called it a ball. It's such a big spot. Your adrenaline's really going, so it's really hard to kind of bottle that in and turn your back on it. I said something, and I probably shouldn't have. ...

"But I was able to step to the back of the mound, take a second, take a deep breath and just reset and say, 'OK, let's make my pitch now.' "

Leyland stressed the importance of the Quentin at-bat.

"That was a huge out," he said. "That wasn't a very comfortable situation."

Verlander then fielded a hard grounder from A.J. Pierzynski while falling down on the mound and threw Pierzynski out at first to send the game to the ninth inning tied at 2-all."