DETROIT -- When Max Scherzer is pitching well, the best team in baseball would have trouble beating him.
The worst team? They don't have a chance.
Scherzer dominated the hapless Astros on Monday night, allowing just three hits and a walk in eight shutout innings, and the Tigers won 2-0 for their sixth straight victory.
"There's a reason he won the Cy Young," Houston manager Bo Porter said. "We had a couple chances where we didn't execute the way we might like, but he deserves a lot of that credit. It's tough to do anything with that guy."
Scherzer has had at least seven strikeouts in each of his seven starts this season, including nine Monday night. He's now two away from Bob Feller and Pedro Martinez's American League-record of nine such outings at the beginning of a season.
"There are times when I'm definitely trying to strike guys out, and there are other times when it just happens," Scherzer said. "You don't try to strike a guy out every time, but you want to be aggressive early in the count. And if you get 0-2 or 1-2 counts, yeah, you are trying to get them."
Scherzer was only at 92 pitches through seven innings, but he wasn't letting himself think about getting the first complete game of his career.
"This game is too hard to let yourself start getting ahead of yourself," he said. "My job there was to get through the eighth inning and put up another zero."
He did, but it took 19 pitches and a little help from Alex Avila.
The Astros had runners on first and second with one out, and Porter sent them on a 3-2 pitch to Jose Altuve. Altuve, though, was badly fooled by Scherzer's changeup, and Avila fired to third, throwing out Marwin Gonzalez by 15 feet to end the inning.
"That was a huge play," Scherzer said. "Altuve always gets good at-bats against me and he's tough to strike out, but I was able to sequence him right and make that 3-2 changeup work.
"Alex made a great throw, and we got out of a situation where they were threatening."
That was Scherzer's 111th -- and last -- pitch of the game. Joe Nathan came on to pitch the ninth and got his own defensive boost from Avila.
Nathan walked leadoff hitter Dexter Fowler, but when he followed that with a pitch in the dirt to Jason Castro, Fowler broke for second base. That was a bad idea from the start, since the Astros needed two runs to tie. Avila made it worse by cleanly scooping the ball on one hop and throwing Fowler out.
Nathan quickly retired the next two batters, and the Tigers had picked up another victory.
"You definitely enjoy the winning streaks because you play 162 games, and if you don't enjoy this, you are going to just beat yourself up," Scherzer said. "Anytime you are on a streak like this, where the whole team is playing well, it's just great."
TOUGH HOMETOWN DEBUT
Astros reliever Anthony Bass, a Trenton native who played his college ball at Wayne State, came within one pitch of having a fairy-tale outing in his first game at Comerica Park. Replacing Cosart for the eighth, Bass retired Torii Hunter and Miguel Cabrera, and had a 2-2 count on Victor Martinez.
Needing one more strike for a 1-2-3 inning against the heart of the Tigers order, with his mom watching from the stands, Bass threw two more good pitches, but Martinez was able to foul them off. The seventh pitch of the at-bat, though, was a hanging slider that Martinez slammed into the right-field stands for his fifth homer of the season.
Austin Jackson followed with a single before Bass ended his Detroit debut by retiring Nick Castellanos.
ROSTER MOVE
After the game, the Tigers optioned reliever Jose Ortega to Toledo, making space on the 25-man roster for Robbie Ray. Ray, acquired from Washington in the Doug Fister trade, will make his major-league debut as Tuesday's starting pitcher.
AVOIDING TRAFFIC
The Tigers announced Monday night that the game against the Royals on Sept. 8 will be played at 4:08 instead of the previously scheduled 7:08.
The Lions open the season on the same day on Monday Night Football, and starting games simultaneously at Comerica Park and Ford Field would have created huge traffic and parking issues.
