Tigers 10, Royals 1: Ian Kinsler homered among his three hits and drove in three runs while Justin Verlander pitched into the eighth inning as visiting Detroit routed Kansas City in the opener of their key divisional series.

J.D. Martinez went 3-for-4 with a run scored while Eugenio Suarez added two hits and two RBIs for the Tigers, who ended their two-game skid and moved 1 1/2 games ahead of the second-place Royals in the American League Central. Verlander (14-12) allowed one run on seven hits as Detroit improved to 12-5 against Kansas City this season.

The Tigers silenced the sold-out crowd with three runs on five hits in the first inning against Jason Vargas (11-10), who surrendered base hits to seven of the first 11 batters he faced. Vargas yielded five runs on nine hits over 3 1/3 innings in his shortest outing of the season as Kansas City dropped to the second wild-card spot, a half-game ahead of Seattle.

Kinsler doubled in a run in the fourth to push the lead the 5-0 before the Tigers broke open the game with five in the fifth. Nick Castellanos and Suarez began the rally with back-to-back RBI singles and Kinsler capped the outburst with a two-run homer into the left-field seats off Louis Coleman.

Kinsler scored twice and came within a triple of hitting for the cycle while Victor Martinez went 2-for-4 with an RBI and two runs scored for Detroit, which finished with 19 hits. Verlander, who entered the game with a 6.00 ERA over his previous six starts, was charged with a run in the eighth after Johnny Giavotella belted a leadoff double and later scored on Jayson Nix’s sacrifice fly off Evan Reed.

GAME NOTEBOOK: LF Norichika Aoki went 2-for-3 and has 13 hits in his last 17 at-bats for Kansas City, which dropped to 3-5 on its 10-game homestand. … Detroit C James McCann recorded his first major-league hit with a leadoff single in the fourth and finished 2-for-5 with two runs scored while starting in place of Alex Avila, who remains out due to concussion symptoms. … Royals manager Ned Yost replaced most of his starters before the start of the sixth inning with his team trailing 10-0.