It has been a while since I have blogged about the Tigers, but today just feels right with Detroit advancing to the ALCS for the second year in a row. I am glad that the work week has been slow because it allowed me to stay up until the wee hours of the morning watching some really good baseball.
I have been saying all season that even though the regular season record was disappointing for this year's Tiger team, if they could just get into the playoffs they would be a very tough out. Oakland found that out the hard way, which is a little disappointing because the Athletics had an unbelievable season. If Detroit failed to make the playoffs, Oakland would have been my rooting interest.
I want to take a look at the series as a whole and try to think of what we can expect moving forward against either the Evil Empire or the new kids on the block. The strength of the Oakland baseball team was their starting pitching, and I would definitely say the young guns lived up to that billing over this last week. The problem for them was, Detroit's was just better. People, do you understand just how good the starters were in these 5 games? For a roster built on scoring 6 runs a game, it turned out to be better at giving up 2 or less a game. The 4 pitchers combined to pitch 34.2 innings and gave up just 6 runs, 5 of them earned. That is a 1.30 ERA, for an entire playoff series! Of course Justin Verlander is the leader of this group, but I was impressed with the 3 other guys as well. We really didn't know what to expect from any of them, and I would say that 6 runs in 5 starts is pretty dang good.
The offense definitely struggled against the A's. It could be a testament to how good their starting pitchers are, but I think some of the blame falls on the 9 guys in with the old English D on their helmets. The approaches to many at bats were subpar, and I would like to see better in the games to come. Miggy and Biggy combined to go 9-41 (.220) with 1 home run and 3 RBI. Just looking at those numbers, it seems like a miracle that the Tigers are even moving on. These guys have carried the offense all season, they have to step up in the next series. It seemed there were multiple times that the Tigers were on the doorstep of breaking the game open, and knocking out the A's pitcher early. However, they failed to convert with RISP and took some bad cuts to end potential rallies.
The bullpen looks extremely shaky still, but this was to be expected. It is probably the biggest weakness of this team. The relievers pitched an even 10 innings against Oakland, but allowed 5 runs to score. I honestly do not feel safe with any of them coming into the game at this point. Benoit is not locating well at all, Valverde is barely breaking 90 mph and forgot about his split-finger, Coke is allowing right handed hitters to hit .390 against him, and Alburquerque is walking almost 1 per inning. I am just going to expect each starter to go 8 or 9, that seems realistic.
I could dive into the defense not tripping over itself, or Leyland's in-game decisions, but I want to vent about something that bothered me even more than the over-baked spud closer blowing game 4. Was anyone else annoyed with the announcers after game 3? It would have been sooner for me, but luckily MLB showed game 2 on MLB Network only so I had to listen to Dan & Jim. It could have been that getting 4 or 5 hours a sleep the two nights before played a factor, but last night I wanted to drop kick my tv to put me out of my misery (and if you know me, you know that I happen to like my tv). However, I came up with a better plan (thanks to the engineer in me), I turned the clowns on mute and listened to Dan & Jim with the 5 second radio delay and watched what happened on tv. It was amazing how much it calmed me down. Yes, we all know how great of a story Oakland was this year, but I don't need to hear about it between every pitch. Yes, the umpire called some pitches strikes that were out of the zone, but the zone was consistent for both teams in ALL 5 games. Also, since when is it considered "chasing a fast ball" when it halves the plate and crosses at your belt? If anything, that was a location mistake by JV last night. I get annoyed very quickly with baseball announcers, mainly because they have so much time to fill during a 3.5 hour baseball game in a playoff series with the same 2 teams every night. But, this does not give them an excuse to be completely mis-informed about my Detroit Tigers. They are getting paid for talking, shouldn't they at least be expected to talk about facts? All I can say is I hope we get assigned the A-team of announcers for the ALDS, or else Dan & Jim are going to be getting another listener very soon.
Looking ahead, the Tigers will either play tomorrow in New York or home against Baltimore. I have to admit that getting home field advantage shapes up perfectly for Detroit's rotation. Games 1 and 2 at home with Fister and likely Scherzer taking the mound, and then follow it up with JV in game 3 on the road. That looks pretty intimidating for opposing lineups. However, if we get to play the Yankees for the third playoffs in a row, we would have Justin still pitching game 3 when we come home to Detroit. Does anyone else feel pretty confident with Verlander at Comerica? Leyland really went with the matchups against Oakland (Berry and Avila out against lefties), but I would at least like to see Avila in the lineup more. Yes, Laird hit better against lefties this year, but Avila is our franchise catcher and I want to see him behind the plate every game. Other than this, I doubt the lineups will change much from what we saw this last week. All I know is that I am going to enjoy the remaining October baseball that the Tigers get to play in 2012. Let's go Tigers, and eat 'em up!
