From the beginning of the season, opening day, I said that the Detroit Tigers will win the World Series, for the following reasons, we made it there last year, and we want redemption. We added free agent Torii Hunter, who is not only a great defender & hitter, but he's a wonderful clubhouse presence -- add that to the return of Victor Martinez (who missed all of 2012) & a full season of Anibal Sanchez as part of the rotation, with an contract extension of Justin Verlander... I felt like we were golden. I had the Tigers over the Nationals, but as we know the Nats would under-achieve and not live up to their expectations.
By mid-season we would no longer have the headache of Jose Valverde, Joaquin Benoit would settle in as the closer, and we also added Jose Iglesias (which made our defense so much-better) and Jose Veras to the bullpen. So despite the fact that our lineup cooling off, basically due to the injury that has been affecting Miguel Cabrera & the fact that we got no-hit by the lowly Marlins on the last game of the season -- I still loved our chances.
Our first round opponent was once again the Oakland Athletics, I really wanted to pick this team to win the A.L. West, but at the last second I changed my mind (should have kept with my gut instinct). They proved they were no fluke, and proved they can deal with the ups & downs of a baseball season -- to be in the hunt all season, after coming out of nowhere the season before is a tough task, and just shows why Oakland was no joke having to deal with division contender Texas once again. So if last season went all five games, I knew this one would indeed go five (and it did) -- I feel this team is better than last year's edition as well.
My brother Jared and I walked around Wal-Mart one day while shopping and talked about the up-coming series, he brought up (Oakland Manager) Bob Melvin's decision to pick Sonny Gray to start in Game 2. I told Jared I felt it was actually a good move, here you got a struggling Tigers offense, and you have to face a young pitcher you never have seen before, many cases this actually favors the rookie, and there has been plenty of cases where a rookie was placed in a high-pressure situation -- one that comes to mind is when the 2006 St. Louis Cardinals started rookie Anthony Reyes against my Tigers in the World Series. Speaking of Bob Melvin, the D-Backs & Mariners must be sick to their stomachs to let him go, I personally think he's an excellent manager and if Oakland is smart, they keep him there as long as possible.
The stinker of the series was the fact that both me and my brother both had to work that night, and it drove us nuts that Major League Baseball won't learn from the NFL and start their baseball games earlier, 9:30 for Game 1 & 9:30 for Game 2 -- the first game I could actually watch in full was Game 3 and that was on Becky & I's seventh wedding anniversary. So I took the radio to work, the first game we won 3-0, got all three runs in the first. The next game was Game 2, or otherwise the game the world or Baseball got to meet Sonny Gray, like I said before I felt it was a good move by Melvin, seeing the numbers in his brief appearances this season, but no one knew he was going to be off-the-charts that night. Justin Verlander also had his A-game on (has been rolling since beginning of September), checking on the game at the break-table (at work) became excruciating with a 0-0 game, and the more it dragged on without us scoring, I knew it favored the home team very much. Eventually Stephen Vogt smacked a single through for the walk-off win in the bottom of the 9th off of Rick Porcello. After I watched the highlights the next morning, I knew and predicted that Justin Verlander will be saved for Game 5.
Game 3 was a nightmare on the most part, I tried to watch it at home before the wife and I go celebrate our marriage, but the cable service was being a pain in the ass, so we decided to go to a bar downtown where we had drinks for our first date. The Tigers would lose 6-3, Anibal Sanchez allowed three home runs.
The next day was Game 4, and I happened to have that day off too. It was not looking good through four innings, as we trailed 3-0 entering the bottom of the 5th; the wife started giving me the "Oh.. I'm sorry honey, there's always next year speech". Our team at this point has not scored a run for 21 innings, and then Jhonny Peralta came up, smacking a three-run HR to tie the ballgame. Jim Leyland would later bring Max Scherzer in for relief, in which I felt was a clever move, stupid media was questioning why he did start Scherzer, because we have an excellent pitcher for Game #4 in Doug Fister. This is the thing with the Tiger, you can try to match up with us the best you can, but when you have a pitcher as legit as Fister who can be an ace on the majority of the ballclubs in the MLB, you know you got it made. Once they wrapped Game 4 up, there was plenty of reason for Tigers fan to sigh in relief, because we knew we had the series with Verlander going to the mound in Game 5.
Verlander almost pitched a no-no, having it broke up in the late 7th Inning, he was on like he was in Game 2, and was setting historic marks. He set a major league record of 30 scoreless innings (dating back to last season's playoffs) against a single-opponent, breaking a mark that was held by Christy Mathewson (of 28 innings) against the Philadelphia Athletics. Verlander also became the second pitcher (the first right-hander) in MLB history with 10 or more strikeouts & zero runs allowed in back-to-back starts, joining Sandy Koufax; Koufax accomplished this in his Game 5 & Game 7 starts against the 1965 Minnesota Twins.
Next is Boston, as Boston took care of the Tampa Bay Rays, 3 games-to-1. The final four teams in the MLB playoffs are the Red Sox, Tigers, Cardinals & Dodgers; which is all fitting, because I believe many baseball fans will agree these four teams were mean't to finish as the final four -- since they were the four teams that stood out, especially in the second-half.
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