Newsday (N.Y.): Dominant Justin Verlander propels Tigers to ALCS

By Art Spander
Special to Newsday

OAKLAND, Calif. — By the time Justin Verlander was tired, it didn't matter. Not to the Detroit Tigers, who had enough of his near-perfection to win another playoff series. Not to the Oakland A's, who saw too much of him again.

Verlander didn't allow a baserunner until a one-out walk in the sixth and didn't allow a hit until a two-out single in the seventh Thursday night, pitching Detroit to a 3-0 win over the A's in Game 5 of their best-of-five American League Division Series.

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Copyright © 2013 Newsday. All rights reserved.

Newsday (N.Y.): A's will start rookie Sonny Gray instead of Bartolo Colon in Game 5 of ALDS

By Art Spander
Special to Newsday

OAKLAND — Haunted by the past, the A's contend they are thinking only of the present, Thursday night's deciding Game 5 of the American League Division Series against Detroit at O.co Coliseum.

The A's, as many predicted, will start rookie Sonny Gray, 23, who pitched eight shutout innings in the second game of the series. Oakland skipped 40-year-old veteran Bartolo Colon.

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Copyright © 2013 Newsday. All rights reserved.

Newsday (N.Y.): Stephen Vogt, Sonny Gray help A's even series with Tigers

By Art Spander
Special to Newsday

OAKLAND, Calif. — It was an hour after rookie catcher Stephen Vogt had taken a pie to the face and a bucket of Gatorade down his back. O.co Coliseum already was being converted to football for Sunday night's Chargers-Raiders game.

The Athletics were packing and scrambling, headed for a red-eye to Detroit, where Monday, almost too quickly, they will meet the Tigers again.

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Copyright © 2013 Newsday. All rights reserved.

A’s: Too many strikeouts, not enough runs

By Art Spander

OAKLAND — No tarps on the upper deck. Revelation. No runs for most of the game. Ruination. The O.Co Coliseum could barely hold the excitement. Detroit’s Max Scherzer had very little trouble holding the Oakland A’s.

The game was everything it was supposed to be, a matchup of two of baseball’s best teams, a matchup of two of baseball’s best pitchers. “You figure the runs were going to be stingy,” said Tigers manager Jim Leyland, “and they were.”

Scherzer, the major leagues’ only 20-game winner during the regular season (he was 21-3), wasn’t at all stingy with strikeouts. He recorded 11. His backups, Drew Smyly and Joaquin Benoit, added five more.

When a team strikes out 16 times in any game, especially one in the postseason, it’s not going to win.

And in Game 1 of the best-of-five American League Division Series on Friday night, the A’s did not, losing 3-2 to the Tigers, who scored all their runs in the first inning.

Oakland’s 40-year-old starter, Bartolo Colon, couldn’t retire any of the game’s first three batters, giving up a double to Austin Jackson, hitting Torii Hunter with a pitch and then allowing a single by Miguel Cabrera.

What an awful way to begin for 48,401 fans, the largest baseball crowd in Northern California since a Giants-A's game in 2004 in Oakland drew more than 52,000. That was before the A’s had the absurd idea of covering seats in the upper deck and so-called Mount Davis, to make people believe, ostrich fashion, that those seats didn’t exist.

In last year’s playoffs, the tarps stayed on. This time, wisely, management opened up the place, and the people filled it. Unfortunately, except for a Yoenis Cespedes monster two-run homer in the bottom of the seventh, the crowd had no reason to do much than chant every now and then, “Let’s go Oakland.”

Pitching wins, especially in the postseason — yes, there are exceptions, such as the Red Sox and Pirates on Friday — and for the Tigers and Scherzer, pitching won. Now, Detroit follows tonight with Justin Verlander, last season’s Cy Young Award winner.

“We tend to strikeout some,” said A’s manager Bob Melvin. Some? How about a lot? 

The trouble with a strikeout is it does nothing for the offense, doesn’t move a runner, doesn’t force a fielder to make a play that he may botch, doesn’t get a guy home from third with one out. Think of it. Of the 27 outs made by the A’s, half were on strikeouts.

“We’ve been a little bit on and off with that over the course of the season,” conceded Melvin. “But Scherzer is a strikeout guy. He’s a swing-and-miss guy ... He has a gap (a differential in velocity) between his fastball and his two off-speed (pitchers). He can pitch up and down, which he did.”

Scherzer insisted that every game was the same to him, that it was no big deal he was chosen for the first game of the playoffs. Leyland believed otherwise.

“He was thrilled to get Game 1,” said the manager, who tends to be wonderfully forthright. “He was locked in all night. He was awful determined. I think it meant a lot to him, even though he said it didn’t matter which game he pitched. And he responded like we expected him to respond.”

Mixing fastballs, change-ups and curves, keeping the A’s guessing when they weren’t lurching.

“You go on your instincts,” said Scherzer. “Today we noticed my fastball seemed pretty good, and my change-up seemed pretty good, so early in the game we featured those two pitches a lot.”

Then, contradicting his manager, Scherzer said, “I don’t get caught up in the hoopla, worry about where I’m pitching or if I’m pitching Game 1 or Game 5. When you’re pitching against the A’s, you have to bring your game. And tonight I was able to pitch effectively and pitch well against their left-handed hitters, and that’s the reason why I had success tonight.”

It was a righthanded batter, Cespedes, only a few days ago a doubtful starter because of shoulder soreness, who ended Scherzer’s shutout and the despair among the A’s partisans.

“It got to 2-2,” said Scherzer of Cespedes’ at-bat in the seventh. “And I didn’t know what pitch to go with, and I thought if I went with my fastball I could make him go away (hit the ball to right). The pitch caught too much of the plate, and he took it deep, and that’s just something that happens.

“It’s baseball. It’s pitching, and you move on. From there I was able to settle down and get three big outs in that situation. The crowd was roaring, and the crowd was on their feet, and to get those outs was big, because I was then able to pass it on to the rest of the (bull)pen.”

Which did what bullpens are supposed to do, shut down the batters and, in the process, shut down the crowd.

Giants outplaying, outpitching the Tigers

By Art Spander

SAN FRANCISCO – Jim Leyland took exception to the question. “Breaks?’’ he responded rhetorically. “I don’t think the Giants are getting any breaks. They’re outplaying us.”

Most of all, they’re outpitching the Detroit Tigers. Which in baseball is where it all begins. And ends. The adage can be repeated forever: If the other team doesn’t score, you can’t lose.

The other team, the Detroit Tigers, managed by Jim Leyland, didn’t score Thursday night. And so beaten, 2-0, by a team that barely scored, Detroit has lost the first two games of the 2012 World Series.

Defense wins. In baseball, defense begins with pitching. And ends with pitching.

With Barry Zito fooling the Tigers on Wednesday night. With Madison Bumgarner, who had been fighting himself, who had been getting chased from games in the fourth inning, stunning them Thursday night.

These are the Giants we’ve come to expect, the Giants who throw strikes and make big plays, such as Gregor Blanco firing to Marco Scutaro, whose relay cut down Prince Fielder at the plate. And make scoring against them almost an impossibility.

In the last five postseason games, the closing three against St. Louis in the National League Championship Series and the first two in the World Series, Giant pitching has given up runs in only three different innings. Three of 45.

A run in 27 innings to the Cards. Three runs in 18 innings to the Tigers, who were shut out only twice during the regular season. One run in the sixth on Wednesday, then, almost as a gift, two runs in the ninth. And none Thursday on an evening at AT&T so full of noise and tension that 42,855 fans at AT&T Park may never unwind.

The way they were starting to think the Tigers would never score.

“This was a really good World Series game,’’ said Leyland. “It didn’t turn out right for us . . . I don’t have any perspective. We got two hits tonight. I’m certainly not going to sit here and rip my offense. I think our offense is fine . . .”

It’s just that the Giants’ pitching has been better.

Santiago Casillla took over for Bumgarner in the eighth. Sergio Romo took over for Casilla in the ninth. “Those fans,’’ said Casilla of the crowd, “I’m 5-feet-10. The way they cheer when I’m on the mound, I feel about 6-feet-10. They’re unbelievable.”

A word some might apply to the Giants’ pitching. Zito overcame his demons of the past. Bumgarner overcame his struggles of the present. San Francisco manager Bruce Bochy even took Bumgarner out of the rotation after he couldn’t make it through the fourth inning of the NLCS opener against St. Louis.

“I thought the first inning would be critical for him, for his confidence,” Bochy said of Bumgarner’s opportunity Thursday night. “Also to see where he was at.”

Where he was at was back in 2010, when as a rookie Bumgarner was so impressive in a World Series start against the Texas Rangers.

“I mean,” said Bochy, after Bumgarner allowed only two hits and two walks to the Tigers, “what a job he did. Dave Righetti, our pitching coach, did a great job getting him back on track. He had great poise out there with a great delivery, and he stayed on it for seven innings.

“He needed a break, and I thought he benefited from it, both mentally and physically.”

No question everything so far has gone the way of the Giants, who, along with the nightly sellout crowds, waving their “rally rags,” singing along with the music of Journey, dressing in all sorts of loony attire of orange and black, have turned AT&T into a magical place.

On Wednesday night, Angel Pagan’s bouncer hit third, spun crazily and bounced into left for a double. On Thursday night, Gregor Blanco’s sacrifice bunt virtually dug a hole inches inside the third base line, loading the bases with nobody out in the seventh.

When Brandon Crawford grounded to second, the Tigers chose to go after the double play – which they got – instead of throwing home, and the Giants went in front, 1-0.

“It’s not debatable,” Leyland said of the decision, “because if we don’t score it doesn’t make any difference anyway. I can’t let them open the game up.”

Bochy said the difference in Bumgarner from his last few games was the delivery. “It was simpler, more compact,” he said, “and I think he was able to get the ball where he wanted to because of that.”

Asked if there was a different feel, Bumgarner, a laconic sort, but not without a sense of humor, answered, “Yeah, I went into the seventh inning instead of getting took out in the third.”

OK, his English isn’t perfect, but his fastball was.

“I think the only difference,” Bumgarner added, “was being able to make pitches. I hadn’t been able to do that this postseason, and tonight Buster (Posey) caught a great game, the defense did great.“I wanted to go out there and pitch well for our guys and the fans.”

He, Casilla and Romo couldn’t have pitched any better. If the other team doesn’t score you can’t lose. And the Giants didn’t.