2011 DETROIT TIGER SCHEDULE AND RESULTS

Max effort: Tigers tie up ALDS

By Jason Beck / MLB.com | 10/2/2011 11:00 PM ET

BOX>

NEW YORK -- Tigers fans spent the regular season wondering which pitcher was the real Max Scherzer. His first postseason start, the biggest outing of his career, provided a pretty good answer.

He also provided a tied AL Division Series heading back to Detroit, where Justin Verlander will have an electric atmosphere at Comerica Park surrounding him and a pitching duel with CC Sabathia in front of him. The matchup that was meant to open the best-of-five series will now essentially start off a best-of-three.

It took a pitching gem from the Tigers' No. 3 starter, and an escape from their perfect closer, amidst a deafening crowd at Yankee Stadium to get them there.

"You never know what's going to happen," Tigers manager Jim Leyland said of Scherzer. "Big stage, and he was terrific."

Going into the series, Verlander was the Tigers hurler who had fans and media wondering if he had a bit of postseason greatness in him, a chance for a no-hit bid to open the postseason like Roy Halladay did last October. Scherzer had the talent, but not the consistency. For 5 1/3 innings, he had the outs.

This was the Scherzer fans remembered from his shutdown summer of 2010. It's the Scherzer his teammates knew he had in him.

"I expected him to be," catcher Alex Avila said, "because he's good. I'll be completely honest with you, 15 wins is pretty good in the American League.

"A lot of people talk about his inconsistencies because of his stuff, like what he showed today, but he's got the potential to be doing what the elite pitchers in the league are doing. I think that's why we always expect that. I think that's why he always expects it in himself. And when he has outings like this, it doesn't surprise us."

Whether it surprised the Yankees is debatable, but it kept them off guard. A pair of fly balls that cleared the short fence in right field frustrated Scherzer at Yankee Stadium in early April, though an offensive barrage that afternoon earned him the win anyway. This time, he turned the tables, though it looked eerily reminiscent at the start.

He threw seven straight balls that saddled him with back-to-back two-out walks and a 3-0 count to Mark Teixeira, who homered off Scherzer in that April game. Scherzer escaped the first inning with a popout to second and rolled off 11 consecutive outs.

It was a power-pitching form the Tigers saw in Scherzer when they acquired him from Arizona in the trade that sent Curtis Granderson to New York. With a fastball that topped out at 98, five miles above his regular-season average, his changeup became a dangerous swing-and-miss pitch.

"He was really good, the best I've ever seen him," Teixeira said. "Great fastball, his changeup was really, really good, and the numbers don't lie. He just dominated us."

The key, Scherzer said, was taking the ballpark out of his mind.

"You can't really focus on the ballpark per se," he said. "I was more focused on the quality of their hitters, and making sure I was executing pitches throughout the night -- even when I was behind in the count, never giving in in a situation where it could cost me."

All the while, Scherzer had a lead to protect courtesy of Cabrera, whose first swing off old friend and fellow Venezuelan Freddy Garcia cleared the short right-field fence for his fifth postseason home run, a two-run shot, in the opening inning. His liner up the middle in the sixth was the first of back-to-back RBI singles -- the other from Victor Martinez -- to double the lead to 4-0 and knock Garcia out of the game.

"We needed run support," Cabrera said. "We needed to score early in the game to give breathing room to our starting pitcher."

Not until Robinson Cano flared a bloop single just out of Delmon Young's reach in short left field did the Yankees have a hit, a one-out single in the sixth. Scherzer stayed in until a leadoff walk and a Jorge Posada single chased him in the seventh.

Joaquin Benoit ended the threat there, spotting a changeup on the outside corner to strike out Derek Jeter and strand both runners, before Granderson's leadoff homer in the eighth broke up the shutout. Once Don Kelly singled in another run in the ninth, the Tigers had their four-run lead back.

They needed all of it once the Yankees awakened against Jose Valverde. He went perfect in save situations all year, and he didn't have a save chance this time, coming on to start the ninth with the four-run lead. By the time he stared down Cano with two outs and the tying run on base, he couldn't tell the difference.

It fell apart in a hurry, a first-pitch home run from Nick Swisher and a triple from Posada. Once Russell Martin walked, New York had the tying run at the plate and its crowd roaring. Once Avila slipped on the on-deck circle trying to chase down Granderson's popup for the potential third out, the Yankees seemingly had fate. Granderson walked to bring the winning run to the plate in the form of Cano.

"You know, it was a little hard, I think," Valverde said. "That's what happens sometimes. Nothing you can do. You do the most you can. I throw my pitches, my split-finger, my sinker and my fastball. The umpire missed a couple pitches. I think I missed a couple, too."

At the moment he needed to, he made it, mixing in a splitter with a slew of sinkers to get a ground ball from Cano. He officially made a winner out of Scherzer, whose performance seemingly hours earlier gave them the chance, and gave Verlander the momentum to go with the ball.

"We did OK," Leyland said. "If you make pitches, you have a chance."

Jason Beck is a reporter for MLB.com. Read Beck's Blog and follow him on Twitter @beckjason. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.

Gutsy Verlander puts Tigers a win from ALCS
Ace fans 11 Yankees, gets assist from Young's go-ahead blast

By Jason Beck / MLB.com | 10/4/2011 3:30 AM ET

BOX>

DETROIT -- Arguably nobody in baseball takes over a game like Justin Verlander. In the biggest outing of his career, he took it back. An old foe gave him that chance.

This was the showdown that was supposed to set the tone for this American League Division Series. Four days and way too many rain showers later, Verlander didn't so much outpitch CC Sabathia as he outlasted him. And after eight innings from the potential AL MVP and a Delmon Young go-ahead homer in a 5-4 victory, the Tigers are a win away from taking this AL Division Series.

It was a display of domination from Verlander, who fired one triple-digit fastball after another while dropping in curveballs on the corners. But for one of the rare times this season, it was a show of redemption, and why this MVP candidate counts on a team behind him.

"I lost my rhythm for three batters," Verlander said, "and all of a sudden, you look up and it's a tie game. But this team has a never-say-die attitude. We did what we've done all year, which is either come from behind or have a big hit when we need it."

It's the team with a never-say-die attitude. It's Verlander's job to get the other team to say die, so to speak. With 24 wins and a pitching Triple Crown on his resume, he has the stats to create that sense. And after his second set of opening-inning struggles in four days, he eventually got the lead with help from two RBIs from Ramon Santiago.

It became another show for a sellout crowd of 43,581, until the final act got twisted a little bit looking for the perfect ending.

Starting in the third inning, Verlander retired 13 of 15 batters, seven by strikeout, four on called third strikes. He dropped a curveball on Nick Swisher to end the fourth inning, and it sparked a flurry of them. Brett Gardner saw a 98-mph fastball, then an 84-mph bender to finish off a 10-pitch fifth that might rank among the best postseason innings for a pitcher in a long time.

Once Curtis Granderson came up in the sixth, Verlander pulled a reverse, just missing with a curve out of the strike zone before pumping a 99-mph heater past him on his way to stranding Derek Jeter after a leadoff single.

Sabathia had escaped the early innings with double plays, but lasted just 5 1/3 innings. Once Verlander took the mound for the seventh with a 4-2 lead, he had seemingly won the battle, striking out Mark Teixeira and getting a first-pitch foul out from Swisher. He had an 0-2 count on Jorge Posada and the crowd on its feet when he tried for one more called strike, then another, then another.

"After two strikes," catcher Alex Avila said, "I think he kind of smelled it and realized, 'OK, we've got this,' and maybe overthrew a little bit. It just kind of created a jam there. And it happens."

Verlander tried four times to spot the strike -- two curveballs, a 101-mph fastball and a changeup. None of them worked, putting Posada on. Two pitches later, Russell Martin took a 100-mph fastball off his ribs to put the tying run on base. Verlander fell behind on a 3-0 count to Gardner, then ran the count back full.

With a payoff pitch coming, Verlander hit triple digits again. Gardner slashed it into the gap in left-center field, sending both runners around to score and sending Comerica Park into silence.

"That was an unbelievable at-bat," Tigers third baseman Brandon Inge said. "You have to tip your hat on that one. He battled and battled and against perhaps the best in the league right now. It was Verlander's best against Gardner's best. You just tip your hat to him on that one. It was a great, great at-bat."

It's tough for Verlander to get into hat-tipping mode.

"That's why that team is so dangerous," Verlander said. "Top to bottom, anybody can hurt you."

Verlander kept the Yankees from pulling ahead by getting Jeter to chase an offspeed pitch in the dirt. He had to count on his offense to take care of the rest. A first-pitch swing from Young in the bottom of the inning did it.

When he came over from Minnesota, one of the first things he said was how glad he was not to have to face Verlander anymore. To support him in a game this big with an opposite-field homer was an entirely different feeling.

"I was just going up there, trying to get a good pitch to hit," Young said. "We needed desperately to get a run, because playing a tie ballgame with the Yankees late in the game is never fun. There's some type of spark and magic that they have late in ballgames."

Young saw enough of that in Minnesota with two straight Division Series sweeps. By taking Rafael Soriano deep for his second home run of the series, he got to feel the other side of that. He also became the first Tiger since Granderson to homer twice in a Division Series.

Verlander went to 120 pitches, including five straight triple-digit fastballs to Alex Rodriguez, to carry the lead to the ninth. His 11 strikeouts were the most by a Tigers pitcher in the postseason since Joe Coleman in the 1972 ALCS. His 15 pitches at 100 mph or better is believed to be a career high.

Jose Valverde backed up his confidence from Sunday night for his first postseason save since 2007. And the Tigers turned the matchup of the series into a swing game that saw momentum swung against, then for their ace.

Jason Beck is a reporter for MLB.com. Read Beck's Blog and follow him on Twitter @beckjason. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.

Former teammate burns Tigers in Game 4
Martinez homers, but Detroit loses chance to close out ALDS

By Jason Beck / MLB.com | 10/5/2011 12:07 AM ET

BOX>

DETROIT -- So much for the comparisons between this American League Division Series and 2006, now that the 2011 ALDS will go to a deciding fifth game at Yankee Stadium after Tuesday's 10-1 Tigers loss.

So much, too, for the thought that Detroit had New York in an untenable position, with A.J. Burnett starting a must-win game.

Though the Tigers have shown a talent for hitting top pitchers since around midseason, they've also had a challenge facing the effectively wild. Burnett became the picture that goes with the definition on Tuesday, when he held the Tigers to Victor Martinez's solo homer among four hits over 5 2/3 innings. He stranded four walks in the process, three in an opening inning that left the Tigers lamenting one of Curtis Granderson's two great catches.

"I thought we hit some balls pretty decently," Tigers manager Jim Leyland said. "[Burnett] wasn't real sharp early. We had our shot. In the first inning, we may have been able to turn the game around."

Three walks among Detroit's first five batters, one of them an intentional pass to Burnett's former Marlins teammate Miguel Cabrera, had a sellout crowd at Comerica Park on its feet for a chance to break the game open. Don Kelly, who earned his first start of the series as an injection of speed and baserunning against Burnett, centered a solid liner towards center field and his ex-teammate Granderson.

When Granderson was an All-Star center fielder in Detroit, his one fielding shortcoming was reading line drives hit directly at him. Kelly's shot also seemed to freeze Granderson for a split-second -- enough that he had to make a rapid retreat to give himself a chance. He made a leaping grab at the last second to take away what likely would have been three Tigers runs and an early lead for Rick Porcello.

"It looked like it might get over his head," Leyland said. "If it would have gotten over his head, and he had fallen down, it might have been an inside-the-park home run. That was a huge out right off the bat."

It was the kind that brought Tigers fans to their feet when Granderson was wearing the old English "D." This time, he broke their hearts. He did it again on a diving catch in left-center field to retire Jhonny Peralta and preserve what was then a 4-1 Yankee lead after Burnett left in the sixth.

Porcello, a New Jersey native and the son of Yankees fans, did his best to keep pace, retiring the first six Yankees he faced, but he hit Jorge Posada and allowed a single through the middle by Russell Martin set up New York's initial runs in the third. Derek Jeter's two-run double put the Bombers ahead before Granderson's RBI double put them in command.

"I thought Porcello really threw the ball well," Leyland said. "He made a bad pitch to Derek on the double. The ball had good life. He actually pitched well, to hold that team down like he did."

A six-run eighth inning put the game out of reach, sending the fans home and sending the Tigers on their way to New York on Wednesday, preparing for a Thursday night battle in the Bronx that will decide who advances to the AL Championship Series.

"It doesn't surprise me that the series is going five games," Leyland said. "That doesn't surprise me at all. Hopefully, that suit I bought three or four days ago will be fixed now. I can pick it up when I go back."

Jason Beck is a reporter for MLB.com. Read Beck's Blog and follow him on Twitter @beckjason. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.

Tigers take Game 5 from Yanks, head to ALCS
V-Mart drives in go-ahead run in fifth, bullpen makes it stand

By Jason Beck / MLB.com | 10/7/2011 1:51 AM ET

BOX>

NEW YORK -- The Tigers escaped the Bronx in the wee hours Friday morning and flew to Texas for the American League Championship Series. It's difficult to imagine any amount of turbulence on their way down could match what they faced at Yankee Stadium on Thursday.

For the first time since the 1968 World Series, the Tigers won a winner-takes-all game in a postseason series. The way they held on for a 3-2 win over the Yankees, it took every heart-pounding out, every stress-inducing pitch to get there.

Don Kelly took the abuse from the Bronx Zoo in the outfield bleachers, but he silenced them with a first-inning home run as part of back-to-back Tigers shots. Kelly broke their hearts at the right-field fence when he caught Derek Jeter's eighth-inning drive that nearly pulled New York ahead.

"Oh, boy," Kelly groaned when asked later what he was thinking while he was backpedaling. "We've seen him do it a thousand times, go the other way and use that short porch. I couldn't tell how well he hit it."

Joaquin Benoit had bases loaded around him and the largest crowd in new Yankee Stadium history on top of him, yet he struck out Nick Swisher to work his way out of the jam and preserve the lead.

Benoit described the deafening sound of the playoff crowd with two words: "Yankee Stadium."

"Everybody's loud, and I think the adrenaline rush is amazing," Benoit said. "I think this is the best I've felt all year. It was a great win for us."

Finally, Jose Valverde bounced out of the bullpen and into the sights of Yankee fans, who made him a target of their pent-up angst after he declared the Division Series over following Game 2 here last Sunday. Once Valverde set down the heart of the Yankees' lineup in order, capped with a strikeout of Alex Rodriguez for the first 1-2-3 inning since the opening one, the game was truly over.

"It's not easy," Valverde said, "but what I do today is for all my family, all my friends and God, too, for all the energy to be on the mound to do what I had to do. It's great today. "

When asked if he had any predictions for the ALCS, Valverde laughed.

"Not yet," he said. "Not yet."

Tigers fans who remember the AL Central tiebreaker loss in Minnesota two years ago kept waiting for the Yankees to rally. Detroit held off New York's late charge and celebrated on the field at Yankee Stadium.

"The Yankees are so good that I would be lying if I said it didn't give me a little extra satisfaction to be able to do it here in the fifth game," Tigers manager Jim Leyland said. "I don't mean that disrespectfully, I mean that respectfully. ... I was just talking to [general manager] Dave Dombrowski -- other than the American League pennant and the World Series, this will be a game I'll remember for the rest of my life."

He won't be the only one.

Yankees manager Joe Girardi went to his bullpen early and often after rookie starter Ivan Nova gave up first-inning homers to Kelly and Delmon Young and escaped a jam in the second, but Leyland stuck with starter Doug Fister through five innings and 92 pitches. New York had burned through four pitchers by the time Fister got a pat on the back and Leyland made a call to his bullpen for Max Scherzer to start the bottom of the sixth.

Five days after taking the loss in the series opener, Fister allowed baserunners in all but the first inning, including a bases-loaded jam with one out in the fourth, but he shut down the Bronx Bombers until Robinson Cano lined a mistake into the right-field seats for a fifth-inning solo shot.

The Tigers were hoping to add on runs to give their pitching some room for error against a Yankees lineup with seemingly too much balance to shut down. Austin Jackson aggressively took second base after leading off the fifth with a hit, and Victor Martinez scored him with a clutch two-out RBI single, but that was it. In the end, Martinez's RBI stood as the difference in the game as Benoit stared at his jam in the seventh.

Asked if he thought the Tigers could win with three runs, Kelly smiled.

"No," he said. "Our pitchers did an insane job."

It was on them. Somehow, they took it.

Scherzer, who was making his first relief appearance since his rookie season in 2008, retired the side in the sixth, but Jeter reached with a perfectly placed ground ball in the seventh. Leyland went to his bullpen to summon Benoit.

Former Tigers star Curtis Granderson greeted Benoit with a lined single, then Benoit couldn't field Cano's dribbler to the third-base side of the mound.

With the bases loaded, Benoit struck out Rodriguez for the second out, but he lost Mark Teixeira to a one-out walk that plated Jeter and put Granderson on third as the potential tying run. Benoit finished the frame by striking out Swisher.

"I needed to do something to get out of it," Benoit said. "I went to my best pitch. The fastball is my best pitch. It's what was working."

Benoit recovered to get through the eighth, inducing by Jeter's fly ball that sent Kelly to the foot of the short fence in right field before he corralled the third out with Brett Gardner running.

"That was unbelievable," Kelly said. "Doug did a great job. Max comes in, and it was a gusty win, especially with all the opportunities they had with the bases loaded a couple of times. Their lineup is unbelievable. Just being able to hold them to two runs, they did an outstanding job."

That set up Valverde, whose 51st save in as many chances this season was remarkably peaceful, but it was still his biggest of the year.

Valverde could have had his biggest post-save celebration yet, but his teammates didn't give him a chance, nearly tackling him on the first-base side of the mound.

"We had the guy that we wanted to beat," Swisher said. "All that talking he's been doing, man -- as much as I don't want to say it, I do have to say, 'Congratulations.' Those guys pitched extremely well this series, especially against a potent lineup like ours."

Jason Beck is a reporter for MLB.com. Read Beck's Blog and follow him on Twitter @beckjason. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.