2013 DETROIT TIGER SCHEDULE AND RESULTS

'Pen writes different ending after Scherzer fans 13
Four relievers have hand in letting lead slip away in eighth inning

By Jason Beck / MLB.com | 10/14/2013 2:43 AM ET

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BOSTON -- The Boston strikeouts piled up again in a hurry, one futile swing-and-miss after another for most of Sunday evening, but Max Scherzer insisted he wasn't thinking of being the latest Tiger to make a run at a postseason no-hitter, this one in Game 2 of the American League Championship Series.

By the end of the night, Scherzer had barely cooled from his seven-inning gem when Torii Hunter made a run after the game-tying grand slam and the latest chapter of postseason heroics from David Ortiz.

He took a tumble. The Tigers fell.

"The one guy you don't want to beat you, he beat us," Hunter said after a four-run lead in the eighth became a 6-5, walk-off loss in the ninth.

As Hunter sat in his corner of the clubhouse, the cramped visiting quarters at Fenway Park might have never felt tighter to this team.

"We learned from it," Hunter said.

Asked what was the lesson, Hunter answered, "Not to touch the hot stove."

He wasn't talking about the offseason market, no matter how many second-guessers might point at Detroit's injury-shortened, inconsistency-hindered bullpen and wonder how it came about.

"The hot stove is David Ortiz," Hunter continued. "Don't want to touch the hot stove anymore."

The Tigers returned to Detroit having been burned after icing Red Sox hitters for the first 14 innings of the series. With Justin Verlander awaiting the Red Sox for Tuesday's Game 3 at Comerica Park (4 p.m. ET, FOX), the Tigers have a chance to take back the momentum of this series. Before that happens, however, they're going to take a day to regroup.

"We were winning the whole way, and the bottom of the eighth, we let it go," said Joaquin Benoit, whose first-pitch changeup to Ortiz ended up over the wall in right field. "So the situation is tough, but what we need to do is put it behind and start fresh."

If any two games showed how fresh starts matter, these ALCS contests were it. One night after Tigers relievers picked up where Anibal Sanchez left off and fell two outs shy of completing a no-hitter, they missed two chances at completing the eighth inning with a 5-1 lead intact.

One big swing later, they had a tie game. Four different Tigers relievers ended up charged with a run apiece, which showed how the rally was pieced together after Scherzer left with 108 pitches over seven innings of two-hit ball.

"I told them I was done," Scherzer said. "They wanted me done. They had it all lined up how they wanted to approach the eighth inning."

Jose Veras retired leadoff man Stephen Drew before Will Middlebrooks doubled into the left-field corner. With left-handed-hitting Jacoby Ellsbury, Drew Smyly entered and had a 1-2 count before losing him to a walk.

"I just let it slip," Smyly said. "Once I had 1-2, I didn't want to give him a good pitch to hit, and then 3-2, I just missed low. That's all there was to it."

Al Alburquerque used his swing-and-miss slider to strike out Shane Victorino, but he paid for back-to-back fastballs to Dustin Pedroia, whose single loaded the bases.

"The way Pedroia took [the first pitch], it looked like he might have been sitting slider," catcher Alex Avila said. "At least, that's what I thought. We threw a fastball that ran back towards him, jammed him a little bit, actually, and he just hit it right in the perfect spot."

It was during that at-bat that manager Jim Leyland had lefty Phil Coke warming up. Up came Ortiz, 2-for-18 lifetime against Coke but with a go-ahead hit off him earlier this season.

With Coke just back from being out of action for three weeks, Leyland turned to Benoit for what would be a four-out save.

"Coke hadn't pitched a big game for quite a while," Leyland said. "Benoit is our guy against the lefties, and we felt he gave us the best chance to get the out."

Said Benoit: "I wanted it down. Left it middle out, he took a good swing and hit a ball."

For 7 1/2 innings, the Tigers outplayed the Red Sox in pretty much every facet, including their third no-hit bid in four nights. By the ninth inning, they were struggling to stay in the game, from Jose Iglesias' throwing error -- an aggressive attempt at an out that instead allowed Jonny Gomes to advance to scoring position on a leadoff infield single -- to Prince Fielder's off-balance attempt to reach for a foul ball in front of the tarp down the first-base line.

"It definitely wasn't an easy play," said Fielder, who said afterwards there was no fan interference on the attempt.

A wild pitch and a Jarrod Saltalamacchia single later, there was no game left to salvage.

"I was trying to get him to hit the ball on the ground and keep the runner on third from scoring," said Rick Porcello, the fifth starter during the regular season who became the game's fifth and final reliever when he began the ninth. "I threw the best pitch that I felt to keep the ball on the ground, and he found a hole."


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.

Power outage spoils Verlander's Game 3 gem
Right-hander strikes out 10 over eight, gives up seventh-inning HR

By Jason Beck / MLB.com | 10/15/2013 10:45 PM ET

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DETROIT -- The power outage only lasted only for a short time at Comerica Park, the product of a nearby substation going offline. It lasted well into Tuesday evening at the plate, the product of Justin Verlander and John Lackey.

It lasted just long enough for Mike Napoli to haunt the Tigers in the American League Championship Series for the second time in three years, this time in a different uniform. And with one big swing off one Verlander fastball in the seventh inning, he officially turned the switch on this series in Boston's favor.

The 1-0 Tigers loss in Game 3 puts them down in the best-of-seven series, two games to one, with Game 4 on Wednesday night (8 ET on FOX). They've lost the last two games -- despite brilliant performances from their two aces, Verlander and Max Scherzer -- for entirely different reasons. Two days after Detroit's bullpen let Scherzer down in Game 2, its offense was powerless along with the stadium lights against Lackey.

Now, after plating five runs in Game 2 and losing, the Tigers are back in their previous predicament, trying to figure out how to score runs in a series where they're scarce.

"I mean, it's frustrating," Prince Fielder said, "but that's part of it. Our team's done it to people. It can happen to us, too, so just gotta shake it off."

Only two entire postseasons in history featured multiple 1-0 games until this series. The Tigers have now played in three, including two in three games of this series. The only multi-run hit, David Ortiz's game-tying grand slam in Game 2, currently stands as the difference.

"I think you kind of expect that in this series," Verlander said. "It's going to be a battle for every single out, every single run, and it's two heavyweights going at it.

"If you can't appreciate this, you can't appreciate baseball."

Surprisingly, the Tigers' .231 average this postseason is the second-best mark of the four teams still alive. Their 23 runs, however, are the lowest total.

The common theme out of the Tigers' clubhouse after Game 3 was that they're not getting mistakes to hit, including Lackey's 6 2/3 shutout innings.

"If they throw a mistake, I hit it. If not, I won't," Fielder said. "It's that simple."

With Tigers nemesis Jake Peavy looming in Game 4, followed by Jon Lester in Game 5 trying to follow up his Game 1 gem, there might not be many mistakes to hit. If hitters can't capitalize, there might not be many games left.

Asked whether playoff offenses have to hit some pitches that pitchers execute, catcher Alex Avila said, "Absolutely. But in the playoffs, pitching is going to dominate. At this time of the year, a good pitcher that knows how to pitch will be able to shut down a good offense. I mean, it happens to every good offense. They're not scoring many runs either."

Tuesday's offensive blackout on both sides lasted well after the lights eventually warmed up and came back on, after a 17-minute delay in the middle of the second inning. The way both teams were swinging, they could've played the game in the dark for a while without much difference.

It lasted through a postseason-record-tying six consecutive strikeouts for Verlander, coinciding with four strikeouts in a row for Lackey. It thrived through the makings of another no-hitter bid by a Tigers starter, though Jonny Gomes' dribbler for an infield single with two outs in the fifth inning marked Boston's earliest hit of the series.

Asked if he pitched as well as he did in his AL Division Series win in Oakland, Verlander said, "I think the results speak more than what I can say. But just as far as execution and my mechanics and everything that I worked so hard to get to, I feel like I was right where I need to be."

The battle lasted long past two Tigers singles in the opening inning, and well after Jhonny Peralta's double leading off the fifth, thanks to Lackey's strikeout of Omar Infante with one out and Peralta on third.

It lasted after Napoli, 2-for-19 in the postseason before he stepped to the plate, homered off the same pitcher in the same park where he hit his first Major League home run seven years ago as an Anaheim Angel. Napoli, who went 7-for-24 with six runs scored for the Texas Rangers against Detroit in the 2011 ALCS, scored the first run off Verlander since Justin Smoak homered off him at Comerica Park on Sept. 18.

"He was really late on his fastball most of the game," Avila said. "That one just caught more of the middle of the plate."

Verlander had tossed 34 consecutive scoreless innings over five outings, but won only one of the games. Detroit's offense, meanwhile, scored in just three of those innings for him.

"I wouldn't say it's frustrating," said Verlander. "You know, I think you kind of expect that in this series."

A scoreless eighth inning kept Verlander in long enough for the Tigers to put up their best chance to break their blackout against the Red Sox bullpen, runners at the corners for the middle of the order.

With Austin Jackson 90 feet away as the potential tying run, having reached on a one-out walk and gone to third on Torii Hunter's single, all Miguel Cabrera needed was a well-struck ball against Junichi Tazawa. The Red Sox right-hander answered with a first-pitch strike, followed by three fastballs off the plate, drawing two more swings and misses from Cabrera.

"Gotta swing at better pitches," Cabrera said.

On came closer Koji Uehara for Fielder. With two foul tips and a swinging strike, the Red Sox escaped.

"That's why he's there," Fielder said. "He's very good. Just gotta wait and when he makes a mistake, gotta hit it. If not, you're probably out."

Cabrera went 0-for-4 with two strikeouts, failing to reach base in a postseason game for the first time as a Tiger and just the third time in his career, ending a 31-game, postseason-record streak. Uehara stayed on in the ninth and overcame a Victor Martinez leadoff single, inducing a Peralta double play and getting Avila swinging.

The game finished just before the rain arrived in Detroit, bringing a drenching to Comerica Park as the lights beamed down. The stadium blackout was long since over. The offensive blackout is ongoing.


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.

Game 4 shufflin' helps Fister, Tigers knot ALCS
Righty cruises after new lineup erupts for five in second; series tied at 2

By Jason Beck / MLB.com | 10/17/2013 1:30 AM ET

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DETROIT -- Had to try something, Tigers manager Jim Leyland said about juggling his lineup Wednesday.

"We might get shut out on two hits," he said before Game 4 of the American League Championship Series, "but I was happy because we did something."

By the end of this 7-3 win over the Red Sox, the Tigers had done plenty.

They put up more runs in three-plus innings against Jake Peavy than they did in the first three games of this series combined.

They somehow found a road map out of this hellacious slump for Austin Jackson, whose four times on base out of the eighth spot Wednesday nearly matched his total for the previous eight games of this postseason batting leadoff.

They rediscovered the run production in the veteran bat of Torii Hunter, who who accounted for as many runs in the third inning (three) as he did for the rest of the postseason.

Last but not least, they not only deadlocked this series again, they flipped the script.

What was looking like a best-of-seven series in which the first run wins is now essentially a best-of-three set in which the Tigers will try to win behind Anibal Sanchez, Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander. Sanchez gets the ball in Game 5 Thursday night at Comerica Park beginning at 8 ET on FOX.

The Tigers will take their chances with that pitching lineup, especially if they can get anywhere near this type of offense to support it.

"I don't know what it is about them," David Ortiz said after Doug Fister's six innings of one-run ball added to the stinginess. "They're taking it to another level. Good pitching can mess up good offense. In the playoffs, you definitely have to keep the score close."

Detroit won only one of the first three games despite 21 innings of two-run ball from its top three starters, in part because the offense couldn't plate a run in Game 3. It was a big enough concern that Leyland took Jackson out of the lineup's top spot for just the third game in his career, batting him eighth and moving seven other hitters up a spot.

"I didn't want to turn it into a circus," Leyland said. "I wanted to tweak it a little bit."

It wasn't a circus. Instead, it was a second-inning parade.

Leyland set up Hunter, Miguel Cabrera and Prince Fielder to get their swings at Peavy in the opening inning, and they went down in order. Everything after that went right for the Tigers.

"He's the boss," said Victor Martinez, whose move to the cleanup spot merely set him up to lead off the second inning. "We still have to execute."

So did Jackson, even from the eighth spot in the lineup. It was far enough down, Leyland estimated, to take some of the pressure off of Jackson at the plate, where he was 3-for-33 with 18 strikeouts for the postseason.

"You know, I was happy that I was still in there," Jackson admitted. "That's a good thing. But I think the goal was to just get me to relax and just go out and play, don't put so much pressure on yourself."

For a change, he didn't have to worry about being the sparkplug for the offense. He watched what Peavy was throwing, and he waited for his turn.

When he came up in the second inning, all he had to worry about were the bases loaded with one out, and Peavy on the ropes. So much for relaxing.

With four pitches outside the strike zone, Peavy took the pressure off.

"We know he's not swinging the bat that well," Peavy said. "That's why he's in the eight-hole. We've got to make him swing the bat, and we just couldn't do that there."

For a veteran pitcher, it was a huge mistake. On his very next pitch, his All-Star second baseman compounded it.

"We have to turn the double play on the ball Iggy hit," Dustin Pedroia said of Jose Iglesias' grounder to the right side, "but we didn't."

The way Pedroia struggled to field it, he needed a throw wide of second and a neighborhood call for the force to get any out. Stephen Drew had no chance to get Iglesias on the throw to first, allowing the second run to score and extending the inning for Hunter to come back up and reset the lineup.

The Tigers struggled to capitalize on those kinds of mistakes at various points this season. Hunter's first-pitch, two-run double down the left-field line ensured they didn't miss this one.

"You try to change the mindset of the players in the lineup," said Hunter, who scored on Cabrera's single to make it 5-0. "It was a lot of fun. I think it settled us down and allowed us to do what we had to do."

Instead of leading off the attack against Peavy, Jackson ended it in the fourth with a ground ball just out of Pedroia's grasp and into right field, scoring Omar Infante following his leadoff double. The Tigers knocked Peavy out with more runs than he allowed to them in any start during his four years with the White Sox.

"The thing is, we had some good at-bats off him," catcher Alex Avila said.

Fister couldn't duplicate the no-hit bids his fellow starters carried into the middle innings, giving up a first-inning single, but he could easily carry a touchdown-sized lead, allowing just one run, coming in the sixth.

The Tigers did something on offense after Leyland did what he felt he had to. They'll go with the same lineup for Game 5, the manager said, hoping for something more.

"This has nothing to do with Jim Leyland," he said. "This is about the players. They executed, they came out, they played well. It was really a good game for us."

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 knocked into a corner in quest for pennant
Detroit must win final two games in Boston to advance to World Series

By Jason Beck / MLB.com | 10/18/2013 2:33 AM ET

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DETROIT -- The Tigers came within a disastrous eighth inning in Game 2 of taking two games in Boston to start this American League Championship Series. They're going to have to finish the job with two straight against the Red Sox at Fenway Park if they're going to get back to the World Series.

In an ALCS in which so many games have been decided by so little, they'll take their chances.

"If you had a tiger, and he was backed in a corner, he couldn't go left, he couldn't go right, he couldn't go behind him, what's he going to do? Fight through," Torii Hunter said after Thursday's 4-3 loss in Game 5 pushed Detroit to the brink of elimination. "That's what we're going to try to do. That's what Tigers do.

"Our back is against the wall. We can't go left, we can't go right. We're going to go right through it. I like being down 3-2."

History, of course, is leaning against them. In each the previous four instances that a best-of-seven ALCS has been tied at 2, the Game 5 winner has gone on to win the series. Three of the previous four times, the Game 5 winner wrapped up the series in six.

"We've got to feel positive. We've got to feel ready to play," said Miguel Cabrera. "We've got to feel ready to play. We've been here before."

In a series that has featured four one-run games in five contests, it's not that easy to predict. In a series this close, it's easier to lament.

"I think we've been a pretty good show for baseball, two unbelievable organizations, two great teams," said Jose Iglesias, whose running, lunging catch in short left field might have been the defensive highlight of the series. "We've been playing some good games. Sometimes we win, sometimes they win."

With Max Scherzer starting in Game 6 on Saturday (4:30 p.m. ET on FOX unless the National League Championship Series is over, in which case Game 6 starts at 8 p.m.) and potentially Justin Verlander in Game 7 on Sunday, the Tigers have to feel somewhat at ease. But as the Red Sox showed Thursday, a second look at even a nasty pitcher, Anibal Sanchez, can yield vastly different results in the postseason.

In this swing game, with a rally that fell just short, there was plenty to ponder.

The sight of Cabrera rounding third base past coach Tom Brookens' stop sign and into an out at home plate in the opening inning was one. It was a late change on Brookens' part, initially waving him around before switching just before Cabrera hit third base.

A healthy Cabrera, unencumbered by groin and abdominal issues, likely makes the stop.

"I was hoping he would see me and stop," Brookens said, "but Miggy sometimes, when you get him going, he just keeps going. And I think that's really what happened. I think he saw me waving initially, 'Come on, come on,' and then when I tried to stop him, it was too late."

One commercial break later, Tigers postseason nemesis Mike Napoli worked a 3-1 count, blasted a fastball over the plate and sent it to the right-field side of the center-field camera well.

Thus began the first early-inning rally from the Red Sox all series. By the time Sanchez recovered, a Cabrera error and three consecutive hits had plated two more runs for a 3-0 lead, and only an alert throw home from Omar Infante prevented a fourth.

The ensuing collision at the plate with David Ross left Alex Avila shaken. He stayed in the game but left after four innings with a strained patellar tendon in his left knee. By then, Napoli had doubled and scored on a Sanchez wild pitch for a 4-0 lead.

Once the Tigers rallied, that add-on run became the difference in the game, a pitch in the dirt that skipped past the injured Avila.

Sanchez lasted six innings for the second time this series, but he was far from hitless. The Tigers, whose offensive struggles left Sanchez with the thinnest of support in Game 3, nearly made up his deficit.

"Just one inning. Couple mistakes," Sanchez said.

Cabrera's fifth-inning RBI single put Detroit on the board, and replacement catcher Brayan Pena greeted Junichi Tazawa with another RBI single to make it 4-2 in the sixth. But double plays in the sixth and seventh kept the Tigers from picking up runs more than one at a time.

The offense forced Koji Uehara to enter for a five-out save, but he retired the five batters in order to salvage the win for Boston.

One more one-run game will tie the record for a League Championship Series, set at five by the Mets and Braves in the 1999 NLCS. A sixth would match the postseason record from the 1972 World Series between the A's and Reds.

The Tigers would take their chances with two more at Fenway.

"We have to win one game and then take it from there," manager Jim Leyland said. "We've got to win one game."


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' AL reign, season end with Game 6 loss
Veras gives up grand slam to Victorino following Iglesias' misplay

By Jason Beck / MLB.com | 10/20/2013 12:03 AM ET
to be updated

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BOSTON -- The Tigers came within a grand slam of owning this American League Championship Series coming out of Boston last weekend. Just when they seemed on the verge of forcing a seventh game, another granny sent them home.


In a series that twisted and turned on one-run games, the 5-2 Tigers loss to the Red Sox that ended it on Saturday night will be one of the outliers. Yet, until Shane Victorino sent an 0-2 curveball from Jose Veras deep to left field and over the Green Monster, Game 6 was among the closest of all.

It was close enough that Red Sox manager John Farrell pulled his starter, Clay Buchholz, two batters into the sixth inning with a 1-0 lead. For the next few innings, it looked like Farrell would pay for it, a four-pitch walk from Franklin Morales to struggling Prince Fielder loading the bases for Victor Martinez to hit a go-ahead, two-run single off the left-center portion of the Monster.

It was close enough that manager Jim Leyland replaced Jhonny Peralta with Don Kelly for defense and running after a double play that halted the sixth-inning rally, Fielder caught in a rundown between third and home.

It was close enough that Leyland, who usually gives his starters the benefit of the doubt, turned to lefty Drew Smyly with the tying run on second with one out in the seventh after starter Max Scherzer didn't get a third-strike call from home-plate umpire Dan Iassogna. It marked the third time rookie No. 9 hitter Xander Bogaerts battled out of a two-strike count to reach base safely, and the walk set up the demise.

It was close enough that Jacoby Ellsbury's ensuing ground ball was in slick-fielding shortstop Jose Iglesias' glove behind second base before popping out for a critical error that loaded the bases for Victorino.

It was close enough that Veras was a strike away from fanning Victorino on curveballs when he left the 0-2 pitch just a little too high, just enough for Victorino to send it out.

One more play, one more escape, and the Tigers could've gone into Game 7 with Justin Verlander, the hero of two winner-take-all games in the last two years. Instead, they're headed home, a season's worth of dreams dashed.


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.