2013 ALDS: Justin Verlander, Miguel Cabrera send Tigers to ALCS

MLB executives believe there will be talks in the offseason about banning collisions at home plate, reports Buster Olney of ESPN.

There has also been a rash of injuries in recent years as catchers get injured in these collisions. Both players involved in the ALCS play, Ross (who is also a catcher) and Avila, have suffered concussions in 2013 on similar plays. As the cost of concussions becomes more clear, major sports leagues are looking to do what they can to prevent such injuries.

It’s painful to look at. Still, the A’s are a well-run team; they should be back in the postseason hunt next year. The glass-half-full interpretation of that is that Melvin and the A’s will have another chance to win their first championship since 1989. The glass-half-empty interpretation is that Melvin will have another chance to wear this expression again. Baseball is a harsh mistress.

One of the cool/alarming things about online encyclopedia Wikipedia is that anyone can edit it. The edits might not stay live for very long, depending on how accurate or inaccurate they are, but at least temporarily, anybody can say anything about anyone.

• Verlander, Cabrera lead Tigers to ALCS | Video: Ewok Dance?

Nobody was beating Justin Verlander last night. He went 6 2/3 no-hit innings, and even after allowing a single to Justin Verlander was near flawless, dealing heat late into the evening as he shut out the A’s through eight innings in a decisive 3-0 Game 5 win.

Oakland’s fans tried to do what their team’s bats couldn’t and get him off their game.

Those of us who appreciate baseball’s long history were lucky Thursday night. You don’t always know that the players you’re watching on a given night are the future Hall of Famers, the ones you’re going to boast of seeing 10 or 20 years from now. So many players only seem historic in retrospect. When the Hall of Fame voted in, say, Rick Ferrell in 1984, perhaps it succeeded in completing its collection of catchers to that point, but what it could not do is send the message back in time to the thousands of fans that watched him play in St. Louis or Boston or Washington and tell them, “Pay attention! You’re watching someone special here!” They didn’t know; it was 1984’s judgment that he was historic, not 1932’s or 1942’s.

We are powerless to affect the past. We can find a fresh appreciation of a player who was dismissed in his own day through something obtuse or primitive in that era’s perceptions in the same way that critics eventually proclaimed Moby Dick, a flop in its own time, a masterpiece of American literature, but we can’t make that player a star in his day any more than the critics can make Melville’s book a bestseller in 1851. They missed their chance to experience it as it was happening, which is a different experience than looking back. It’s like trying to get a sense of what it was like to watch Eric Davis play -- and Davis never finished higher than ninth in the voting for Most Valuable Player, so this applies to him -- from the stats on his Baseball-Reference page. You get the echo, not the blast.

Gray pitched five innings, allowing three runs on six hits and four walks while striking out three in the losing effort.

Gray was unable to come up with the ball cleanly, knocking down before throwing to first to end the inning.

Prior to this home run, Cabrera was 4-for-17 in the series without an extra-base hit. He couldn’t have picked a better time to get his stroke back, however. Gray was looking strong through the first three innings and the stress was starting to weigh on Detroit GM Dave Dombrowski.

When plump-belly-dancer guy didn’t work, the crowd thew in the towel, many towels actually:

When the Tigers climaxed their Game 5 AL Division Series victory over the Oakland A’s by doing what seemed like a cross between a choreographed dance routine and a tribal war chant, we couldn’t resist the parallel to the now sadly absent Ewok celebration from the original version of Return of the Jedi. Courtesy of our own Clay Wendler, the Tigers go yub nub.

Verlander now has a streak of 30 straight scoreless postseason innings against the A’s and 28 straight scoreless innings overall dating back to regular season.

• By picking Yanks, Girardi chose the harder path

Through seven innings, Verlander has eight strikeouts, one walk and one hit allowed. Verlander, who pitched a four-hit shutout to eliminate the A’s in Game 5 of the 2012 ALDS, pitched seven scoreless innings in a no-decision in Game 2 of this series on Saturday, also in Oakland.

In four playoff starts against the A’s in the last two seasons, Verlander has allowed one total run and 12 hits in 30 innings, with 41 strikeouts.

• By picking Yanks, Girardi chose the harder path

• GIFs: Cardinals advance! | Pirates hope to keep team together

• By picking Yanks, Girardi chose the harder path

• GIFs: Cardinals advance! | Pirates hope to keep team together

That sigh says it all, doesn’t it? And his team is winning, 2-0 thanks to a home run by the suddenly-alive-again Miguel Cabrera. Just imagine how A’s general manager Billy Beane feels! I bet Beane can’t even watch (or, maybe he can).

• By picking Yanks, Girardi chose the harder path

• GIFs: Cardinals advance! | Pirates hope to keep team together

Likely in light of their recent struggles against the former MVP and Cy Young winner, A’s manager Bob Melvin has elected to go with a new lineup arrangement for Game 5:

On to the Tigers:

On the other extreme, you have the Braves, who have reached the postseason consistently since 1991. Sure, they won a championship nearly 20 years ago, but their play in October rarely meets expectations. They’ve made it to the World Series five times since emerging as a perennial winner and have lost four of them. They’ve only made it beyond the first round of the postseason once since 1999, and their eight consecutive postseason series losses is the second-longest streak behind -- you guessed it -- the Cubs.

Perhaps that’s why it feels like Game 5 favors the Athletics. The Tigers will have Justin Verlander on the mound against rookie Sonny Gray, and that would seem to give an advantage to the Tigers, but given the absence of the offense and Gray’s performance in Game 2, it’s not a sure thing. The Athletics have good pitching, but not so good that it accounts for the Tigers’ performance at the plate: They scored three runs in the first inning of Game 1, then went 20 innings without scoring again. They broke that streak in the fourth inning of Game 3, then went another nine innings before scoring again. The Tigers went the first three games without any home runs, and it’s no surprise that in Game 4, in which they finally hit two home runs and two doubles, that they outscored their opponent and won.

Verlander struck out 11 batters in seven scoreless innings in the Tigers’ 1-0 loss on Oct. 5 at O.co Coliseum in Oakland. The A’s rookie hurler went toe-to-toe with the six-time All-Star, tossing eight shutout innings and notching nine punch-outs.

That game was the polar opposite of Game 4, which saw the two teams combine for 14 runs and 21 hits. The Tigers pulled away late with five runs in their final two innings, a stark contrast from one stretch of 20 consecutive frames without scoring, spanning Games 1 through 3.

Manager Bob Melvin explained the decision Wednesday evening on a conference call.

“We had two great options, we looked at it at a bunch of different angles,” Melvin said. “The short of it is that it came down to the game that Sonny just pitched.”

“It just didn’t look 100 percent right,” Manager Bob Melvin told reporters Tuesday. “I had a conversation with him after the fifth, and he wasn’t in total disagreement that maybe it was time for him to come out.”

Parker, 24, had some struggles towards the end of the regular season, as well. He allowed seven runs In two of his final three starts, pitching into just the fifth inning both times.

Things looked to be going Oakland’s way for much of the early going, but Detroit kept on fighting back.

Then things got weird.

Oakland got itself into a bases-loaded jam of its own with two outs in the bottom half of the inning, but wasn’t quite as fortunate as Scherzer. Left-hander Brett Anderson walked the first batter he faced on four pitches to load the baases, then proceeded to throw a wild pitch to give the Tigers a 6-4 lead.

• Sensitive Braves boycott Chipper Jones’ first pitch | Call the Party Police!

Here’s a still image of the moment before it hits:

The home run knots the game at 4-4 in the seventh.

Crisp was hitless in the first two games of the series, but now has three knocks in each of his last two games.

• Sensitive Braves boycott Chipper Jones’ first pitch | Call the Party Police!

• Yasiel Puig’s celebration breaks camera | #Lookit

The homer knots the game at 3-3 and continues the Tigers’ strange run of scoring all of their runs in threes. Detroit has now scored nine runs in the series, all of which have come in three-run innings.