MLB 2014 ALDS: Orioles sweep Tigers

TBS will televise the best-of-seven ALCS, with Ernie Johnson on play-by-play alongside analysts Cal Ripken and Ron Darling, and reporter Matt Winer.

Here is the schedule for the 2014 ALCS, with start times ET:

The foul-tip that knocked Alex Avila from the game caused a concussion, Alex Avila told media members after the Tigers’ ALDS Game 3 loss to the Orioles. Avila was knocked out by the blow, suffered from dizziness immediately and remained a bit woozy even after the game.

Via AP reporter Noah Trister:

Cruz continues to be one of the most devastating postseason hitters in recent memory, and his performance in the series against Detroit only bolsters that reputation. In three games, the 34-year-old batted 6-of-12 with two homers and five RBI, leading the team in pretty much every major offensive category.

The home run off Price on Sunday was Cruz’s 16th career postseason home run in 37 games.

The Detroit Tigers were my pick to win the American League pennant for a couple of reasons, but I think it mostly had to do with David Price. The allure of the big deadline deal was too much for me, and I followed its scent as if it were a windowsill pie. No one stopped to tell me just how bad their bullpen is, but that was a minor concern. Right? Right?

It wasn’t the thermonuclear ‘pen that got the Tigers in Game 3 of the American League Division Series. It was a conspiracy of awful, bad luck and bad breaks acting in concert with offensive impotence, and it led to the Tigers -- possibly the preseason favorites to win the pennant, if not the World Series -- have to spend another offseason wondering how open that window really is.

Delmon Young is playing left field for the Baltimore Orioles in a playoff game. This isn’t an interleague thing, where David Ortiz has to pretend he’s a first baseman for seven innings. Young is actually playing left field in an American League ballpark. On purpose.

As you might expect, that brought up a situation like this:

“We’re going to go day‑to‑day,” Showalter said on Saturday. “We knew if certain things happened the first two games, Bud would pitch. If things happened the first two games, Miguel would and that gives us a chance to bring Bud back in Game 5 and satisfy a lot of ‘what-ifs’.

“We just didn’t to want commit to something until we got Game 1 under our belt and Game 2 under our belt and get to the off‑day,” he said, “and the players most importantly knew where we were going.”

Unlike the vast majority of stats in sports, ERA is asymptotic. Batting average, OBP, etc. all fall between zero and one. Points per game in any sport are dictated by how many points a player can physically score. ERA, however, spans the width between zero and infinity. Sure, most ERAs are contained in a bell curve -- we’d estimate 99 percent fall between 1.50 and 9.00 -- but the possibility exists for higher or lower.

By comparison, it’s easier to achieve preposterously high ERA totals. You just have to allow a few runs in a short amount of time. In the 2014 ALDS, I have watched Joba Chamberlain do this. In his first appearance, he allowed both runners he faced to reach base -- one via error, one via single -- and both scored, giving him an ERA of infinity:

The Orioles topped the Tigers for a second straight day thanks to a Detroit bullpen breakdown, punctuated by a three-run double by Delmon Young. When the game ended, Young strode out on the field, made a clumsy cameraman eat dirt and victoriously laughed at him (via @cjzero):

Walking backwards with a camera is hard, especially when the field has mounds on it and stuff. That said, Delmon, laugh away, you deserve it.

Justin Verlander is not the pitcher he used to be. He might someday be that workhorse ace again, maybe even as soon as 2015, but in the present, that’s not who he is. He’s a diminished version of his former self who can still show flashes of excellence, but is now prone to brushes with pitching mortality that didn’t even seem possible for someone with his ability before 2014 began.

Anibal Sanchez is still a great starter, but he made just 21 starts thanks to a pectoral injury, and returned too late in the year to rehab in the minors. He received a single relief appearance in late-September after not pitching for almost two months, meaning he had not been able to build back up his strength and stretch out in time to be part of the ALDS rotation. The stuff is still there, but Sanchez isn’t an innings machine even when his season is going well: immediately coming off of an injury, he can only be used for so long.

Baltimore entered the eighth inning trailing 6-3, but strung together a number of hits before bringing Young to the plate with the bases loaded. He came through with a line drive to left field, turning a two-run deficit into a one-run lead with a single swing:

The big play completed a four-run inning after the Tigers went ahead early.

Instinct is a powerful thing. There is very little chance that Wei-Yin Chen even thought about catching this line drive hit right at him, but he caught it nonetheless.

Chen ended the third inning to keep the Orioles and Tigers scoreless in Baltimore in Game 2 of the ALDS with that nifty grab. He’s lucky he doesn’t follow through just a little bit more with his head after his pitches, because that’s precisely where the ball would have been headed for if he did.

The Orioles would like to take a commanding 2-0 American League Division Series lead. The Tigers would like that to not happen. Here are the lineups both teams will use:

That gap between the ninth-place hitter and the starting pitcher is there because the pitchers don’t hit, if you can believe it.

“I think tomorrow when I get up to the mound, I will be all sweating and nervous, just like I am now,” Chen told reporters before Baltimore’s 12-3 win over Detroit in Game 1 on Thursday. “But still, as Buck [Showalter] said, we should try to stay calm and do whatever we did in the season, whatever you did to get you here.”

“[When] you have experience playing in [the] playoffs, you will know how the crowds would be and how the environment would be again,” Chen explained.

The Orioles last won the World Series in 1983, the Tigers in 1984. To indulge it just one “since,” Ronald Reagan’s first term was a long, long time ago.

We pause here to note that Cruz’s was his 41^st in 160 games this year and that he led the AL in home runs. There is no excuse for any attempt to cheat, but there is a difference between attempting to cheat and successfully cheating. Biogenesis was a confidence game, a fraud executed not only against the baseball fan, but the baseball player as well. Alex Rodriguez’s ongoing decline even while deeply involved is testimony to that, as is Cruz’s fine season with the Orioles. There is no magic home-run potion in baseball.

Scherzer settled down nicely between the second and seventh innings, allowing only one baserunner during that time, but the home runs killed him. The defending AL Cy Young winner’s night ended after seven frames, during which he allowed four runs on six hits while striking out six batters.

How do you figure a guy from the North Pole ends up being an Orioles fan?

No word on the last time two Tigers with the same last name went back-to-back in the postseason.

The action continued in the bottom of the frame. With two on and two out, Nick Markakis flared a single between three Detroit defenders to knock in Ryan Flaherty and re-take the lead, 3-2.

Max Scherzer followed up his breakout Cy Young season with a campaign of almost equal quality in 2014. Nelson Cruz followed up a nightmare 2013 by leading the entire majors with 40 home runs. They met in the first inning of ALDS Game 1.

Advantage, Cruz.

Well played, Orioles.

Dad?

Yes, son?

The Tigers beat the Orioles in five of six games in 2014, including a three-game sweep at Camden Yards from May 12-14.

First pitch: 5:37 p.m. ET