by Jerry Feitelberg

ALDS Preview- Detroit Tigers vs. OaklandAthletics

The AL Division Series begins Friday night at the Oakland Coliseum at 6:30pm. The A’s will be hosting the AL Central champion Detroit Tigers. This will be the third time since 2006 that the A’s

have met the Tigers in the playoffs and the Tigers eliminated the A’s in 2006 and in 2012. The A’s are hoping to oust the Tigers and move on the ALCS.

The Tigers have a powerful team. They are led by last year’s MVP Miguel Cabrera. Cabrera won the Triple Crown last year and this year he led the league in hitting with a .348 average while hitting 44 home runs and driving in 137 and has an OPS of 1.078. He is certainly a candidate for MVP with those numbers. Torii Hunter, Prince Fielder, Victor Martinez,Austen Jackson, Alex Avila, Andy Dirks and

Jhonny Peralta are players that can cause a lot of damage. The A’s pitching is going to be good in order to slow these guys down.

The Tigers’ pitching staff feature Max Scherzer who is the favorite to win the AL Cy Young award.

Scherzer won 1 record of 21-3 with an ERA of 2.90 and a WHIP of 0.97. Scherzer will be starting game 1 Friday night. Former MVP and Cy Young award winner Justin Verlander will start game 2

with Anibal Sanchez going in game 3. Doug Fister will pitch game four for the Tigers.

Jim Leyland said “I truly feel that I could start any one of my guys and I would feel comfortable.”

The A’s will have their hands full facing this team and are not intimidated by anyone. The A’s

went into Detroit in August and took three out of four from the Tigers and narrowly missed sweeping the series. The A’s do not have superstars like the Tigers’ Cabrera or Fielder but they have good players up and down the lineup that play well together. A’s manager Bob Melvin uses different lineups in order to put the best team on the field for the game. Since the Tigers’ starters are all right handed pitchers, Melvin will you his lefty lineup. Coco Crisp, Jed Lowrie and Alberto Callaspo are all switch hitters.

Brandon Moss will be at first base, Steven Vogt probably will catch and Eric Sogard may play shortstop. The only right hand bats playing will be Josh Donaldson and Yoenis Cespedes.

Donaldson is having an MVP type year.He is hitting .301 with 24 home runs and 93 runs batted in.

Bartolo Colon will go for the Green and Gold Friday night. Colon had an excellent season winning 18 games and had an ERTA of 2.65 which was second best in the American League. The A’s bullpen

has been outstanding led by setup stars Sean Doolittle and Ryan Cook. The closer, Grant Balfour

has pitched well all season. Lefty Brett Anderson will be available in the bullpen. Anderson won a game in the ALDS last year as a starter. Jarrod Parker, Sonny Gray and A.J.Griffin will be in the rotation for the ALDS.

One big question mark for the A’s will be the health of Yoenis Cespedes. Yoenis didn’t have a monster year but he did get untracked in September. The A’s were 83-51 with Yoenis in the lineup and 13-15

without him. Hopefully, his shoulder will be fine and he can contribute to the A’s offense.

Should be a great series. My prediction will be that the A’s will win it in five games. The reason for my optimism is that the A’s have a better bullpen than the Tigers and that the A’s pitching has shown that it can shut down the Tiger offense.