A Detroit Tigers team is down 2-1 in the American League Division Series while facing the winner of the American League West. After winning Game 1 by a 3-2 score, the Tigers drop the next two as the hitters
go largely silent. In the do-or-die Game 4, Detroit is down 3-0 before the bats wake up and they come back to even the series at two games apiece, forcing a Game 5 on the road on October 10. The Tigers’ ace, a former Cy Young winner, is slated to start the series finale with the entire fanbase’s expectations riding on his able shoulders.
Yes, this is happening in 2025 — but the above paragraph also exactly describes 2013, in which the Tigers faced the Oakland Athletics in an ALDS which weirdly parallels the current one. And yes, we know how that season turned out in the end… but relax, everyone, David Ortiz isn’t playing anymore, Jim Leyland isn’t running any bullpen that we know of, and Joaquin Benoit has long since retired.
We at Bless You Boys thought it would be fun to review that ALDS Game 5 in 2013 in which Justin Verlander told everyone, “Sit back, I’ve got this,” and proceeded to plow through the A’s like my uncle Frank at an all-you-can-eat seafood buffet.
Hopefully Tarik Skubal can do something similar against the Seattle Mariners on Friday night.
The Lead-Up
Verlander and the Tigers were coming off a 2012 season that saw them smothered by the San Francisco Giants in the World Series. (But hey, let’s not forget what Verlander did in the 2012 ALDS Game 5 in Oakland: a complete-game 4-hit shutout.) However, as they progressed through 2013, they’d ostensibly improved: their win total increased from 88 to 93, Miguel Cabrera arguably improved from his Triple Crown season (increasing his OPS from a sensational .999 to a ridiculous 1.078), they had a full season of Anibal Sánchez (who won the ERA title), and Max Scherzer led the league in both wins and WHIP on the way to his first of many Cy Young awards. So, to say that expectations were high as the Tigers started the postseason was a grand understatement.
Detroit won the American League Central by a game over Cleveland; they were up by 8 1/2 games on September 2 and were ahead by six games with a week to go in the season, but managed to hold on to win the division over a surging Cleves, and holy mackerel, yet another parallel to this year, how about that. Cleveland was then shut out by the Rays in the one-and-done Wild Card game (and Tampa would lose 3-1 in the other ALDS to Boston). In the meantime Detroit travelled to the west coast to start their best-of-five ALDS with the A’s, with their eye on repeating as American League champions.
In Oakland, the Tigers won Game 1 behind seven great innings from Max Scherzer, in which he gave up two runs and struck out eleven. Detroit scored all its runs in the first inning with a double, hit-by-pitch, single, double-play groundout and a single; Oakland’s only runs came in the seventh after Brandon Moss led off with a single and Future Old Friend™ Yoenis Céspedes mashed a two-run home run to left field. Joaquín Benoit struck out the side in the ninth for the save, and it was on to Game 2 the following day.
The second game of the series was also started by Verlander — another weird similarity to this year, eh? — and he would also go seven innings and whiff eleven. But this one stayed scoreless until the bottom of the ninth; the closest the Tigers would get to scoring was with runners on the corners and one out in the fifth. Austin Jackson struck out swinging and Jose Iglesias was thrown out trying to steal second for the strike-’em-out-throw-‘em-out double play, which was unusual because the runner on third, Omar Infante, would’ve had a great chance to come home on the throw to second. (I’m not sure that throw to second gets made today.) The catcher who threw out Infante? None other than current Guardians manager Steven Vogt. Anyway, in the ninth, Al Alburquerque gave up a pair of singles and intentionally walked Josh Reddick to load the bases, Rick Porcello was brought in and… goshdarnit, Vogt again, he singled to score Céspedes. Time is a flat circle, as they say.
Game 3 in Detroit wasn’t nearly as dramatic; Oakland went up 3-0 in the fourth and the Tigers rallied to tie in the same inning, which was fun. But in the fifth the A’s finally chased Sánchez as Moss hit a solo homer and Seth Smith hit a go-ahead two-run home run, completing the scoring for a 6-3 Oakland win as they took a 2-1 series lead. A pair of Joses, Veres and Alvarez, mopped-up on the mound for the Tigers, and I have absolutely no recollection of pitchers of that name ever summiting the tiny dirt hill for us.
As previously mentioned, the Tigers were down 3-0 in Game 4 with Doug “The Tall One” Fister starting for Detroit; Jed Lowrie hit a two-run home run in the top of the fifth, and to that point the Tigers’ only baserunner was Prince Fielder, who got plunked by Dan Straily. But in the bottom of the fifth the bats came alive: a pair of singles put two on for Jhonny Peralta, who belted a three-run home run to tie the game. Oakland went ahead 4-3 in the top of the seventh, but the Tigers answered back in the bottom of the frame with a leadoff homer by Victor Martínez off Sean Doolittle. Jackson put the Tigers ahead 5-4 with an RBI single, and in the eighth they went up 8-4 with a bases-loaded wild pitch and an Infante single. Oakland made it interesting in the ninth when Céspedes hit his own two-run single off Benoit to close the gap to 8-6 with two out, but Benoit slammed the door by striking out Smith.
A long, cross-continent plane ride followed — probably on a private jet, but still — and a Game 5 showdown was about to happen at the then-O.co Coliseum.
Game Five
Both teams’ offenses started off tentatively, with not much happening in the first three innings. Verlander struck out two in each of the first two innings, showing early-on that he had his big-game-mojo workin’.
As an aside…
Verlander’s 2013 season was pretty pedestrian, by his standards. He was 24-5 with a 2.40 ERA and a bonkers .920 WHIP in 2011, winning both the Cy Young and, somewhat controversially, the American League MVP award. His 2012 season was great as well, going 17-8 with a 2.64 ERA and finishing second in the Cy Young voting; in both seasons he led the American League in strikeouts.
But 2013 wasn’t exactly his best work: he had a 13-12 record, his ERA jumped to 3.46, and he was giving up more walks and hits than he had since 2008 when he led the American League with 17 losses. (Many of you youngsters don’t remember that ‘08 year for Verlander; it was his third full year in the major leagues, and it was definitely a difficult one. He bounced back the following year with an AL-leading 19 wins, though, and I think things have turned out alright for him in the end.)
In September, Verlander had three straight starts in the middle of the month where he gave up at least three runs, no doubt causing concern about the looming postseason and what would be asked of him. Sure, the staff had prime Scherzer and Sánchez, Fister doing Fister-y things for a full year and Kid Rick having a typically-dependable season. But, Verlander was the only starter on staff who’d been to the 2006 World Series; he was the veteran, called-upon in the biggest game of the year in 2013 to date. He would have to do the heavy lifting here…
…which he most certainly did.
As the game moved onwards, Verlander kept rolling. Through five innings Oakland hadn’t had managed to get anyone on base in any way, had struck out six times, and hit the ball to the outfield four times (for four flyouts). But that at point it was a narrow 2-0 lead for the Tigers on a Miguel Cabrera two-run home run in the third, after Torii Hunter singled with one out.
In the top of the sixth, Sonny Gray gave up a pair of singles to start the inning; he was relieved by Dan Otero, who got Alex Avila to ground into a fielder’s choice to put runners on the corners with one out. Infante hit a grounder to Josh Donaldson at third base, who opted to force Avila at second, letting Martínez score from third. That seems like a strange choice: Martínez was certainly lead-footed, and throwing him out at home must have been an option. Either way, the Tigers went up 3-0 in the sixth and Verlander still hadn’t allowed a baserunner.
(You think the Tigers have been in a hopeless hole recently? Try being down 3-0 with Verlander smothering you. That’s a fountain of despair, right there.)
Verlander finally allowed a baserunner, a one-out walk to Reddick, who was stranded at second in the sixth. Céspedes managed to get Oakland’s first hit with two out in the seventh, a single to centre with two outs. But Smith struck out swinging to end the seventh, and Verlander carried on into the eighth, wherein he gave up his second and final hit of the day, a single to Reddick. But then he got — you guessed it — Vogt to strike out for the final out of the eighth, and his day was done.
His final line: 8 IP, 2 H, 0 R, 1 BB, 10 K. He threw 111 pitches, and 76 of those were strikes. He also singlehandedly deflated an entire stadium’s-worth of hopes.
After an uneventful top of the ninth against Grant Balfour, Benoit was called-upon for the save. After getting a quick groundout and a strikeout, the A’s certainly made it interesting: Lowrie doubled and Céspedes got hit to bring the tying run to the plate in Smith, who had homered in Game 3. Smith lifted a fly ball to right field, Hunter squeezed it for the final out, and the comeback was complete.
Epilogue
Something-something, grand slam, security guard, whatever. The less said about it, the better.
Jim Leyland retired at the end of the season and was replaced by Brad Ausmus as manager in 2014. The Tigers won 90 games and their division, but went down meekly in the ALDS to Baltimore in a three-game sweep. To wit: in the third game the Tigers managed two hits off journeyman Bud Norris in 6 1/3 innings. Bud Norris! I mean, to be fair Norris had, by far, the best season of his career that year (15-8, 3.65 ERA, solid-but-not-spectactular 1.216 WHIP), but here’s a guy who went 67-90 for his career, and in the middle of 2015 the O’s cut him and his 7-plus ERA loose.
It was clear that the championship window which had been open for about five years was rapidly shutting. Verlander stuck around until 2017 and was (in)famously dealt to the Astros seconds before the trade deadline, going 5-0 for them in the regular season and 4-1 in the playoffs, helping the Houston Trash Cans win a World Series. Sánchez crashed down to earth in 2016, the same year the Tigers got within a game of securing a Wild Card, but got shut out 1-0 by a last-place Atlanta team; on that day Verlander was good, but Julio Teheran was just a little bit better.
And then, the darkness. Again, the less said about those late-’10s/early ‘20s Tigers team, the better.
But here we are, in 2025, with a Game 5 looming large yet again. Will Tarik Skubal be able to lift the Tigers like Verlander did? Nobody knows. I’d like to think that past is prologue, though. We will find out soon.
