The playoffs havey started for the Detroit Tigers.  And it could not have gone worse.

Max Scherzer was not himself.  He slogged through seven plus innings, managing to keep his club in the game for the most part.  But this was not the vintage Max that racked up 39 wins to 8 losses over the past two seasons.

The offense popped a few balls over the fence and did virtually nothing else.  There was a very real fear entering the postseason that this group was far too reliant on its fearsome 3-4-5 trio in the middle of the order.  Game 1 was the definition of this imbalance. 

Miguel Cabrera homered, as did Victor and J.D. Martinez.  There was no other thunder to speak of.  Four of the nine innings saw the Tigers retired in order, without so much as a peep.   

The Irony of Romine 

If you want an idea of how out of character and bizarre the Tigers’ performance was Thursday night, look no further than the game had by Andrew Romine.  The typically no-stick, all-glove shortstop was the only Tiger to collect two hits, yet he botched a routine grounder in the 8th that opened the floodgates for the Orioles.

It was about as bad a beginning to a playoff run as one could imagine.

But if there’s a silver lining to be found, it is this; that you can give up 12 runs, you can lose by nine, you can do just about everything there is to do wrong in a night of baseball, and it’s still just one of a possible five games.

It’s a cliché, but it’s also the truth -- the Tigers will arrive at Camden Yards this afternoon with a clean slate.  Some added pressure from being in an early series hole will exist, but all those crooked numbers from the night before will be wiped off the scoreboard and the Detroiters will start anew.

There is always a tendency in postseason play to overreact to each performance, be it one of dominance, or in this case, one that sets the game back several hundred years.

Experience and Guile on the Mound  

But it can all change in nine innings.

The pitching matchup favors the Tigers today.  Stat-heads might point to the sparkling 16-6 record of Taiwanese southpaw Wei-Yin Chen, but in a game of this magnitude, it’s often experience and guile that rule the day. Justin Verlander checks those boxes, and then some.

The longtime ace of this staff has been under heavy fire for much of the year.  Some think his focus has waned as his relationship with supermodel Kate Upton has progressed.  Some think his now pedestrian fastball has transformed him into a run-of-the-mill big league pitcher.  While there might be small hints of truth to these various arguments, they are for the most part, vastly exaggerated.

Verlander came on strong down the stretch, rarely issuing a walk and pitching deeper into games.  He’s started seven times since returning from an injury in late August; the Tigers won six of those seven contests, a good omen for today’s critical affair. 

For a different team, one with more of a youthful, wide-eyed, happy-to-be-there approach, a game like Thursday’s would be wildly concerning.  There’d be no assurance that said club would be able to bounce back from such a humiliating defeat.  The previous night’s horror would simply carry neatly over into the following afternoon.

But the Tigers are not such a group.  They have been in this spot before and it has not fazed them.

ALDS Is Where Tigers Warm Up

In the team’s four playoff appearances since 2006, not once have they gone down in the first round. The ALDS is their warm-up.  It just so happened that the beginning of this particular warm-up knocked them flat on their rump.

You take a game like this and you throw it away.  You try to convince yourself that all those runs the opposition scored in the late innings probably “tired them out” and will make it harder for them to do it again the next time out.

By 3:30 Friday afternoon, the series could very well be knotted 1-1, with a hungry David Price and a raucous Motor City crowd waiting for Sunday.

There’s no way to dress up a 12 to 3 shellacking and make it look pretty. You must simply forget, move on, and rip momentum back the very next day.

Responsibility falls on the seasoned shoulders of Justin Verlander and the bats of the sleeping Tigers offense.

History would suggest they’ll be up to the task.