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This baseball postseason is littered with former Detroit Tigers stars.
Rick Porcello (Red Sox) was first up last night and flopped like a recycled Hollywood sequel. The likely American League Cy Young winner was staked to an early lead against Cleveland but couldn’t come close to making it hold up. The Tribe came out swinging and walloped three solo shots against Porcello in a single inning.
The Red Sox loss puts all the pressure on another former Tiger, David Price, to cool off the Cleveland bats this afternoon. The southpaw Price, despite being one of the more reliable regular season pitchers in recent history, has been anything but in the playoffs.
Remarkably, in one of the more eye-popping statistics you will ever come across, David Price has made eight postseason starts in his career and his team has lost every single one of those games. Eight attempts and no victories. For a guy boasting a sparkling 121-65 regular season win-loss mark, it’s almost unfathomable how punchless he has been in October.
Boston desperately needs Price to reverse that playoff trend today, but remember that he’s coming off a fairly pedestrian regular season. He did rack up an impressive 17 wins, but did so with a 3.99 ERA, easily the highest mark since his rookie campaign.
The other former Detroiter in the spotlight today is Max Scherzer. Mad Max was the Nationals’ ace all year long. The National League’s only 20-game winner, Scherzer also paced the NL in innings pitched and led all of baseball with an electrifying 284 strikeouts (Verlander was next on the list, a healthy 30 Ks behind).
The only issue for Scherzer today? The unhittable Clayton Kershaw will be taking the hill for the opposition. Kershaw is generally someone you’re lucky to score 1-2 runs off of, but like Price, his dominance has not transferred to postseason play. With Stephen Strasburg currently on the shelf for Washington, it is critical that Scherzer somehow topple the great Kershaw in Game 1.
Even though JV, Miggy, and Co. got left out of this year’s October festivities, Detroit baseball die-hards can still find interest keeping tabs on these former Tigers’ All-Stars.
After the way the Bengals finished, and the performance from Porcello on Thursday night, Price and Scherzer better tread carefully. New or old, it has not proved to be a very fruitful time of year for anyone associated with the Old English D.
