ALCS Prediction and Preview: Boston Red Sox vs. Detroit Tigers

Boston Red Sox (97-65) vs. Detroit Tigers (93-69)

Keys for the Red Sox: Take advantage of the Tigers exhaustion; get into the Tigers bullpen; keep the games close late.

The Tigers just finished getting through a long and tough series against the Athletics. They’re a veteran team that’s probably half-relieved to have gotten through the ALDS and half-emotionally exhausted from the difficulty they had winning the series. If the Red Sox jump out and hit them immediately, the Tigers might conserve their energy for the next night.

The Tigers have the advantage in starting pitching, but when it comes to the bullpen the Tigers don’t have a trustworthy closer. Jim Leyland will push his starters as far as he can.

If the games are close late, the Tigers closer Joaquin Benoit is not battle-tested in the role and might crack.

Keys for the Tigers: Ride their starters deep; jump on the Red Sox questionable middle-relief; hope that Miguel Cabrera’s legs are feeling better.

The Tigers have a significant starting pitching advantage and have to use it. In the ALDS, Leyland mistrusted his bullpen to the degree that he used probable AL Cy Young Award winner Max Scherzer in relief. His starters have not been babied by being yanked at 100 pitches. They have the ability to go deeper into games and will be helped by the cool weather and the post-season adrenaline.

The Red Sox middle-relief core is supposed to be “better” with Ryan Dempster out there. That’s not my idea of better and he’s the type of pitcher the Tigers will hammer. Junichi Tazawa, Craig Breslow, Franklin Morales and Brandon Workman aren’t a who’s who of great relievers either.

The Tigers have a lineup full of bashers with Prince Fielder, Victor Martinez and Torii Hunter buttressing Cabrera, but Cabrera is the hub around which the Tigers offense is built. If he’s still compromised – and there’s no reason to think he won’t be considering his inability to move in the ALDS – then they might struggle to score.

What will happen:

Game three is almost as if the Red Sox are punting it, scheduling John Lackey to pitch against a hot Justin Verlander. The first two games have evenly matched starting pitchers. David Ortiz is 3 for 3 with two homers in his career against game one starter Anibal Sanchez. The Tigers will be very careful with Ortiz and that puts the rest of the lineup, specifically Mike Napoli, on the spot. If the Red Sox lose one of the first two games, they’re going to be in serious trouble with the game three matchup.

The Red Sox lineup is built on walks, power and being greater than the sum of its parts. The Tigers lineup is overall superior with their ability to hit and hit the ball out of the park. While Benoit is not a trustworthy closer, Koji Uehara’s longball troubles bit him in the ALDS. With this Tigers lineup, it has a good chance of happening again. The Red Sox will have to use Uehara. If the Tigers get depth from their starters, Leyland won’t hesitate to let them finish their games.

As much as a positive influence John Farrell has been on the Red Sox this season, he’s still does a large number of strange strategic things. The advantage in managers falls to the Tigers.

The Tigers have to win one of the first two games. If they do that, they’re going to win the series. And they will.

PREDICTION: TIGERS IN SIX

ALCS MVP: PRINCE FIELDER

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A Bad Week For MLB’s Radical Right

Political ideologies aren’t judged on their tenets, but on their representatives. Because we see the front people of their particular positions as extreme and overtly unlikable, the entire platform is poisoned because of personality and presentation.

It’s with that in mind that it makes many self-proclaimed conservatives—in statements and action—in MLB look hypocritical.

Three such individuals have found themselves in the public eye this week for various reasons that run the gamut on the scale from the overreaching, delusional businessman; to the ignorant and mouthy; and to the disturbing.

Here they are.

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Curt Schilling’s video game company goes under.

Rhode Island has had a very public shortfall in their pension funds to retired city workers in the municipality of Central Falls, but the state had enough money to guarantee loans worth $75 million to Schilling’s video game company to lure them from Massachusetts.

Schilling, whose right wing politics were fodder for ridicule during his career, was playing the big businessman running a fledgling and hit-or-miss enterprise of creating video games and it collapsed without warning in a most embarrassing fashion.

I’m trying to reconcile how Rhode Island found the money to make that loan guarantee to Schilling and his video game company. Was there a coherent plan that made it a decision with solid foundation that simply failed or was the Republican governor of the state,  Donald Carcieri, trying to use Schilling’s star power to get himself reelected? Was Carcieri himself hypnotized by Schilling’s presence? Or was it bad business?

Possibly all of the above.

Carcieri lost and the business has gone under.

You can read the details here on Boston.com and decide for yourself.

—

Luke Scott has a lot to say.

Having first come under fire for his insistence that President Obama is not an American citizen, Luke Scott of the Rays is no stranger to controversy for his statements. Earlier this year, he said some none-too-flattering things about Fenway Park calling it a “dump”. Last night in the ninth inning of the Rays’ 7-4 win over the Red Sox in Boston, Franklin Morales drilled Scott. The benches emptied and there was a lot of shouting and shoving but no punches thrown.

Ostensibly the incident was in retaliation for Burke Badenhop hitting Dustin Pedroia in the sixth inning. Naturally Red Sox manager Bobby Valentine couldn’t resist stirring the cauldron by saying, “Maybe it was the Ghost of Fenway Past remembering he bad-mouthed all our fans and our stadium, directing the ball at his leg.”

Did the Red Sox pop Scott because of Pedroia or was it because of what he said about Fenway?

I’m inclined to think that it was a combination of the two and Scott was conveniently (or inconveniently for him) batting in the ninth inning of a game the Red Sox were likely to lose. They had the opening and took it. Morales didn’t throw at Scott’s head, so I don’t think this is that big of a deal; certainly not worth the war of words that’s not going to stop anytime soon as long as the managers are involved.

—

The Thong Song seems so long ago for Chad Curtis.

The journeyman Curtis had found a home as a useful extra outfielder for the Yankees and contributed many clutch hits to the 1998-1999 World Series winners. But because he made the mistake of choosing to take on Derek Jeter when Jeter was joking with Alex Rodriguez (then of the Mariners) during a bench clearing brawl between the two clubs, he was run out of town following the 1999 season.

Traded to the Rangers, Curtis again found himself talking about things other than baseball when he objected to teammate Royce Clayton playing Sisqó’s Thong Song in the Rangers’ clubhouse.

It doesn’t make much difference now, but Curtis happened to be right in both cases.

It was entirely inappropriate for Jeter to be standing in the middle of the field chatting with A-Rod while Joe Girardi was brawling with Frankie Rodriguez and Don Zimmer was staggering around on the field as if he was having a heart attack. Since it was Jeter, his behavior was sacrosanct even when he was wrong. Curtis called him out publicly and was dealt away.

As far as the Thong Song goes, if children are allowed in the clubhouse or there are religious people who object to certain content, that has to be taken into account for the sake of the group. Curtis didn’t like it and had a right to express that.

But Curtis’s presence in the news today is a typical political scandal as he has been charged with sexual misconduct for inappropriately touching two teenage girls at a Michigan school where he was volunteering.

“Inappropriate touching” could entail any number of things. Who knows if it’s true? If it is, listening to the Thong Song might’ve been a better alternative to the urges that caused Curtis’s behavior and all three of the above cases are prime examples of why athletes might be better served to keep their political affiliations more ambiguous or be quiet about them entirely.

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