Top 10 A's - Tigers Game Three ALDS Takeaways

Air Coco

10) The fact that Justin Verlander can go twice in this series with no pitch count, while Brett Anderson will only go once and is done after six innings, is something of a problem

9) I'm not saying that A's OF Seth Smith owns the Tigers' Anibal Sanchez, but there's a reasonable chance that the pitcher is washing his car as I write this

8) Cliff Pennington plays second base like a shortstop, which is nice, but hits like a relief pitcher, which, well, isn't

7) Every close game against the Tigers becomes a matter of counting outs against seeing Miguel Cabrera

6) Coco Crisp's game-changing play in the second, and Yoenis Cespedes' in the seventh, had to make Prince Fielder wonder what he did to get all of the good defense

5) I'd like to think that Tigers' SS Jhonny Peralta will eventually bobble a ball that matters, given the obvious issues posed by the weird spelling of his name

4) For some reason that no one can easily fathom, A's catcher Derek Norris tried to steal a base, and was gunned down easily by the Tigers' Gerald Laird

3) Anderson's six innings were a thing of fast acting beauty, with a slider that was borderline unfair, in his first start in 3 weeks... which is to say he was borderline miraculous

2) Ryan Cook, Sean Doolittle and Grant Balfour pitched three innings with 2 hits, 5 Ks, and at least a half a dozen fist pumps and screams of joy

1) For the first time in the last half dozen times it has come up, the A's actually won a playoff game where they could have been eliminated

0) There is no takeaway about the Tigers' offense, because you can't really say anything about something that, other than one stolen home run, didn't really exist