In Friday night's Game One Bartolo Colon and the Oakland A's scuffled right out of the gate and gave up three runs in the first inning; three runs proved to be more than enough for Max Sherzer and the Detroit Tigers as they held on to take the opener on the road 3-2.
The bad news for Oakland is that things aren't going to get any easier when they face former American League MVP and Cy Young Award winner Justin Verlander. While Sherzer became the staff ace this past year that's no reason to think that Verlander isn't still one of the top pitchers in the AL. Verlander's stats for the year - 13-12, 3.46 ERA, 217 SO - were good enough to be the top guy on many teams.
"I think some of it probably was that it was not up to the standards that the national media and everybody was used to," Tigers manager Jim Leyland told MLB.com. "He's still been an excellent pitcher for us. Anytime you can put him out there, we feel real good about that. He's been a lot better than his record shows."
In what may be a must-win game for the A's they turn to rookie sensation Sonny Gray. Gray was born a week after the A's last won the World Series and has all of 12 major leagues game experience under his belt.
Gray has posted a 5-3 record in 10 starts with the A's this season with an excellent 2.85 ERA. Most notably Gray has been especially hot lately - 4-1, 2.27 ERA in his last six starts - and has been extremely dominant at home - 3-1, 1.99 ERA, according to ESPN.
"I think he will do well. We wouldn't have put him in that spot if we didn't think so," A's manager Bob Melvin told ESPN. "He's pitched in some big games, whether it's in the big leagues, whether it's at school. He's been in some high-profile places and pitched in some high-profile games."
If the A's are going to avoid leaving Oakland in a 0-2 hole someone other than Yoenis Cespedes is going to have to step up. In Game One Cespedes accounted for two of the team's three hits and all of the RBIs when he went deep against Sherzer in the seventh. Just making contact would be a big step forward for Oakland; Detroit pitching tallied 16 strikeouts in Game One.
Game Two is scheduled to start at 9:07 p.m. ET. A live radio broadcast of the game can be heard at the following link. A live stream of the game can be watched at the following link.
* Stats for this article were obtained from Baseball-Reference.com.
