DETROIT – Anibal Sanchez sat in front of reporters at the post-game press conference trying to explain what went wrong.
He’d led the American League in earned run average for the Detroit Tigers, and given up fewer homers per nine innings than anyone in the league.
But he got rocked by the Oakland A’s in Monday’s 6-3 loss, which put his team on the brink of elimination entering Game 4 on Tuesday night at Comerica Park.
The aberration was something he could only partially explain, and he began by saying, “I would like to know what happened.”
But there was one point on which he was certain.
“Nothing is over,” Sanchez said with emotion. “Nothing is over. Tomorrow, it’s another day, another chance. We need to keep working, keep the pitch and throw, get some hits and make some runs. We need to keep fighting. Nothing is over yet.”
Now, he was not exactly John Belushi’s Bluto Blutarsky character in “Animal House,” rallying the Delta’s against Dean Wormer with the “Nothing is over until we decide it is!” speech. But his eyes did flash conviction; he believed.
And a belief that they can win Tuesday, when Doug Fister faces Oakland’s Dan Straily, and win again Thursday night in Oakland with Max Scherzer is what this season has come down to for the Tigers.
That’s because they could not match the offensive revival the A’s experienced, and Sanchez couldn’t keep the ball down consistently.
Sanchez had a 2.57 ERA and 0.45 homers allowed per nine innings stat that were unrivaled in the league. He allowed one homer in the entire month of September -- a solo shot by Raul Ibanez of the Seattle Mariners – but turned into a batting practice pitcher in the middle innings.
Josh Redick, Brandon Moss and Seth Smith – in a span of nine batters in the fourth and fifth innings – all went deep against Sanchez.
He tipped his cap to Redick for golfing out a low, inside pitch. But Sanchez knew he’d erred on the pitches to Moss and Smith that turned a tie ballgame into a three-run deficit.
“The pitch against Moss was a changeup,” Sanchez said. “They both stayed up. It’s the same way with Smith, sinker in the middle. He stayed there. He’s a fastball hitter, Smith. I don’t keep the ball down.”
Moss hit his into the teeth of a stiff wind, while Smith’s was aided by what Tigers manager Jim Leyland described as a “jet stream” blowing out to left-center. Still, the Tigers couldn’t manage even a single homer under the same conditions. But that’s a matter for another story.
“It’s not about one pitch,” Sanchez said of whether or not he could find his curveball. “Today, it was about location.”
Sanchez gave up more runs in 4 1/3 innings against the A’s – who continued to feast in games at Comerica after getting 34 runs in four games here in late August – than he did in three impressive post-season starts combined last year for Detroit. Those were the starts in which he convinced the Tigers to pay him big money -- $80 million over five years – to keep him in their rotation.
Garry Seth Smith – perhaps best known as Eli Manning’s backup quarterback at Ole Miss – now has something else going for him. The sweet-swinging left-handed hitter looks like Ted Williams against Sanchez. Smith is .409 with four homers and six RBIs in 22 at-bats facing him.
What’s his secret?
“Honestly,” Smith said, “I don’t know what it is. At no point am I ever comfortable in an at-bat against him. He keeps me off balance. He’s got a great mixture of pitches. It could be something where I’m just in a good place with my swing every time I face him. I honestly have no answer.”
Moss, with five homers in his last four games at Comerica, had been 1-for-8 with seven strikeouts in the series before hitting the solo shot that put Oakland ahead for good.
“Got the swing-and-miss down pretty well in this series,” Moss said with a smile. “In all honesty, I’m just trying to get a mistake, anything. So right there, I swung over a couple pitches, and he left a changeup up and stayed back long enough to hit it.”
Moss was feeling desperate and found a big chunk of gold in what had been a barren stream. And that is where the Tigers – who have been shut out in 25 of 27 innings in this series – find themselves. They are panning for a victory to stay alive.
Leyland, who will be second-guessed to the high heavens for everything from staying too long with Sanchez to his choice of cologne, was asked about preparing his team any differently for Tuesday night’s backs-against-the-wall game.
“No,” he said, “there is no tricks. We got to win the game tomorrow to try to extend it to Game 5. It’s that simple. There is no different players or no different pitchers, anything of that nature.”
However, I might suggest going to You Tube and typing in “Animal House Speech.” At times like this, you can laugh or you can cry. Or recall how the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor.
