Four runs in three games.
A series victory.
Welcome to Detroit Tigers baseball.
With Alfredo Simon at his sick father's bedside, the Tigers needed six pitchers to get through nine innings, and they only scored on one play, but at the end of the day, that was enough for a 3-2 victory over Oakland. Couple that with Tuesday night's 1-0 victory, and they leave the Bay Area with two wins in three games.
All three of Detroit's runs came on Yoenis Cespedes' fifth-inning homer. Oakland manager Bob Melvin had just walked Miguel Cabrera to face Cespedes, who is still wildly popular with A's fans, and the move didn't work.
"Cespy hit the homer, we got a great job from the pitching staff, and we won the game," Brad Ausmus said. "Can't complain about much after that."
Kyle Ryan's rushed trip from Louisville to Detroit didn't work as well as the Tigers had hoped, so it was Alex Wilson making his first career start. It went better than Brad Ausmus could have imagined, as Wilson faced the minimum nine batters in his three innings.
"I treated it like a relief appearance," Wilson said. "I waited until the game started to start warming in, and then I came in from the bullpen. It was just another long-relief outing."
Ryan followed with three more innings, allowing one run and turning the game over to Detroit's late-inning relievers in good shape.
"We were hoping to get three innings from Alex, and he did a great job," Ausmus said. "We weren't even sure that Ryan would be here by the third inning, but he got here and he said he slept on the plane, so he was the second guy, and he did a nice job as well."
Al Alburquerque got through the seventh, and although Blaine Hardy gave up a run in the eighth, Joba Chamberlain escaped the game.
That set things up for Joakim Soria. He wasn't his usual overpowering self, allowing a single and walk, but he struck out the final two batters of the game. Soria's 19th pitch, thrown with the tying run on second and the winning run on first, was a nasty curveball that froze Marcus Semien to end the game.
The 71-mph curve was the only curveball Soria threw, as he dug deep into his arsenal to find the perfect pitch.
"That one was hard," he said. "It's never easy against a major-league team, but you always keep track of what is going on and make adjustments. By the end, I felt really good."
In the end, the Tigers got a win from five major-league relievers and a minor-league starter that hadn't won a game all season. The A's managed six hits and were 0-for-10 with runners in scoring position.
"We are always having fun in the bullpen, and that carries over to the mound," Soria said. "These guys have been awesome."
