Behind eight scoreless innings from ace Justin Verlander, the Detroit Tigers defeated the Oakland Athletics 3-0 Thursday night to advance to a third straight American League Championship Series.
Detroit's star players took matters into their own hands in the elimination game, as Miguel Cabrera's two-run home run and Verlander's dominance combined to keep the 2013 season alive.
Strangely enough, the contribution from the two MVP's was something of an underdog story.
Though injuries and rust were both to blame, the 2012 Triple Crown winner couldn't seem to generate any power during the 
ALDS. Cabrera's mediocre performance through four games included just four singles and a costly game three error at third base. What made the struggles concerning was that it continued a trend from September. Cabrera hit just .278 with two extra-base hits in the final month of the season and struggled to move around the base paths.
Jim Leyland defended the best hitter in baseball as he battled through injuries to his ankle, knee, hip and groin; but the power was gone.
Then, 24 days and 52 at bats after his last extra base hit, Cabrera snapped his drought with a two-run moonshot to left field that landed just feet past the fence. Seeing their slugger come out of his slump gave the Tigers confidence, and Verlander ran with it.
Following a "disappointing" season in which he finished with a 3.46 ERA and 217 strikeouts, Verlander slammed the door on Oakland for the second year in a row. While carrying a no-hitter deep into the seventh inning he silenced a raucous O.co Coliseum and all of his doubters at once.
In 15 ALDS innings Verlander allowed zero runs on just six hits. In a season that featured Max Scherzer as the leading Cy 
Young candidate and Anibal Sanchez as the ERA winner, Detroit's richest pitcher was all but forgotten.
Fans forgot 2011, when he was the first pitcher to win the MVP in 19 years. They forgot 2012, when he finished second in the Cy Young voting. Many probably forgot that in 2013 he made his fifth straight all-star appearance.
They remember now.
When the stage is brightest, Justin Verlander always brings his best. Leyland often talks about the look in the 30-year old's eye before a game like Thursday night and how certain it makes him that his ace will be dominant.
But despite the game five heroics, the most valuable player for the Tigers was neither Verlander nor Cabrera, but the recently-reinstated Jhonny Peralta. After serving his 50-game suspension for violating the MLB's substance abuse policy, Peralta returned to Detroit and provided the biggest hit of the season: a three-run home run to tie game four in what was setting up to be Oakland's clinching victory.
It was the second game in a row that Peralta brought the Tigers back from behind. His two-run single in game three knotted things up before the A's ambushed Sanchez for two home runs in the fifth. A day later, Peralta's shot to left field 
resurrected the all-but-dead Detroit hopes to advance.
Peralta and Verlander may have been an unlikely hitter-pitcher combination to play hero going into the ALDS, but they answered the call when the Tigers needed it. Even a struggling Cabrera found a way to pitch in at the end.
Now the Tigers will match up against a formidable Boston team that led the AL with 97 wins. It's the first time these franchises have seen each other in the postseason despite tracing their histories all the way back to 1901. Detroit took the season series 4-3 in 2013 but suffered their worst loss of the season 20-4 in the final meeting.
Boston will have to worry about former-Red Sox catcher Victor Martinez, who is scorching hot at the plate. After posting the best second-half batting average in the country this season, Martinez shredded the A's for a .450 average and three extra-base hits in the ALDS. The veteran designated hitter is on a mission this postseason after being forced to watch from the dugout with a knee injury in 2012.
Detroit will need him against Boston.
Though both of the Tigers' last two World Series trips have come after ALCS sweeps, this round figures to be more of a grind.
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