@Athletics 1, Tigers 0 (series tied, 1-1) — After winning the opener, Jim Leyland was playing with house money, and it showed. The key play of the game, before Oakland’s walk-off 9th, came in the top of the 5th inning, Tigers on the corners with one out, and leadoff man Austin Jackson at bat. On a full count, Leyland sent the runner from first base — an aggressive, almost devil-may-care stratagem. Jackson swung through a fastball for his third strikeout, and Stephen Vogt’s peg nailed Jose Iglesias to end the inning.

The goals of sending the runner are clear — avoid a groundball double play, and get another man into scoring position — but the situational math doesn’t seem to add up. Taking the factors in chronological order:

• The chance of a strikeout, leading to a SB attempt: Sonny Gray had struck Jackson out in the 1st and 3rd innings. Jackson fanned in 25% of full counts this year (20/80), 27% career. Gray fanned 28% of full counts (11/39). Jackson is even more vulnerable to power pitchers like Gray, fanning in 32% of career chances.
• The value of a stolen base: Since the steal could only succeed on a strikeout, let’s compare the run expectancy of the two 2-out situations: (a) Men on the corners, 0.53 runs; (b) men on 2nd and 3rd, 0.63 runs; net gain of 0.1 expected runs. Moreover, with the game tied in the 5th, the potential first run is much more valuable than the second; and the expectancy of scoring any runs does not improve with the steal, but actually goes down by a trifle. Granted, those rates measured all teams for 1993-2010, not these teams in a 2013 playoff game. Still, the odds of success on the steal have to be high to justify the risk of ending the inning. However…
• The chance of success on a SB try: Iglesias is fast, as he showed beating out the roller to short that set up the threat. But he’s not a prolific base-thief, with 10 steals and 5 CS this year (counting majors and minors), and a minor-league high of 13 steals. Sonny Gray allowed just one steal in two tries over 64 innings this year. Vogt’s career CS rate is 33% in the majors, 36% in the minors; the AL average this year was 26%.
• The risk of a double play: Oakland was awful at turning DPs this year, tied for last at 9% of DP chances; MLB average was 11%. Gray’s rate was 8%. Jed Lowrie is not a good shortstop. Jackson’s career GDP rate is 10%. And starting the runner creates some risk of a line-drive DP.
• The result of standing pat: If the runner holds, and Jackson makes a non-DP out, Torii Hunter gets to bat. He hit over .300 against righties the last two years.

Sending the runner was a high-risk, low-reward ploy. I think Leyland expected a curveball from Gray, the pitch that whiffed Jackson to open the game. A curve would have given Iglesias a much better chance to steal. But was that a good guess? Gray mixed up his out pitches all night. In the 3rd, he struck out Jackson, Hunter and Cabrera all on fastballs; in the 6th he came back with the curve to fan Hunter again. Given the situation, I would not have banked on a curveball.

The failed gambit did not decide the game; there’s a good chance they would not have scored anyway. But coming away empty did, I think, affect Leyland’s future moves, as did their lead in the series. Given a lead in the game, he would have started the 9th with one of his closers, either Joaquin Benoit (who threw 17 pitches Friday) or Jose Veras, rather than riding the flammable Al Alburquerque. Al-Al bailed them out of the 8th with two high-leverage whiffs, but allowed a .400 OBP leading off innings this year (.382 career). And if Detroit had been tied or behind in the series, it’s unlikely that Justin Verlander would have come out after “just” 117 pitches (he’s gone 130+ twice in the last two postseasons), or that Rick Porcello would have been chosen for the desperate 9th-inning jam. Lefties have hit over .300 against Porcello each of the last four years.

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Bob Melvin made an uncharacteristic move of his own in the home 5th, men on 1st and 2nd with no outs and the bottom third of the order coming up (Josh Reddick, Stephen Vogt, Eric Sogard). Melvin ordered Reddick to bunt. The A’s had just 37 sac bunt attempts this year, 29th out of 30 teams. But Reddick hit .226 this year, .238 vs. RHPs. He was 2 for 19 career against Verlander, with 8 strikeouts (including 6 of his last 9 trips); and he went 0-4 with 3 Ks in game 1. And while Reddick had just two sac bunts in his big-league career (and one in the minors), he did have a perfect record in his four tries (two sacs, two hits). With the profoundly immobile Miguel Cabrera patrolling third base, almost any bunt on the ground would get the runner to 3rd. But Reddick showed poor form (as TV analyst Buck Martinez noted), tilting the bat head below horizontal and punching the ball on a soft line, straight to Cabrera for the first out. Verlander had seemed antsy that inning as he dealt with his first baserunners, but he steadied after the failed bunt, and punched out Vogt and Sogard.

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Vogt’s game-winning hit was his first in the majors, and just his second go-ahead RBI at any stage of a game. He had been 0-for-6 in the series, and struck out in all three tries against Verlander, twice with men in scoring position. But despite an 0-for-32 start to his big-league career, Vogt is no joke as a hitter; his .945 OPS ranked 8th among PCL regulars this year, and he owns a .302 BA and .365 OBP in about 2,500 PAs in the minors. Exactly why Tampa Bay cut him loose this spring, handing him over to Oakland for unnamed consideration, is an open question.

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Despite all the attention paid to the statue of Miguel Cabrera at the hot corner, it was a Princely freeze play that set up the winning run (see 2:45 of the clip). Seth Smith hit it hard, but not even a full step to the right of Fielder. A good first baseman can turn a DP on that ball; an average one gets the out at 1st; and a routinely poor one still might knock it down, holding the lead man at 2nd. But Fielder owns the worst total of WAR-fielding runs of all modern first basemen, and Detroit turned no 3-6-3 DPs this year.

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Some folks are worried about Detroit’s offense, given their late-season numbers and now 17 straight scoreless innings. But I don’t think the Tigers are fretting. Sonny Gray pitched a great game; if he threw any hangers, or fat fastballs in hitter’s counts, I don’t recall them. Still, Detroit earned a split in the Coliseum, where Oakland went 52-29 (2nd in AL), and now they’ll test out their own 51-30 home mark. Monday’s matchup is AL ERA champ Anibal Sanchez against Jarrod Parker. Sanchez threw three sturdy games in last year’s postseason, allowing 4 total runs in 20.1 IP. Detroit has beaten Parker in all four chances, twice in last year’s division series (though he didn’t pitch badly), and pummeled him in their last meeting this April.

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Detroit’s big takeaway from this game was the vintage Verlander performance. Justin ended the year strong, with two scoreless 6-inning stints, 22 Ks against 4 walks, but that was against the feeble Twins and Marlins. Facing the potent Athletics (3rd in AL scoring, 2nd in OPS+), he flashed the old 2-strike dominance that had often been missing this year, as just 6 of 17 put a 2-strike pitch in play, with 2 hits. From 2010-12, Verlander’s .139 BA with 2 strikes trailed only Felix Hernandez, out of 132 pitchers with 300+ IP. This year, his .183 BA was worse than the league average.

If the series goes five games, both game-1 starter Max Scherzer and Verlander would be on full rest, thanks to the travel days after games 2 and 4.

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Yoenis Cespedes is 4 for 8, with 2 of Oakland’s 3 extra-base hits. The rest of the A’s starters have 6 singles in 52 ABs (.115), with 26 strikeouts and 6 walks. Pinch-hitter Alberto Callaspo is 1 for 2 with a double.

Verlander’s 79 Game Score is the 12th at that level in a postseason team loss, and the 12th time a pitcher went 7+ scoreless innings in a postseason team loss. With Gray notching an 81 Game Score, it’s the 5th postseason game with both starters at 79 or better; the first four were all double-CGs, including a Ruthian epic. It’s the 6th postseason game where both starters went 7+ scoreless innings; of those six, it’s the 4th with no decision for either, and the first ever with 9+ Ks for each.

Mr. Vogt, meet the other A’s postseason walk-off heroes:

• Coco Crisp off Papa Grande in last year’s LDS.
• Big Mac’s blast in the ’88 WS.
• Campy’s home run in the ’73 ALCS (11th inning, off starter Mike Cuellar).
• Angel Mangual’s pinch-winner in the ’72 Series.
• Gonzalo Marquez in the pinch, flipping the 1972 ALCS opener (and hanging an 11th-inning loss on starter Mickey Lolich).
• Bing Miller’s WS-winning double in 1929 (after a pass to The Beast).

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Friday

@Braves 4, Dodgers 3 (series tied) — Why did Don Mattingly choose Chris Withrow to start the home 7th inning, with L.A. down by a run? Forget about Withrow’s very short record of professional success. (He was a mediocre SP with poor control, stalled at AA three-plus years before switching to relief last season.) The real issue is facing Brian McCann with a right-handed pitcher. McCann has a large platoon gap, especially in the last two years, when his OBP against lefties is about .270. There were six outs left to get, unless his club rallied, so why wasn’t Mattingly thinking matchups right off the bat?

Fredi Gonzalez might have pinch-hit for McCann, but no one coming off their bench against a lefty is as dangerous as McCann against a righty. The next batters were Chris Johnson, who hit a lot of singles off southpaws this year but is equal both ways for his career, and Andrelton Simmons, who has a slight reverse split. Commentary has focused on matchup moves later that inning, ending in Jason Heyward’s 2-run hit. But it was all set up by McCann’s leadoff walk. I would have started off with Paco Rodriguez, and then played it by ear.

• Hanley Ramirez had the 11th game of 3 or more extra-base hits in a postseason loss. Just two came before 1993, including the only 3-homer loss.
• I was hoping to see Billy Hamilton in the postseason. Instead, we got Dee Gordon. He’s now 5-for-8 in steal tries as a pinch-runner.

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0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 3, 4: Runs scored by the losing team through 10 games of this postseason, averaging 1.6 runs. Last year’s postseason losers topped 4 runs just once in 37 games, averaging 1.8 runs.