Unlike three weeks ago today, this Dallas Braden start lacked any kind of drama, as the Detroit Tigers scored early and often, and then piled on late against Vin Mazzaro to trip the A's 10-2, thus ending Oakland's modest four-game win streak on a lazy afternoon at Comerica Park.
Meanwhile the A's bats could not register any sort of offense against Max Scherer, who celebrated his return to the bigs by striking out 14 in 5-2/3 innings. That's 14 of the 17 outs he recorderd, folks. All told Detroit pitchers K'd 17 A's.
Some would say they had a little help from the guy who stands behind the catcher.
Daric Barton's big fly off Phil Coke in the seventh kept the A's from bring blanked, and that came after he had struck out in his three previous at-bats.
Whereas Oakland was able to withstand a long-ball assault by Miguel Cabrera on Friday night, the young star was good enough by himself to beat the A's today. He had four of the Tigers' 15 hits (matching the other team's total), drove in four runs, and his homerun in the eighth inning was his fourth of the series. Dude's a beast.
Brandon Inge and Carlos Guillen also homered, in the fourth and sixth innings respectively, both coming off Braden.
This is the kind of game you toss out and look ahead to the next day. Only the next day consists of Justin Verlander, and you hope the A's can somehow figure out a way to steal a win- and the series- before heading out to Boston.
Tomorrow's game is an early one, too; 10:05 first pitch on Memorial Day.
