Detroit Tigers vs. Oakland A’s: The starting rotation

It is a really tough call to say which four-man rotation is the better one. On the one side you have Oakland full of youth but with limited postseason experience and not a Cy Young Award among them. On the other side you have Detroit with an older and more experienced staff with a lot of playing time in October and the last three years worth of Cy Young Awards in three of the four pitchers.

At first you would automatically give the advantage to the Tigers with all of their awards and experience, however when you look at their numbers on the current season they are not even close to those of the Athletics. All four A’s mentioned have ERAs under 3.00 while all four Tiger pitchers’ ERAs are over 3.00. Verlander’s is above the 4.00 mark. The A’s also have the advantage of having two left-handers on their staff. They will be able to alternate between right and left handed pitching going game by game.

I give a very, almost minuscule advantage to Oakland in this case simply because they have better numbers and are  playing better ball this so far this year without quite as potent of a lineup as the Tigers. I will get to the both teams lineups in the next part of this comparison series. So, as far as starting rotations for the postseason, what do you think? Who would you say has the advantage, the Tigers or the A’s?