*NORMALLY I WOULDN’T BORROW SO MUCH OF AN ARTICLE, BUT IT’S THE TIGERS. ENJOY.

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The winner of the 2013 World Series will be …

The Detroit Tigers. They’re going to beat the Los Angeles Dodgers. In six games.

You know, it takes courage to pick a team that just got swept — not to mention no-hit — in their final series of the year, by a club that lost 100 games. But I wasn’t shaken by that one bit, at least not after one scout who also picked the Tigers reassured me that they just “took the weekend off” and that “the games that team had to win late in the year, they won.”

via Predicting who comes out on top in this year’s October action – ESPN.

Can You Spell P-I-T-C-H-I-N-G?

Here’s how one exec on the Tigers bandwagon summed up his case, pithily: “Pitching, pitching and pitching.”

Hey, he had me at the first “pitching.”

When we size up what we’re looking for in a potential World Series champ, what’s always the first item on our list? Not just this October — every October. We always ask ourselves: “Who has the most dominant, most October-ready pitching?” Don’t we? And, specifically, we ask: “Who has the most dominant, most October-ready rotation?”

Well, if the answer isn’t the Tigers, I’m not sure which sport you’ve been watching the past six months. Here are some tidbits about this Tigers staff that you probably ought to know:

Their starters have ripped off 21 games this year of 10 strikeouts or more. And yeah, that’s a lot. In fact, it’s the most double-digit strikeout games by any rotation since the 1989 Angels.

Every one of the Tigers’ starters has had at least two games with 10-plus whiffs this year. So how many other teams since 1900 could say that? Not a one, the Elias Sports Bureau reports. And their Games 1-2-3 starters (in some order) — Max Scherzer, Anibal Sanchez and Justin Verlander — have combined for 17 double-digit K games just by themselves. Whew.

The strikeout ratio of this group is an incredible 8.63 strikeouts per nine innings. That would merely be the best ratio by any rotation in the history of the American League.
Their 108 quality starts this year are the most by any AL pitching staff since the dawn of the DH — and 13 more than the next-closest AL rotation this year.

They also averaged 3.47 strikeouts for every walk. That’s the second-best strikeout/walk ratio by any rotation in the history of the American League.

Oh, and one more thing. Scherzer (21-3, 2.90) is probably going to win the AL Cy Young Award — and he didn’t even lead his own team in ERA. Sanchez did that (with a 2.57 ERA). In fact, he led the whole league.

So I heard the same reviews of this staff over and over: “Best starting pitching in the league.” … “Best collection of power arms.” … “Stud pitching.” … “Any team that could have Verlander as maybe their (fourth-best) starter is pretty strong.”

Hey, ya think?

Crouching Tigers

OK, so why the Tigers? One reason is that so many baseball people in this poll had deep reservations about the Dodgers, who “just aren’t playing well,” said one scout who saw them recently.

I like the Tigers’ October readiness even better.

Hard to believe I’ve gotten this deep into this opus and I haven’t even mentioned their trusty manager (Jim Leyland) or Miguel Cabrera and an offense that led the major leagues in hitting (and struck out 244 fewer times than the Red Sox). Tough to overlook the fact that the Tigers scored almost 150 more runs than the Dodgers.

Amazingly, the biggest worry about the Tigers’ offense these days might be Cabrera himself. No one knows for sure the extent of his groin/abdomen issues. But he hasn’t been the same guy for more than a month now, with just two extra-base hits in his last 96 plate appearances.

“I just finished watching them, and he can’t run or move,” said one NL scout. “He doesn’t have his legs under him. He’s hitting everything to right field and right-center. And if he has to run, he goes like 25 percent.”

But he also now has four days of rest before he has to play again. He’s still a good enough hitter, on one leg, to have finished his season with four multi-hit games in his last six games. And, as one NL exec put it, “Half of Cabrera is still better than most guys.”

“I’d actually be more concerned,” said the same exec, “if Verlander was not the same guy.” But a scout who just saw Verlander expects him to have a big October.

“[There’s] all this worry about Verlander,” the scout said. “And the last time I saw him, he was throwing 100 [mph] in the fifth.”

“I wouldn’t put it past him,” said another scout who just left Detroit, “to go out and strike out 14 in his first game.”

And that, ladies and gentlemen, brings us right back to where this conversation began: Pitching, pitching and pitching.

“My criteria in picking the winner,” said one AL GM, “is all about who would project to line up in [the rotation in] Game 5-6-7 scenarios. And that’s where the Tigers separate themselves a bit for me.”

Hey, for me, too. If you have to go through Verlander, Scherzer and Sanchez, in any order, to win it all, um, good luck to you.

So remember, you heard it here first: Tigers in six.