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Ben Grosenthal and other contributors
In a heavyweight battle between the #1 Detroit Tigers and #2 Cleveland Indians, the Detroit Tigers prevailed in 5 games to defeat the defending, and 5 time champion Cleveland Indians.
With visions of 1968 dancing in their heads the Tiger faithful watched this young Tiger pitching staff do just enough to silence the best hitting team in the Global Federation. Braden Bucannon pulled a page from his childhood idol, Mickey Lolich as over the course of 2 starts, he threw 17 innings, allowed 11 hits and 2 runs and came away with 2 wins including the series clincher. Cleveland was paced offensively in the series by 2B Ozzie Albies (8-21 .381), 1B Ward Robertson (5-22 .227) and LF Pascual Gonzalez (7-23 .304). Albies had 4 extra base hits including 2 Home Runs and Robertson had 3 Home Runs and led the Indians with 9 RBI. SP Mohamad Hummel picked up the only win as he went 6 strong innings in Game 2. RP Peter Van Zyl picked up the save shutting the Tigers down for 2.2 inning, overall he had a strong series only allowing 1 earned run in 6+ innings of work. LF Mitch Lewis led the Tigers in hitting this series, (8-21 .381) with 4 extra base hits including 2 Home Runs. 3 players drove in at least 6 runs, C Nick Oden and RF Li Cheung both had 2 Home Runs and 2 doubles, driving in 6 and 7 runs respectively. SS Alex Fontenot only had 4 hits, but drove in 6 runs. Detroit only had 2 players hit over .251 for the series (Lewis & Cheung), so that leads to the real reason for this Detroit title, the pitching staff. Detroit came into the playoffs with an all-time record of 51 complete games, and they held true to form in this World Series with SP Barton Wertz going the distance in an important Game 3 victory and SP Braden Bucannon going the distance in the first game of the series. SP Bucannon closed out the series going 8 innings to pick up 2 wins. Game 4 was a 15 inning affair where the seldom used Detroit bullpen would use 5 pitchers to only allow 2 runs over the last 10+ innings to secure the win. In a bit of an ironic twist, the only Left-handed pitcher (RP Jacob Ford) on the Tiger staff would pick up his 1st 2 saves of the year, by going 1.1 innings in game 4 & 5. My pick for World Series MVP would be SP Braden Bucannon. I would place major $$ on both of these teams maybe seeing each other in the Season 10 World Series. Neither Detroit or Cleveland lose any of their regular position players or major players from their pitching staff.
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December 2019
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