The ALCS looks to be a pitching dominated series, since the hurlers are the dominant members of both teams.

Based on the full year statistics, the Tigers are clearly the better team. They're about .3 runs better scoring, and .4 runs better pitching. If you look at the in-season record, Detroit did dominate Oakland. The Tigers outscored the A's 52-39, but only won the season series 5-4. There were two big blow out wins by the Tigers in there, 10-4 and 11-4. Otherwise, the teams were even.

It's interesting to note both of those games were started by Kenny Rogers in Oakland. Rogers enjoys great success in that stadium. Leyland hasn't announced his rotation for the ALCS, but I wouldn't be surprised to see Rogers scheduled for games 2 and 6 at the Coliseum. Given the relative success of the pitchers in the LDS, I'd go with Verlander, Rogers, Bonderman, Robertson as my rotation. The A's hit lefties better than righties, especially for power, so this rotation minimizes that. Robertson was the only pitcher who didn't shutdown the Yankees in ALDS, so why give him two starts in the ALCS?

The Athletics actually took a vote on who should be their game two starter.

Ten of Oakland's top decision makers held a closed-door meeting in the manager's office Sunday and cast their votes on who should start for the Athletics in Game 2 of the AL championship series -- Rich Harden or Esteban Loaiza.

The tally: Harden 5, Loaiza 5.

Loaiza won the tiebreaker based on his health, recent results and reliability. Harden has only pitched three times since missing more than three months with an elbow injury.

I wonder who cast ballots, and if there was a split between the sabermetricians and the scouts?

Let's take a look at the offenses in more depth:

The Detroit offense gets a big power boost away from Comerica, which is one reason they had the top road record in the majors this season. But the Coliseum doesn't boost power, so we may be looking at seven games of Detroit's offense closer to their poor showing at home. The other thing that's tough to gauge is the reality of Oakland numbers. Over the last two months of the season, they traded walks for hits, keeping their OBA the same but raising both their batting average and slugging averages about 20 points. Take two teams (or players) with the same OBA, the one with the higher batting average is going to be the more dangerous team. Hits move runners a lot farther than walks do.

Here's a more in depth look at the pitching:

Detroit beats Oakland hands down here. They do a better job keeping hits low, and keeping power low. The two teams struck out the same number of batters, gave up about the same number of home runs, but the Tigers walked many fewer batters.

There are a lot of things in favor of the Tigers as you look at the numbers. The only place the Athletics have the edge is getting their batter on base. The Twins did a good job in the first two games of the LDS stopping the Athletics offense. I suspect an even better Detroit staff will do the same. It's then up to the Oakland staff to shut down the Detroit offense, and the configuration of the two ballparks should help in that regard by cutting down on the Tigers power. I'll pick Detroit, with about a 60% chance of winning the series.