And astonishingly enough, the Cardinals are still in the World Series. I remembered watching the Office and being very happy about that, and then I’m sure I turned on the Cardinals game, but it was kind of late and I was a little tired and who knows what kind of strange things the mind can come up with when inhibitions fall to tiredness. A backup outfielder making the best Second-best third best? catch in playoff memory? Yadier F. Molina?

But here it was, Friday in Columbia, and the Royals fans were still shocked about Jeff Suppan, NLCS MVP. I still had an irrational hatred for Endy Chavez. I still had a rational fear of Justin Verlander. Everything seemed about right.

So I looked up the Tigers and I was a little surprised by what I saw. Some notes, from a cursory glance at their Baseball-Reference page.

• They’re mostly ace-less. From the hushed tones in which their rotation was discussed during their series with the Yankees and the Athletics one would think that their team was like the 2002-vintage Athletics, built around three aces that could go against anybody’s number one. On the contrary, the Yankees actually possessed similar frontline guys. The difference is that the Tigers can go the whole series without starting someone whose ERA+–normalized ERA, in which 100 is the league average–is under 111. In that regard, they’re similar to–though less impressive than–the 2005 White Sox, who had four starters with an ERA over 115. (And a frontline starter, Mark Buehrle, to boot.)

  Yes, the Tigers are built such that they will only give up a pitching advantage in the game(s) Chris Carpenter pitches. That said, if power pitching is your thing the Tigers aren’t your team; only Jeremy Bonderman fits the classic strike-em-out profile, and Kenny Rogers rode to the rescue with one of the lowest K/9 marks from a solid starter in recent memory. Bonderman makes mistakes, and the rest of their starters can be knocked around if you’re patient.

• They’re the anti-OBP dream team. Regarded as a solid-hitting team almost by default, the Tigers nevertheless had the lowest on-base percentage of any team in the playoffs. They were 12th out of fourteen teams in the category; their slugging percentage, on the other hand, was fifth.

  Their OBP of .329 is driven down by a few holes in the lineup–not truck-wide like the ones on the Cardinals, but just big enough to lose a win inside. They’ve got a mess at first base, with Sean Casey having scuffled since reaching the AL and hurting as of late; if they slot MVP candidate Carlos Guillen there, as planned, they open up a spot for the execrable Ramon Santiago. Brandon Inge and Craig Monroe are both low-OBP sluggers of the Juancarnacion variety, and AAA find Marcus Thames, owner of the highest slugging percentage on the team, hit just .199/.278/.432 after the all-star break. Everybody in the lineup can hit for power, but there’s nobody to fear on the order of a Beltran, Delgado or Wright.

• Todd Jones is their closer. The Cardinals had better take advantage of this fact at least once.