Jeff Chiu/Associated Press
Miguel Cabrera (24), the reigning A.L. most valuable player, rounding first base after his two-run homer in the fourth inning gave Justin Verlander all the support he needed.
OAKLAND, Calif. — Justin Verlander continued his playoff mastery of the Oakland Athletics, leading the Detroit Tigers to a 3-0 Game 5 victory over the A's in an American League division series for the second straight season.
Miguel Cabrera's two-run homer in the fourth inning provided all the scoring support Verlander needed, helping send the Tigers to the league championship series against the Boston Red Sox and extending an era of playoff heartache for the A's.
Game 1 of the American League Championship Series is scheduled for Saturday in Boston.
Verlander, the 2011 A.L. Cy Young and Most Valuable Player award winner, has been a steady force atop the Detroit rotation for several years. He made the All-Star team in 2013 for the sixth time, but his numbers fell slightly — 13-12 with a 3.46 earned run average — thanks mostly to a smattering of uncommonly short outings in May and June. Verlander's status as staff ace was bequeathed to his teammate Max Scherzer (21-3, 2.90).
But in the postseason, Verlander, 30, has looked as good as ever. After beating the A's twice in the division series last year, including a four-hit shutout in Game 5, he pitched seven shutout innings in Game 2 last Saturday, which Oakland won, 1-0. That extended Verlander's scoreless string against the A's in the playoffs to 22 innings.
"Sometimes pitchers just match up against a particular team and you just can't figure it out," Detroit Manager Jim Leyland said before the game.
Those trends continued for Verlander and the A's on a cool evening at O.co Coliseum. Verlander pitched eight innings, allowing two hits and striking out 10 with a mix of 80-mile-per-hour curveballs and fastballs high into the 90s. In four playoff starts against Oakland the past two seasons, Verlander has struck out 43 batters and allowed one earned run.
"He was locked in tonight," Leyland said. "He did it for us last year. He's done it on several occasions for us. And he did it again."
Joaquin Benoit allowed a two-out double to Jed Lowrie in the ninth, then struck Yoenis Cespedes with a pitch before enticing Seth Smith into a high fly to right.
Verlander's bid for a perfect game ended with one out in the sixth, when Josh Reddick walked after strikes on the first two pitches. Verlander's bid to join Don Larsen and Roy Halladay as the only pitchers in postseason history to throw a no-hitter ended in the seventh with Cespedes's two-out bouncer to the left of Detroit shortstop Jhonny Peralta.
It is the third year in a row that the Tigers have won a Game 5 in the division series — over the Yankees in 2011 and the A's in 2012 and 2013.
Comparing this year to last year, Leyland said: "This was better. Because that one last year was a long, long time ago."
Oakland was desperate to exorcise the franchise's postseason demons, but only extended them. During the low-budget, hidden-value "Moneyball" era of General Manager Billy Beane, the A's have treated their loyal following to a string of surprising regular-season successes. They reached the postseason this year for the seventh time in 14 seasons.
But the A's are burdened by playoff disappointment. The A's have lost their past six win-or-else Game 5s, dating to 2000, five of them at home. The last time the A's won an all-or-nothing final game of any series was the 1973 World Series against the Mets.
They have lost 9 of their past 10 postseason series, dating to the 1990 World Series. Thursday's game against Detroit represented the 13th time the A's have needed a victory to advance to the next round of the playoffs. They have lost 12 of those chances. The exception was 2006, when they reached the league championship series, only to be swept by the Tigers.
The game began with the promise of a taut duel. Verlander and 23-year-old Sonny Gray each started Game 2, giving up four hits and no runs — Verlander in seven innings, Gray in eight. The A's 1-0 victory came in the ninth.
That performance led the A's to choose Gray, a rookie, to start Game 5 instead of 40-year-old Bartolo Colon, a Cy Young candidate who was 18-6 with a 2.65 E.R.A. in the regular season. In Game 1, Colon allowed three runs in the first inning and took the loss in a 3-2 Detroit victory.
The A's, expecting a tight, low-scoring game, did not want to risk another early deficit. Beane and Bob Melvin, the A's manager, decided on Gray.
"Nothing that we've thrown at him since he's been in the big leagues has bothered him," Melvin said.
Both pitchers held the opponent hitless through three innings, before Gray gave up a one-out single to Detroit's Torii Hunter in the fourth. Cabrera, hobbled to virtual powerlessness by nagging injuries, then crushed a belt-high, 94-m.p.h. fastball over the left-field wall.
Only one of Cabrera's 44 regular-season home runs came after Aug. 26. Soreness moved down his body, as if pulled by gravity — starting in his back, then his abdomen, oblique and groin — until some questioned whether Cabrera, the reigning American League M.V.P., with the league's best batting average this season, should be benched in the playoffs for a healthier player.
Gray teetered into the sixth inning, when the Tigers turned two opening singles into a third run on Omar Infante's groundout.
At that point, Verlander still had a perfect game. It did not stay that way. But the Tigers could not have asked for much better.
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