It was not a great season for the usually effectively wild Al Alburquerque. Was 2015 an anomaly?
In the first game of the 2013 ALCS, Tigers pitchers combined to strike out 17 batters while walking 6, making it a perfect Al Alburquerque of baseball games. That's our Al-Al: lots of strikeouts, and whoa, baby, let's tone down the walks a bit, ok? But he can't, you see, because that's what he does. He's the living, breathing definition of "effectively wild." He throws a nasty fastball in the mid-to-high 90's, and he mixes that with a nasty slider that typically sits in the mid-80's.