DETROIT — Boy, it sure was a shame how that scrappy Oakland A’s team, one that struck out a lot, but piled up clutch hits in the regular season, simply ran out of magic in the postseason.

And the Yankees lost the American League Championship Series when their vaunted offense chose the wrong time to go ice cold, and Alex Rodriguez, Robinson Cano and Curtis Granderson all went Missing In Action.

That’s how the storylines for the 2012 playoffs will read, if they’re being crafted to fit the regular-season narratives that we all know so well.

The true story?

The common denominator for why those two scripts got completely flipped?

Sheer dominance on the part of the Detroit Tigers starting rotation that both those teams had the ill luck to face.

It’s the single biggest factor the Tigers are headed to the World Series.

“They’re as close to perfection as you can be. Through the playoffs, too? I mean, these are the best teams. It’s unreal how they’re pitching,” said reserve infielder Danny Worth, marveling at the fact that it doesn’t really matter which of the foursome is going on a given night.

“You’ve seen it, I mean it’s not like we’ve got one guy going tonight, and he’s our best guy, and then, oh, we have these guys coming next. It’s like every night, we’re going to get something good out of all of them.”

When manager Jim Leyland announced his playoff rotation — “It’s not really a secret,” he said — this weekend, it was, as he is so wont to say, “a no-brainer.” Same as it was when the Tigers got it lined up for the AL Division Series.

Justin Verlander in Game 1.

Doug Fister in Game 2.

Anibal Sanchez (Game 3) and Max Scherzer (Game 4) in the first two games of the World Series at Comerica Park.

Repeat as necessary.

Once the Tigers found they had enough time to set up the rotation any way they’d like, you had to figure Verlander — the staff ace — would get the ball in the first game. After that ... does it matter? The other three have been so good, they’ve become interchangeable.

“Doesn’t even matter. I agree,” Worth said. “Everyone’s playing well, pitchers are throwing well, and it’s just fun — I haven’t played a lot, so it’s just fun to watch. Fun to watch them work.”

And their work has been simply sensational.

Through the five-game ALDS against Oakland, the Tigers starters threw 34 2/3 innings (all but nine of the total), giving up five earned runs (1.30 ERA) on 21 hits, striking out 41 and walking 10.

Can’t get much better than that. Or ... ??

Through the four-game ALCS against New York, the starters threw 27.1 innings, giving up two earned runs (0.66 ERA) — “We’re going to have to get on them about those two earned runs,” Leyland joked in the series-clinching celebration — on 14 hits, striking out 25 and walking nine.

At one point — from the start of Game 5 of the ALDS through the first eight innings of Game 3 of the ALCS — the starters recorded 30 1/3 consecutive scoreless innings. According to STATS, LLC, it’s the longest streak by one club’s starting pitchers in a single postseason.

Even more impressive was what the pitchers did to offenses that had been clicking through the regular season.

Nobody in baseball had more walk-off wins than the A’s this season. Their ALDS line?

A total of 11 runs, a .194 average, hit three home runs, slugged .284, struck out 50 times in five games.

The Yankees, who scored the second-most runs in baseball (804) in the regular season, posted an MLB-best .453 team slugging percentage, and hit 245 home runs, 31 more than the next team, were shut down, too.

In four games, they mustered six runs, hit .157 and slugged .264 as a team, and hit just three home runs — two of them in one inning against Tigers closer Jose Valverde.

Or, to look at it another way: The Tigers gave up 15 runs as a team in their final game of the 2011 postseason (a 15-5 loss to Texas in Game 6 of the ALCS), but have only given up 17 total so far through nine postseason games in 2012.

It has helped, though, that the Tigers have faced hitters that were scuffling.

There’s no guarantee they’ll get the same in the World Series.

“I don’t think there’s any question about that, but I think the one thing that you have to remember — and you have to be careful how you say this — for one thing I can tell you, we’re going to see different type hitters in the Cardinals and the Giants than we saw in the Yankees. Yes, the pitching’s been on a roll. Yes, they did a fantastic job. (Pitching coach) Jeff Jones has been unbelievable with the game plan,” said Leyland, who also credited the advance scouting staff, as well.

“But I still want to tell you that if you watch the tapes of those games we still threw some very hittable pitches that the Yankees missed, so we caught a break. They just weren’t swinging real good at the time. So it was a combination of us pitching real good, a good game plan and the fact that they weren’t swinging good. That’s basically what amounted to the shutouts and the lack of runs.”

Even so, the Tigers still took advantage of it. And then some.

You could make a case that the starters should’ve been the ALCS MVP, if not Delmon Young — who won it — or reliever Phil Coke.

“Honestly, I think they could have. This staff is unbelievable. If you really look at the numbers, Fister and Scherzer have been dominating since the All-Star break. Then if you add that with Verlander, you’ve got three No. 1 starters there and they’re pitching like it. That can be tough on any team, any series,” catcher Gerald Laird said. “I thought our pitching performed to our expectations this series.”

That’s just it. That’s the expectation for a team that’s swung deadline deals both of the last two seasons to add veteran pitchers — Fister in 2011 and Sanchez this year — to the mix, knowing that, in the postseason, pitching dictates success.

And the Tigers’ pitching certainly has done that.

“These past two series, Oakland and New York, you’re not going to see better pitching than what they put out there,” said Rick Porcello, who started all season, but ended up in the bullpen for the postseason. “They did a heckuva job. It’s unbelievable in postseason baseball to go out there and put up the numbers they did. It was fun to watch.”

It doesn’t matter to them who is doing it, or when, although continuing the success has been a motivating factor for each.

“I think, first of all, we are an easy-going group. We don’t put too much pressure on one another. It’s just we all tend to get along. And I think pitching, much like hitting, is contagious. And guys go out there night in and night out and see guys have a good game, and the next day he wants to have a good game, so on and so forth,” Verlander said.

“And I think that’s what we are feeding on right now. We have a lot of confidence and a lot of faith in the next guy, and I think that makes it easier on the starting pitcher the next day when you know that the guy going next, he’s been throwing the ball well, too, so you don’t have a ton of pressure on you to go out there and be perfect.

“As a rotation, right now things are going well. In the postseason that’s what it takes, because runs are not easy to come by and you’re facing better pitching. And obviously, especially with the series that we have been playing, runs are scarce, so you have to take advantage when your team scores one or two or three and keep the other team off the board.

“It is nice to see us get rolling as a group, and hopefully we can continue it through the World Series.”

That’s where the power in the formula lies: In the group.

While Verlander didn’t win quite as many games as he did in his Cy Young and MVP season in 2011, he was every bit as stingy with the runs, and again led all of baseball in strikeouts, innings pitched and pitches thrown.

The key has been the other three elevating themselves to his plane, rather than the other way around.

Scherzer and Fister, who both got their first taste of postseason action a year ago, have pitched every bit as well as they did in the 2011 postseason.

While Scherzer’s season started out as his others with the Tigers have — inconsistent — it didn’t stay that way. Since the unfortunate loss of his brother in late June, Scherzer has been on a personal tear, going 10-3 with a 2.72 ERA in 18 starts, allowing opposing batters to hit just .221. He also struck out 131 batters in that span, allowing him to nearly catch his teammate, Verlander, for the strikeout title.

Fister’s inconsistencies were more injury-related, as he spent two stints on the disabled list with a side strain early in the season. Since the All-Star break, he’s made 15 starts, going 10-5 with a 2.67 ERA, holding opposing batters to a .221 average.

The Tigers knew, if healthy, what they had in those two.

The wild card was Sanchez, acquired before the trade deadline from the Miami Marlins. He was 1-3 with a ghastly 7.97 ERA in his first four starts with Detroit, and there were grumblings of having “lost the trade.”

“The thing that’s tough, when you make deals like that, and you’re in a pennant race, there’s a lot of focus on those guys, right off the bat. People forget, too, about the transitions they’re going through with their lives. They’re picking up, they’re moving somewhere. They don’t know the guys on the team real well. They’re in a different city, facing new teammates, thrust right into a pennant race. Sometimes you need to get your breath a little bit,” team president and GM Dave Dombrowski said.

“It’s hard. And you have to ask yourself when you make the deal, if this guy can handle it, or can he not handle it? And nobody really knows until you go through it. But you left your family behind. In Sanchez’s case, his wife’s having a baby. ... All those things are going through his mind, and all of a sudden — boom, you’re leaving. So there is a transition that’s involved. And that’s why sometimes, I understand there’s not a lot of patience.”

There should have been patience. Those who’d waited to pass judgement would’ve seen Sanchez pitch far better than a 3-3 record down the stretch, recording a 2.15 ERA in his final eight starts of the regular season, during which he’d limited opposing hitters to a .227 average.

Even the guy who constructed the rotation, Dombrowski, has been impressed.

“They’re probably throwing as well as rotation I’ve been around,” said Dombrowski, who constructed a World Series-winning Florida Marlins staff of Kevin Brown, Alex Fernandez and Al Leiter, adding in a young Livan Hernandez.

“But this one right now, the way they’re throwing, the combination of where they’re at, age-wise, stuff-wise. I would have a hard time saying that I’ve ever been associated with one that’s better, or got better stuff.

“Also, I’m sure four more victories would add to that, too.”

All four of the starters would go for that.

Email Matthew B. Mowery at matt.mowery@oakpress.com and follow him on Twitter @matthewbmowery. Text keyword “Tigers” to 22700 to get updates sent to your phone. Msg & data rates may apply. Text HELP for help. Text STOP to cancel.