The Oakland Athletics will be facing elimination from the 2012 Major League Baseball post-season on Tuesday when they face the Detroit Tigers in game three of their ALDS. The Athletics are behind 0-2 in their series, having lost both of their first two games from Comerica Park. If there is reason for Oakland to be optimistic about their situation it likely resides in the fact that the Athletics will play home games for the remainder of the divisional series.

Bob Melvin, the manager of the Athletics, indicated that his team needed to take a game-by-game approach to the task at hand. Melvin, according to a CNS Bay Area article, stated: "We need to go home and concentrate on Tuesday. If you start thinking about three games ahead, then you lose your focus on Tuesday's game." Outfielder Josh Reddick doesn't appear to be resigned to defeat either: "We're not going to get our heads down and act like we're beaten," he said.

The Athletics, despite the hole they are in, do have to be feeling somewhat optimistic about their chances. The Athletics, should they come back to defeat the Tigers, will not have to win a game on the road thanks to the new '2-3' format of the divisional series that sees the home team in the series away for games one and two and then home for the balance of the series. Importantly, Oakland was an excellent home team on the regular season and they went 50-31 from Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum. Additionally the Tigers were a losing team on the road on the year as they were just 38-43 as visitors. Those two trends suggest that the Oakland vs. Detroit series is still one that hangs in the balance despite Detroit's seemingly commanding lead.

But besides the home and away splits, the Athletics appear to have the pitching match-up in their favor in game three. According to MLB.com, Oakland will send Brett Anderson to the mound on Tuesday, a player who had just a 2.57 ERA on the year in six starts. Detroit will be countering with Anibal Sanchez, a player who went 4-6 during the regular season with a 3.74 ERA.

The Tigers visited Oakland just once in 2012 in a series that was played way back in May. The Athletics took two games of that set and outscored the Tigers 20-15 overall. While two out of three won't do now, not if the A's hope to make the 2012 ALCS, Melvin is right in taking a game-by-game approach and the Athletics appear to have the edge on Tuesday (9pm ET; 6pm PT) with television coverage available on TBS.