Cole’s probably gone. Just can’t see the Astros matching what I think will be something in the 250/7 range. Too bad, as he’s amazing, not that I’m telling you all anything you don’t already know.
I see them spending for Springer. That, or Boston bows out of trying to retain Betts and settles for Springer. Correa is still under team control for two years. While I want him traded, for someone like Thor, or another stud SP, I’m in the minority among knowledgeable Astros fans.
Miley, Reddick, and some others I’m probably forgetting, are gone, I think.
Wow, extra inning Grand Slam to finish off the Dodgers. This postseason is getting wild. Now Nats vs. Cards? I’m not too sure about this match up. I think the Cards have the edge. They have home field also, so that helps.
Hoping Tampa can beat Cole so Yanks have Home Field.
What’s powerful is bringing in a starting pitcher as a relief pitcher. I cannot believe how fucking stupid Dave Roberts is. Why do you do that?
The Dodgers could have brought in Kenta Maeda at that point. (I realize Maeda is a starter by trade but he’d been in the bullpen all series.) They ended up bringing him in after the game was tied and he struck out all three batters he faced. Or bring in Pedro Baez, a fine pitcher who had a day off. But seriously, why do you not just aim to stretch Maeda and Jansen at that stage? Why are you bringing in a starter? And if you must, why is he entering mid-inning?
I don’t have a handy way of figuring this out, but doesn’t it seem like the “I do not trust my bullpen so let’s convert my best starter into a relief pitcher right now” strategy blows up way too often? Expos fans still remember Steve Rogers being inexplicably trotted out in the ninth inning in Game 5 in 1981. I can think of lots of examples of this strategy exploding. I just don’t get it.
Case of the clevers? Kershaw had really good splits against the next few batters, better than Maeda? I don’t know.
I agree with you that managers asking pitchers to do things they aren’t used to—or any player, really—usually turns out terribly. Asking Osuna to pitch a 4-out save, in admittedly a high leverage situation, when he hadn’t done it all year. Asking Verlander to go on short rest, and Verlander gets stunned that his control is off. Well no shit, Sherlock. Asking sluggers to bunt.
It goes on and on. Still, they do it. Often because I think they begin to lack faith in what got them there, and they believe the difficulties their usual strategy or approach is currently encountering, will continue if they don’t make a change. Then again, we all remember when the crazy thing actually works: Gibson’s homer when he could barely walk, Schilling’s bloody sock game.
Definitely feeling nervous about today’s game. The series feels a lot like the Kansas City series from a few years ago. It would be a bummer for this team’s season to end early, but that’s baseball.
According to one of the Nats blogs, this is the first extra innings grand slam by a visiting team in playoff history. No idea how to confirm that, but that’s a pretty impressive stat. Although, I do realize that most of baseball history only saw a World Series and not so many playoff games.
In a nutshell, the pay-walled Baseball Prospectus article makes the claim that “based on exit velocity+launch angle+park effects, there have been about 50% fewer home runs than expected.”
That’s true. McCullers was great at it. Better than his performance as a SP, but let’s see what happens after his Tommy John surgery. It easily could have blown up in Hinch’s face.
Elimination games are supposed to be stressful. Damned if this won’t be a crusher though, if they lose tonight. I just hope it’s a good game, and not that Cardinals-Braves debacle from last night.
I was watching the game with my mother (and my landlady, starting in the 9th).
I actually said out loud after we got guys on 2nd and third in the 10th: “Now if I’m the Dodgers, I’m putting Soto on deliberately and making Howie Kendrick beat us.”
Well, he sure did! It was great to see after the terrible series he’d had.
He was okay as a reliever in 2018 - two runs, albeit one unearned, in five innings - but in that regard he was like Kenta Maeda; he had started in the regular season but in the playoffs he was cast solely as a reliever, and was preparing and warming up accordingly. He wasn’t thrown into a game as a reliever after starting in the same series.
Soto vs Kendrick aside, doesn’t it make perfect sense to set up a force play at home in a situation where giving up a even single run stands a good chance of losing you the series? The Dodgers certainly weren’t significantly worse off by the home run scoring 4 runs rather than 3.
I guess that the biggest problem is that it puts the pitcher in a situation where he cannot walk the batter, so if he gets into a situation where there are 3 balls in the count his options are very limited.
I’ll take the outcome, though it was maybe the most boring possible game, which is one where almost all the scoring happens in the first inning and it isn’t close enough that the late innings have much tension.
Having to stand around while the Rays change pitchers after every batter is boring for everyone, including the Rays outfielders. I think it’s lousy strategy. On the other hand I thought bringing Cole back for the 8th inning was a mistake, so shows what I know.
I did predict Brantley’s home run when he came to the plate, so there is that.
I hate intentional walks. Hate them. Almost all international walks make the situation worse.
That particular intentional walk, though, probably gave the Dodgers a slightly better chance; with no one out your chances of escaping the jam without a force play are really, really bad. That said it depends on the pitcher you have out there; a ground ball pitcher like Marcus Stroman or Stephen Strasburg vastly improves the effectiveness of that strategy. Kelly is a ground ball pitcher, despite the homer, so it was a reasonably good gamble.