Excuse my ignorance but I haven’t followed the NL all season. I turned on the Dbacks/Brewers game tonight in the 7th or 8th inning. What’s with the Brewers pitching? This Rodriguez guy looked like a disaster in the making. His mechanics were terrible yet he made it through the 8th. He’s pitching from the stretch and making the catcher earn every cent of his pay. If I was the manager I would have been puking my guts out watching the guy. Then in the 9th they bring in the hairy closer and he can’t hit the strike zone.
Congrats to the Brewers for moving on but what I saw in the late innings tonight was some of the worst pitching I’ve seen in a long time. Maybe I just haven’t been tuning in enough. I didn’t expect to see this in the NLDS.
Walking the bases loaded (Pujols) only to get Berkman and Holliday on deck? Then strike out Berkman? Nice half inning. I’m very much enjoying this game.
Amazing! Who are the heroes? For no other reason I am quite convinced that MLB is not fixed. There have been too many inopportune match-ups for that to be the case. Detroit over NY, Milwaukee over Arizona, St. Louis over Phil.? From a optimal financial standpoint for MLB, none of those outcomes make sense. Good for MLB.
Damn, that Cards-Phillies game was great. I think I held my breath for most of the game. The two teams’ best pitchers – former teammates and old friends – head to head in the series finale? Both throwing dominant games? Improbable defensive plays? And the favored team down to their last out with their power hitter at the plate? Come on. That doesn’t happen in real life!
My wife and in-laws are from Milwaukee, and I am a St. Louisan. The NLCS should be good for a couple weeks of marital discord.
First, as Hawkeyeop notes, the Phillies actually outscored the Cards in the series.
More importantly, though, it’s pretty unreasonable to describe a loss in a short series as an “epic failure.” Any team can win and any team can lose a five-game series. The Phillies won 102 games this season, suggesting that they put together a pretty damn good team. The number of games you win over the regular season is a far better indication of a team’s quality than the result of a five-game series. The Houston Astros won a total of 56 games this year, but if they had been placed in the NLDS against the Phillies, they still might have managed to pull off a win.
And it wasn’t like the Phillies got swept. The series went to the final game, in which Philadelphia got a great pitching performance from their ace, and were beaten only by an equally-great performance by the opposing pitcher. A 3-hit complete game. Call this sort of performance an “epic failure” and you’ll risk being lumped in with the type of whining, look-for-someone-to-blame Yankees and Red Sox fans who can’t cope with defeat. You don’t have to like losing, but an honest assessment would at least recognize that the Phillies had a great season, and got pipped at the post by a great performance in an incredibly exciting series.
All you need is 3 good pitching performances . I am sure everybody knows pitching shuts down hitting. it was said by the announcers on yesterdays game. Defense wins championships. A big offense makes it easier to get there. But an offense can be neutered by a good pitcher.
In fact, the Astros took 2 of 3 from Philly just about a month ago. (And took 4 of 7 from a San Francisco team that was trying to stay alive in the playoff race).
Last year’s thread, IIRC, covered the whole playoffs. There were no separate threads for DS, CS, and WS.
ETA: Actually, there was a separate, “live” thread for the World Series.
Anyway, i don’t care too much, but there’s certainly no need to create a new thread out of any concern that it would be “calmer” or whatever. It’s going to be exactly the same people participating anyway.
I thought it was a measure of confidence that the Tigers started and went with Fister in the last game. They had no intention of spoiling their rotation for the next series by using Verlander out of the pen. It also showed confidence in their relieving staff. It sent the players a message from their manager and the same message to their fans.
