Considering Greinke and company got their panties torn down yes. Any lineup is capable of getting hot. Remember Colby Rasmus? A bum for the most part but tore it up in the 2015 playoffs for us. 1 or 2 bats of theirs heat up and Springer, Brantley, Yordan and Correa continue to look lost along with the automatic out that is Reddick and there is reason to be concerned. if we had a healthy Peacock the opener idea would be ok. But trusting innings 1-6 to James, Rondon, Miley and Smith before going to Harris pressley and osuna is not a recipe for a win. Ok. Replace Miley with Urquidy and the needle bumps a little. But not enough. jv is a special pitcher and a competitor. He will come out tomorrow and give us a good shot. We just need our bats to find the ball and connect. Murderers row is looking more like misdemeanor row.
I'm talking about the Astros lineup... I'd rather JV pitch. I'd rather not face Glasnow tomorrow. I'm confident the Astros lineup should do something vs. an opener and their bullpen.
there's certain posters that are pure idiots and i couldn't careless what they think. you just saw some of them.
If JV wants the ball then why wouldn’t you give it to him? He’s a lot more accomplished than many of the pitchers on the list of starting on three days rest. Consider his last start was on an extra day of rest and in that start he was never really in a high leverage spot during his 100 pitches, I think he’ll come out firing. Like mentioned, if the Rays beat Greinke, JV, and Cole in consecutive games then they earned the series win. Hoping for a 2003 Josh Beckett performance! Asking too much? Ha
He pitched in relief 2 days ago (Friday), 3 days after starting the wild card game last monday. What does it all mean? Not a damn thing... Verlander will have his stuff, and the Rays will attempt to square it up. Adrenaline built in at this stage of the season. If the Astros lose, it'll be because of their inability to put together consistently good AB's against non-starting pitchers. They've not done a great job of working counts, fouling off pitcher's pitches. A lot of early hacks (Springer) mixed with some uncharacteristic strikeouts (Bregman/Brantley today, 13 total).
None of these games are being televised. Makes me so mad. FS1 may be televising them to audiences in some parts of the country, but when the baseball game starts, my cable company immediately blocks FS1. (not for college football games, though) And, what was it, DISH? dropped FS1 so as not to broadcast these games. Why aren't they on a network? even TBS or regular FOX
They've split the NLDS games on FS1 and TBS (with some on MLBN) for at least the last 4 years... with the LCS series split between FS1 and TBS, with some weekend LCS games on Fox. Fox pays a good chunk of money for baseball rights, and they've invested a lot in a sports network that needs regular content. There are no NBA playoff games on network TV till the finals. In the end, baseball is as local/regional a sport as it comes. Usually the markets tuning in are predominantly represented by the teams involved, with little "outside" interest until you get to the possible clinching games of a WS (or a series that starts to go longer with dramatic finishes).
Game 4 makes me nervous. If we don't win this game, I think we lost the series. We flamed out last year due to the bats going quiet against the Red S ox. This year the bats have stayed quite the whole series. Springer is 0 for whatever. We will have Cole for game 5 but he knows he has to pitch a shutout the way this team is hitting. The Rays can have 1 lucky at bat and there goes the series in game 5 The Rays will have Snell, Morton combo ready to go which basically means 0 or 1 run for us.