God, that was a great game last night. We watched every minute, a collective nervous wreck, and then it ended perfectly. On to game 3! Cole crushes them and we’re up 2-1. Sounds groovy to me.
Why does everyone think Cole is an automatic win. Yes he can come in give up 1 run and we score 0, he still loses. Look how many guys we have right now batting 0.
Playoff Baseball. Nobody knows what’s going to happen. If that ball last night didn’t bounce perfectly to Correa everybody would be after Altuve’s head.
Nobody's who's been watching these playoffs still thinks Cole is an automatic win, because, as you've pointed out, it takes both sides of the team to put one together. However, I think going into the lion's den of one of the best offenses in baseball (and tied 1-1 to boot), most people are heartened by having the best pitcher on the planet throwing the first volley. If anyone can nullify a home Yankees team, Cole can, and the bats still have to do their work, but maybe not so much work.
In case you haven't seen it, the ringer had an article on this topic as well: https://www.theringer.com/2019/10/1...-ball-juiced-home-runs-dodgers-will-smith-lcs Regarding the pitching match ups, I would say if you get rain, you definitely go greinke for game 4. Obviously Greinke hasn't been great so far, but I definitely trust him over a bp scenario. It also sets you up better for the WS. I also consider the Yankees BP/pitching situation to be fairly unpredictable, so we should just do what we do best. If we were going up against a team with a traditional rotation, I think there may be an argument of having our aces go up against there weaker pitchers to have a better chance of 'guaranteeing' wins. Dunno if anyone has played Witcher 3, but the philosophy would be similar to the minigame Gwent.
So...who should they replace this series? Prior to last night Correa has sucked offensively, yet they don't win last nights game without him. In 2017, I assume you would have 'upgraded' Springer. He was mired in a 3-30 or worse slump prior to game two of the world series.
It doesn’t seem to make sense to me to put Verlander out there in game that might not be a closeout game and instead trust Urquidy, or Miley in that situation. Then again I’m not a manager that has won a World Series and three 100+ win seasons.
I agree nothing can be taken for granted here. We saw the Yankees get a bunch of breaks on Saturday and they capitalized big. We got our ace and get a few big breaks yet barely survive. Cole is pitching lights out this post season yet let’s not forget his first start the Rays were still able to get the winning run up to bat. If our offense can’t generate more ins this series will look like all those Stros series with great pitching yet the Stros losing by one or two runs. The good news is that we should hit Severino as he’s the type of fastball pitchers the Stros batters can handle. Also now that we’ve encountered all of the Yankees bullpen we might have more success. The only guy who I think will still baffle is is Tanaka and we could face him two more times.
It surprises me I don’t see more people saying this. I believe James is better suited to be a starter than reliever, but I don’t want to shake things up too much in October. I think we win tomorrow with Cole and take the Greinke NY game too.
