| 12:40 |
: Hope you guys show! Sorry for being late. Sick. Tough morning.
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| 12:56 |
: Gonna get going! Not many of us today!
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| 12:56 |
Hi Eno! Sorry no one is here |
| 12:56 |
: It’s not your fault! You’re here!
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| 12:56 |
Please don’t be dead, Eno |
| 12:56 |
: Just bronchitis.
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Team depth can be defined many different ways: the quality of your fifth starter, the quality of your bench, the contributions from your non-stars. And, looking at the results of the games so far in the National League Championship Series, you might think the Cardinals had superior depth, given home runs by Shane Robinson and shutdown innings by Seth Maness. But if we look at the year as a whole, and these two rosters as a whole, a different sort of picture emerges. Again, depending on your definition.
Sunday, the American League Championship Series brought us wild swings in win expectancy, a roller coaster of a game that left people in awe. Game Three of the National league Championship Series brought us wild swings in emotion, but they didn’t show up in the game graph. Or, they didn’t show in the entirety of the game graph: they showed in that one highlighted at-bat in the graph, and in the actions of one player. Yasiel Puig inspired many emotions, before, during and after his game-changing triple, but he was also, maybe fittingly, the batter that added the most win probability to his team’s chances Monday night. In essence, the game turned on his matchup with Adam Wainwright in the fourth inning.
Justin Verlander didn’t have a Justin Verlander year, you may have noticed. Sure, he had 200 strikeouts and a decent ERA, but he wasn’t the guy that won all of the hardware in 2011 and could’ve won more in 2012. But that was because he had to work something out mechanically.
Ahead of game five, Oakland manager Bob Melvin had a tough choice to make. Both Bartolo Colon and Sonny Gray were available on full rest. And though he has indicated that Sonny Gray is his starter, what this post presupposes is: what if he hadn’t told us who was starting. Who would we choose to be his starter?
We don’t get a lot of time with the players this time of the year. So it was very nice of Doug Fister to spend some of that precious resource talking with me about his craft late last week. His thoughts could serve well as a backdrop for the six-foot-eight bulldog’s performance in Game Four today.
On May 7th, Jarrod Parker woke up with a pain in his neck. He’d been dealing with it for a while, and it had a lot do with his 7.34 ERA and the fact that he was giving up more than two home runs per nine innings. Those dark days are long since gone, but it was the low point for Oakland’s Game Three starter.
On Saturday before Game Two, Oakland manager Bob Melvin addressed those struggles and identified how that injury most hindered Parker. Even if that injury is in his rear view mirror, learning more about it might provide viewers something to watch for in the early going in Game Three.
The game stories might end up being about Stephen Vogt and that’s fine. He got the big walk-off hit and he hasn’t been celebrated much so far in his baseball career. But, as with many big moments, the seeds that resulted in that wild finish were sown much earlier in the day.
Max Scherzer has a great changeup. His slider is sharp. He added a curve this year to keep lefties guessing. But early in games, he likes the fastball best. Friday night’s two-run, seven-inning start in the first game of the ALDS was just an extension of that affinity.
Every pitcher is a work in progress, it seems. They get to the park and they figure out what’s working that day and they adjust. But, on some level at least, the hard part is in the rear view mirror for Sonny Gray. The work he put into his mechanics in 2012 is done, and now he’s more tinkering than overhauling. In advance of Saturday’s Game Two start, we talked about his arsenal and changes, both big and small.