NLCS Game Five Review: Philadelphia
I’m nothing if not predictable. Why change a horse in midstream, the saying goes.
Roy Halladay, October 6, 2010
Roy Halladay, October 21, 2010
Yup, more strike zone plots from Brooks Baseball. And Carson’s out here pushing the limits in his previews. But these two game plots are pretty different, eh? Then let me blow you away with yet another strike zone plot, eh?
Looks like Halladay was having a little trouble locating low-and-away to left-handers, no? Or, at least low-and-away in general. In any case, it’s a nice way to show, in pictures, what it looks like to win “without your best stuff,” as the game stories most likely went today. Halladay grit and grissioned his way through the start while Tim Lincecum was the valiant loser, mostly because of some poor defense behind him.
Lincecum is not left-handed, and that probably helped lefties Chase Utley, Ryan Howard and the recently unbenched Raul Ibanez to a stunning 3-for-12 in game five. That group, along with Domonic Brown, is now a combined 10-for-51 with 7 walks and 3 extra-base hits, which sounds bad except the whole team is now batting .208. Perhaps the struggles of the left-handed batter from Philadelphia were overstated.
Raul Ibanez, though, that guy shook off his benching in a strong way. One of his two hits led to the first run of the game and started that third inning that featured all the little league defense a big-league audience could handle. Placido Polanco was the WPA champ on the offensive side for singling in the third run in the third inning (+8.5%), but somehow Ibanez sticks out.
It was a nice respite. Now, because of the Roy Oswalt Decision, the Phillies still face an uphill climb in game six.
With a phone full of pictures of pitchers' fingers, strange beers, and his two toddler sons, Eno Sarris can be found at the ballpark or a brewery most days. Read him here, writing about the A's or Giants at The Athletic, or about beer at October. Follow him on Twitter @enosarris if you can handle the sandwiches and inanity.
Apparently Halladay injured a right groin muscle during the second inning and couldn’t push off effectively for innings 3-6. Without much jump on his fastball or bite on his cutter, he relied pretty heavily on the curve and change.
Roy pulled his groin in the second inning, which explains a lot.
Halladay’s PitchFX page from last night is really just crazy. He threw 49 cutters vs. 18 fastballs. He topped out around 91 mph after the second inning. It’s pretty amazing that the Phillies won that game.
Yup. Reason he was in was because the alternative was Kyle Kendrick.
Do you really think that the “Roy Oswalt decision,” which entailed him throwing all of 18 pitches on Wednesday, lowered the Phillies win probability that significantly on Saturday? They’ve clearly got an uphill climb in this series as they’re down 3-2 to a fine team, but I don’t think those few extra pitches will be a factor.
We have to wait until the end of Game 6. If Oswalt piches well, then The Decision won’t be an issue. If he doesn’t pitch well, then it will be Post hoc, ergo propter hoc all over the place.
Oswalt will be just fine on Saturday
It’s not just the 18 game pitches he threw, it’s the bullpen he threw earlier in the day, and the warming up twice on one day – for pitchers that usually have a regimented schedule, that’s a significant difference.
That doesn’t mean that Oswalt can’t go out and pitch well against a poor Giants offense, but yes, I would describe being down 3-2 and using a pitcher that threw a bullpen, warmed up and then threw 18 game pitches two days ago as ‘an uphill climb.’
The Giants are still at around a 60% probability for winning the series.
Nobody really knows how many pitches are thrown in bullpen sessions. Each pitcher makes his own decision – because Oswalts additional 18 pitch bullpen session was made public, there is more concern. If the public was aware that Halladay threw an additional 20 pitches in his bullpen session before his NLDS no-hitter, fans and “experts” would have been concerned before hand.
Halladay threw extra pitches then because he skipped his last start of the season. The extended bullpen session was meant to keep him sharp during an 8-day rest, and this was known in advance.