{"id":11342,"date":"2015-10-16T11:21:46","date_gmt":"2015-10-16T15:21:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=11342"},"modified":"2015-10-18T09:28:56","modified_gmt":"2015-10-18T13:28:56","slug":"alcs-pitching-matchups-and-predictions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=11342","title":{"rendered":"ALCS Pitching Matchups and Predictions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Post season predictions so far:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Wild Card Games: (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=11303\">link to my prediction post<\/a>): <span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">got both Houston and Cubs WC wins right<\/span>.<\/li>\n<li>NLDS: (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=11317\">link to my prediction post<\/a>):\u00a0 <span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">Got LA in 5 games wrong<\/span>, <span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">got Cubs in 4 exactly right<\/span><\/li>\n<li>ALDS: (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=11312\">link to my prediction post<\/a>): <span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">Got Toronto in 4 correct, got KC in 5 exactly right<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>While my overall predictions were pretty good, on an individual game-by-game basis i&#8217;ve been awful.\u00a0 Silly me thinking that regular season dominance on the mound would lead to performance in the playoffs (ahem, <strong>Clayton Kershaw<\/strong> and<strong> Zack Greinke<\/strong>).<\/p>\n<p><strong>Toronto-Kansas City:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Game 1: Estrada vs Volquez<\/li>\n<li>Game 2: Price vs Ventura<\/li>\n<li>Game 3: Cueto vs Stroman<\/li>\n<li>Game 4: likely Young vs Dickey<\/li>\n<li>Game 5: likely Estrada vs Volquez rematch<\/li>\n<li>Game 6: likely Price vs Ventura rematch<\/li>\n<li>Game 7: likely Cueto vs Strohman rematch<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Thoughts<\/strong>: Its hard to root against Toronto, the presumptive AL favorite since they remade their team at the deadline.\u00a0 The incredibly curious handling of <strong>David Price<\/strong> seems really odd though.<\/p>\n<p>Game 4 is where I think this series turns.\u00a0 RA Dickey <a href=\"http:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/gl.cgi?id=dicker.01&amp;t=p&amp;year=2015\">absolutely shut down the Royals<\/a> when he saw them this year (7ip 2hits) while the Royals basically have no fourth starter; they went to a 3 man rotation in the ALDS because they could thanks to Ventura&#8217;s short outing but they likely won&#8217;t have that luxury in the ALCS.\u00a0 No less than three Nats rejects (Estrada, Stroman, Young) will be pitching in this series and they all could have serious impact. I think the Blue Jays can steal a game in KC, take 2 of 3 at home and then have Price pitch them to a win in game 6.\u00a0 <span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><strong>Prediction: Toronto in 6.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Good reference links for the above analysis:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Baseball-reference&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/postseason\/\">post season page<\/a>:<\/li>\n<li>SportsonEarth.com&#8217;s Will Leitch&#8217;s previews on the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sportsonearth.com\/article\/154610050\/alcs-preview-toronto-blue-jays-kc-royals\">ALCS<\/a>, NLCS<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.baseballprospectus.com\/fantasy\/dc_week\/\">Depth Charts<\/a> at Baseball Prospectus.com<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Post season predictions so far: Wild Card Games: (link to my prediction post): got both Houston and Cubs WC wins right. NLDS: (link to my prediction post):\u00a0 Got LA in 5 games wrong, got Cubs in 4 exactly right ALDS: (link to my prediction post): Got Toronto in 4 correct, got KC in 5 exactly [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,2036],"tags":[349,426,223,589,890,1336,2735,781,2919,2232,254],"class_list":["post-11342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nonnatsbaseball","category-post-season","tag-chris-young","tag-clayton-kershaw","tag-david-price","tag-edinson-volquez","tag-johnny-cueto","tag-marco-estrada","tag-marcus-stroman","tag-ra-dickey","tag-will-leitch","tag-yordano-ventura","tag-zack-greinke"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11342"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11342\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11350,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11342\/revisions\/11350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}