{"id":11346,"date":"2015-10-18T09:28:16","date_gmt":"2015-10-18T13:28:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=11346"},"modified":"2015-11-20T10:56:58","modified_gmt":"2015-11-20T15:56:58","slug":"nlds-pitching-matchups-and-prediction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=11346","title":{"rendered":"NLCS Pitching Matchups and Prediction"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>(Whoops!\u00a0 forgot to post this on friday.\u00a0 I have a good excuse; it was my kid&#8217;s 3rd birthday and we have family in town.\u00a0 I swear I didn&#8217;t &#8220;cheat&#8221; on the Harvey prediction in game 1 from last night &#8230; and I still think the Cubs win the series).<\/p>\n<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>Lets get to it; this series is going to be fun.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Mets-Cubs:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Game 1: Harvey vs Lester<\/li>\n<li>Game 2: Snydergaard vs Arrieta<\/li>\n<li>Game 3: Hendricks vs deGrom<\/li>\n<li>Game 4: Hammel vs Matz\/Colon?<\/li>\n<li>Game 5: likely Harvey vs Lester<\/li>\n<li>Game 6: likely Snydergaard vs Arrieta<\/li>\n<li>Game 7: likely Hendricks vs deGrom<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Thoughts<\/strong>: Here&#8217;s a fun stat: The Mets went 0-7 against Chicago this year.\u00a0 *Winless* in seven games.\u00a0 New York dodged a major bullet by only\u00a0 having Snydergaard have to throw one inning in the NLDS game-5 clincher; when he got up in the third to warmup, that could have blown their NLCS rotation plans (even though he apparently threw 100 pitches between the pen and the game).\u00a0 Now as it stands, even though the Mets havn&#8217;t announced anything their rotation for the NLCS lines up so that their three best arms each will get 2 potential starts, with their best arm (deGrom) in line for crucial game 3 and game 7 outings.\u00a0 I see Harvey dominating in game one behind a raucous New\u00a0 York crowd, Arrieta being Arrieta in game 2, then having the strategic fun start.\u00a0 Do you throw Matz in game 4 with Chicago&#8217;s heavy lefties or go to the veteran Colon?\u00a0 Can New York steal one in Chicago somehow?\u00a0 Maybe the deGrom game 3?<\/p>\n<p>I dunno; if the Cubs have already shown themselves capable of handling the Mets pitching staff, why would we think anything would change?\u00a0 Something just &#8220;feels&#8221; different about this Cubs team; they&#8217;re a bunch of kids on offense who have no connection to failings of yesteryear and their pitchers all made their bones primarily with others teams.\u00a0 I can see the Mets sneaking one or two games but think this is Chicago&#8217;s year.\u00a0 <span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><strong>Prediction: Chicago 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<li><a href=\"http:\/\/mlb.mlb.com\/news\/probable_pitchers\/index.jsp?c_id=mlb&amp;date=2015\/10\/16\">MLB Probables<\/a>:<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>(Whoops!\u00a0 forgot to post this on friday.\u00a0 I have a good excuse; it was my kid&#8217;s 3rd birthday and we have family in town.\u00a0 I swear I didn&#8217;t &#8220;cheat&#8221; on the Harvey prediction in game 1 from last night &#8230; and I still think the Cubs win the series). Post season predictions so far: Wild [&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":[343,2653,2329,1036,221,2912,1666,2326,2911,2919],"class_list":["post-11346","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nonnatsbaseball","category-post-season","tag-bartolo-colon","tag-jacob-degrom","tag-jake-arrieta","tag-jason-hammel","tag-jon-lester","tag-kyle-hendricks","tag-matt-harvey","tag-noah-snydergaard","tag-steven-matz","tag-will-leitch"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11346","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=11346"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11346\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11611,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11346\/revisions\/11611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}