{"id":12956,"date":"2016-10-04T13:01:55","date_gmt":"2016-10-04T17:01:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=12956"},"modified":"2016-10-04T13:03:29","modified_gmt":"2016-10-04T17:03:29","slug":"wild-card-preview-and-prediction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=12956","title":{"rendered":"Wild Card Preview and Prediction"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Snydergaard<\/a>

Snydergaard is the X-factor in the NL Wild Card. Photo tucson.com<\/p><\/div>\n

The Nats don’t have to worry about who wins the Wild Card this year, and the Cubs will get a weakened opponent either way. \u00a0So lets preview the Wild Card match-ups mostly from a SP stand point and make some knee-jerk predictions.<\/p>\n

AL Wild Card<\/strong><\/span>: Baltimore @ Toronto:\u00a0Probably\u00a0Chris Tillman<\/strong> vs\u00a0Marcus Stroman<\/strong><\/p>\n

These two AL East foes face off for the 20th and last time this year: Toronto won the season series 10-9 but badly out scored Baltimore while doing it. \u00a0Tillman is hittable; the fact that the Orioles are in the playoffs at all with their rotation is a miracle. \u00a0 Tillman faced Toronto four times; in 22 1\/3 innings he gave up 10 earned runs, and he controlled them in the game’s final season. \u00a0 Stroman also faced his potential opponent four times this year and his numbers are not nearly as good<\/a>; he got lit up for 7 runs in mid-June, and\u00a0his start against Toronto last weekend was anything but dominant (4 runs on 9 hits in 7 innings). \u00a0 The “intangibles” factor doesn’t bode well for Toronto; word has it their clubhouse has lost its focus and professionalism and they may spin out of control at the worst time. \u00a0If these teams played 10 times they go 5-5, but I give Baltimore the edge here.<\/p>\n

Prediction: Baltimore wins a game that gets away from Toronto to earn a match up with Texas.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

NL Wild Card<\/strong><\/span>: San Francisco @ NY Mets. \u00a0Madison Bumgarner\u00a0<\/strong>vs\u00a0Noah Snydergaard<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Does it get any better than this in terms of a pitching match-up? \u00a0The Mets took the season Series 4-3 with a +4 run differential; very even. \u00a0Despite that, I like the Mets in this one; they’ve been hot (not that that matters) and the Giants limped into the playoffs. \u00a0Bumgarner has two starts against the Mets<\/a> this year: in New \u00a0York he shut them down early, but then in SF later on he got hit. \u00a0Snydergaard has also faced SF twice<\/a> this year; in New York in early May he too got lit up by the Giants, but then allowed just 2 hits in 8 innings against them in August in SF. \u00a0Plus, thanks to an early clinch the Mets didn’t have to use Snydergaard in their weekend series, so he’ll have more than a week’s rest heading into the game .. which\u00a0is good because he’s thrown a ton of innings and his splits with a large amount of rest<\/a> are crazy good; 1.92 ERA.<\/p>\n

Prediction: Mets win a one run game and advance to face the Cubs.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Nats don’t have to worry about who wins the Wild Card this year, and the Cubs will get a weakened opponent either way. \u00a0So lets preview the Wild Card match-ups mostly from a SP stand point and make some knee-jerk predictions. AL Wild Card: Baltimore @ Toronto:\u00a0Probably\u00a0Chris Tillman vs\u00a0Marcus Stroman These two AL East […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2036],"tags":[1039,894,2735,2326],"class_list":["post-12956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-post-season","tag-chris-tillman","tag-madison-bumgarner","tag-marcus-stroman","tag-noah-snydergaard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12956","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=12956"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12956\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12972,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12956\/revisions\/12972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}