{"id":2865,"date":"2011-10-29T10:35:06","date_gmt":"2011-10-29T14:35:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=2865"},"modified":"2013-10-10T13:25:53","modified_gmt":"2013-10-10T17:25:53","slug":"tell-me-again-why-holland-wasnt-the-game-7-starter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=2865","title":{"rendered":"Tell me again why Holland wasn’t the game 7 starter?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Would game 7 have gone differently if Holland had thrown on full rest? Photo unk via businessinsider.com<\/p><\/div>\n

I know this is going to sound like a classic “hindsight is 20\/20” post, but you can ask my wife (who listened to me ask this same question when Derek Holland<\/strong> came in to pitch relief in game 6 and Matt Harrison<\/strong> took the mound to start game 7) for confirmation that I was already asking this question prior to the outcome of last night’s game 7.<\/p>\n

Why didn’t Ron Washington<\/strong> use the extra day off gifted to him by the rain delay on October 26th and use Holland on full rest as his 7th game starter?<\/p>\n

I’m sure the answer you get from the old-school Washington is that Harrison did nothing to “lose” the opportunity to take his normally scheduled rotation spot, despite taking the loss in game 3<\/a> and giving up 5 runs (3 earned) on 6 hits in 3 2\/3 innings.\u00a0 However, in the post season you ride the hot hand and you go with your best arms.\u00a0 That’s why Chris Carpenter<\/strong> was on the mound in game 7 on 3 days rest instead of Kyle Lohse<\/strong> (the starter opposite Harrison in Game 4 and the scheduled starter) and that’s why Washington should have gone with Holland (on a short leash) instead of Harrison.<\/p>\n

Instead, we got a predictable result; Harrison knocked out of game 7<\/a> after a 4 innings and 3 runs and took another loss.\u00a0 Washington had to go to his shredded bullpen early again, and it cost him.\u00a0 Scott Feldman<\/strong> walked 3 guys, CJ Wilson<\/strong> forced in another run by hitting a batter with the first pitch he threw and the game was effectively out of reach.<\/p>\n

Coincidentally, Wilson finishes off a post season where he was the “ace” starter yet issued a post-season record number of walks and had a 5.79 era.\u00a0 He had one effective start and three awful ones.\u00a0 Please, Mike Rizzo<\/strong>, think long and hard before throwing ace money at this guy.\u00a0 I’ve said it in several spaces before; I think Wilson is a good, effective mid-rotation pitcher who will get vastly overpaid this summer (think John Lackey<\/strong>) and will fail to live up to the contract.\u00a0 You can see this coming a mile away.\u00a0 With one Nats player already fitting that contract description (ahem Jayson Werth<\/strong>), lets not saddle the team with another.<\/p>\n

As for the series itself, I didn’t feel the need to write my own “Game 6 was the best ever” post after waking up and reading 20 others from every baseball columnist that I follow in RSS.\u00a0 But i’ll say it here; Game 6 was the best baseball game I’ve ever personally witnessed.\u00a0 Several times I stated aloud that the “game was over,” only to follow that up with an audible “wow” when the Cards hitters would reach back and get a clutch hit to tie the game late.\u00a0 Game 7 featured more clutch hitting, with David Freese<\/strong> picking up right where he left off the previous night and keeping his team (and the crowd) in the game early.\u00a0 You have to hand it to both teams; they slugged their way into the World Series and the series featured a ton of power, lots of clutch hitting, lots of offense and little in the way of clutch pitching.<\/p>\n

Side note: I hate the trend of naming things that just happened or current players “the best ever;” we saw it when Albert Pujols<\/strong> hit 3 homers earlier in the series (despite their being relatively meaningless in the grand scheme of that blow out victory) and we saw it again within hours of the end of Game 6.\u00a0 Does Game 6 stand up to the immortal World Series games played in 2001, 1991, 1988, 1986, 1975 or 1960?\u00a0 We think so, but we won’t really know for years to come.\u00a0 Why isn’t it enough to just say, “Wow, that was one of the best games i’ve ever seen” and leave it at that?<\/p>\n

What does Texas take away from this World Series?\u00a0 Despite having a great 7th-8th-9th inning set of relievers in Mike Adams<\/strong>, Darren Oliver<\/strong> and Neftali Feliz<\/strong>, their bullpen failed them badly this off season.\u00a0 Ogando<\/strong> had an era in the 11’s for the post season.\u00a0 So did Oliver.\u00a0 Their bullpen blew THREE save chances in the infamous game 6.\u00a0 All credit to the team for making it back to the World Series after losing Cliff Lee<\/strong>, but clearly the team needs a bit more starting depth to outlast a 7-game series against a quality team.\u00a0 To that end, look for Texas to work long and hard on retaining Wilson, moving Feliz to the starting rotation and supplementing their bullpen for next year.<\/p>\n

Welcome to the off-season!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I know this is going to sound like a classic “hindsight is 20\/20” post, but you can ask my wife (who listened to me ask this same question when Derek Holland came in to pitch relief in game 6 and Matt Harrison took the mound to start game 7) for confirmation that I was already […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[123,1264,224,53,246,308,310,286,115,306,231,303,307,129,288,304,305],"class_list":["post-2865","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nonnatsbaseball","tag-albert-pujols","tag-alexi-ogando","tag-chris-carpenter","tag-cj-wilson","tag-cliff-lee","tag-darren-oliver","tag-david-freese","tag-derek-holland","tag-jayson-werth","tag-john-lackey","tag-kyle-lohse","tag-matt-harrison","tag-mike-adams","tag-mike-rizzo","tag-neftali-feliz","tag-ron-washington","tag-scott-feldman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2865","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=2865"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2865\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7939,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2865\/revisions\/7939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}