{"id":7799,"date":"2013-10-01T14:57:34","date_gmt":"2013-10-01T18:57:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=7799"},"modified":"2013-10-02T10:55:22","modified_gmt":"2013-10-02T14:55:22","slug":"reds-pirates-pitching-matchup-thoughts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=7799","title":{"rendered":"Reds @ Pirates: Pitching matchup thoughts"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Will<\/a>

Will Liriano pitch the PIrates deeper into the post-season? Photo by Rich Schultz\/Getty Images<\/p><\/div>\n

The Reds sputter into the one-game playoff tonight having lost 5 of their last 6 games at home. \u00a0Those 6 games were against the hapless Mets and the same Pirates who they now face in a do-or-die wild card game. \u00a0Meanwhile Pitsburgh has WON 5 of their last 6, all on the road, and got things done when it counted in the last series of the season.<\/p>\n

Before we even look at the starters, clearly Pittsburgh has momentum on their side.<\/p>\n

The Pirates are going with their ace\u00a0Francisco Liriano<\/strong>, who had a complete career turnaround this year, finishing 16-8 with a 3.02 ERA and a K\/inning. \u00a0Liriano features a fantastic slider from the left-hand side and should be relatively effective against the Reds, who are in the bottom third of the league against lefties as a team and whose lineup features three prominent lefties (Choo, Votto<\/strong> and\u00a0Bruce<\/strong>) in the first five batters. \u00a0Choo in particular is just brutally bad against lefties, likely nullifying Cincinnati’s otherwise dynamic lead-off hitter.<\/p>\n

However, interestingly, in the four games Liriano has pitched against Cincinnati this year, Pittsburgh is 0-4. \u00a0Despite a couple of great starts (including an 11 strikeout performace in June and an 8 inning 2 run outing two weeks ago), Liriano has had tough luck against the Reds. \u00a0Liriano is 8-1 with a 1.47 ERA in 11 home starts this year, and that one loss was against Pittsburgh.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Cincinnati got some bad news when their “ace”\u00a0Mat Latos<\/strong>\u00a0bowed out of the one-game playoff with a “sore arm,” leaving it to their opening day starter\u00a0Johnny Cueto<\/strong>\u00a0(and pre-season actual “Ace”) to make the start. \u00a0Cueto’s season has been peppered with D\/L stints and he’s only made 11 starts. \u00a0He’ll be going on 8 days rest and has been reasonably effective since his latest return. \u00a0Interestingly, Cueto’s best start of the season came in Pittsburgh, where he threw 8 innings of one-hit ball<\/a> en-route to a 3-0 victory in May. \u00a0Meanwhile, Pittsburgh is dead-last in the majors in wOBA against right handers this year. \u00a0 But presumptive NL MVP\u00a0Andrew McCutchen<\/strong> hits righties just fine (an .864 ops), so perhaps we’ll see some post-season magic tonight (even despite the fact he got hit in the head during BP yesterday).<\/p>\n

I’m thinking this is going to be a tight, tense pitching duel, and I think its going to be Cueto who blinks first. \u00a0Count on Reds manager\u00a0Dusty Baker<\/strong> to over-manage some aspect of the game tonight (probably involving a bunt or two) and to leave his best reliever (Aroldis Chapman<\/strong>)\u00a0on the bench because it’s not a save situation while Pittsburgh squeaks out a win.<\/p>\n

Who do you think is favored in this game?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Reds sputter into the one-game playoff tonight having lost 5 of their last 6 games at home. \u00a0Those 6 games were against the hapless Mets and the same Pirates who they now face in a do-or-die wild card game. \u00a0Meanwhile Pitsburgh has WON 5 of their last 6, all on the road, and got […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,2036],"tags":[424,569,1910,1750,592,890,586,1930],"class_list":["post-7799","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mlbpitching","category-post-season","tag-andrew-mccutchen","tag-aroldis-chapman","tag-francisco-liriano","tag-jay-bruce","tag-joey-votto","tag-johnny-cueto","tag-mat-latos","tag-shin-soo-choo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7799","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=7799"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7799\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7815,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7799\/revisions\/7815"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}