{"id":7895,"date":"2013-10-09T09:40:04","date_gmt":"2013-10-09T13:40:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=7895"},"modified":"2013-10-09T09:40:04","modified_gmt":"2013-10-09T13:40:04","slug":"nlds-game-5-this-could-be-one-of-the-games-of-the-post-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=7895","title":{"rendered":"NLDS Game 5; this could be one of the games of the post-season"},"content":{"rendered":"

I went 0 for 2 predicting games last night.\u00a0 Oakland gets screwed on the disputed HR call, their bullpen falls apart and lets in 5 runs, and they can’t score after loading the bases with zero outs (that situation has an average run expectancy of about 2.4 runs … they got zero).\u00a0 Ball game.\u00a0\u00a0 Neither starter pitched badly (both went 6 innings and gave up 3 runs for the mediocre 4.50 ERA “quality start”). \u00a0But in the battle of the bullpens, Detroit pulled out its big gun in\u00a0ace\u00a0Scherzer<\/strong>\u00a0and it almost cost them. \u00a0He somehow got out of the bases loaded jam with a couple of Ks (one where he got\u00a0Donaldson<\/strong> to swing at a ball-4 change-up that was a foot inside) and then escaped when a rope to center was caught instead of falling in or sailing over\u00a0Jackson<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

In the night cap I guess it isn’t entirely surprising that Boston won; they easily handled Tampa on the season series.\u00a0 Their offense is best in the league and just has not been shut down yet.\u00a0\u00a0 I still see them as favorites to make the World Series; decent pitching and an offense that has scored 26 runs in 4 games against the very good Tampa pitching staff. \u00a0Phew.<\/p>\n

Tonight’s game could be one of the games of the post season.\u00a0 Cole<\/strong> vs Wainwright<\/strong>.\u00a0 Game 5 in St Louis, one of the best baseball towns in the game.\u00a0\u00a0 Cole is just a kid; conventional baseball wisdom says a rookie will wilt under playoff pressure.\u00a0 But he sure didn’t do that in the previous game (holding the Cardinals to 1 run on two hits in 6 innings in game 2.\u00a0 That one run was via a homer ..).\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Can he do it twice in a row?\u00a0 Same question goes for Wainwrigth; last post season he shutdown the Nats in game 1 and got trounced in game 5.\u00a0 Can he hold down the Pirates two times in a row?<\/p>\n

I think in the end you have to go with St. Louis simply because they’re home, and because they’re the better hitting team.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I went 0 for 2 predicting games last night.\u00a0 Oakland gets screwed on the disputed HR call, their bullpen falls apart and lets in 5 runs, and they can’t score after loading the bases with zero outs (that situation has an average run expectancy of about 2.4 runs … they got zero).\u00a0 Ball game.\u00a0\u00a0 Neither […]<\/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":[346,2047,1221,2046,1037],"class_list":["post-7895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-post-season","tag-adam-wainwright","tag-austin-jackson","tag-gerrit-cole","tag-josh-donaldson","tag-max-scherzer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7895","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=7895"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7895\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7896,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7895\/revisions\/7896"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}