The series heads to St. Louis after the teams split in Boston.<\/p>\n
However, the predicting gets harder from here on out, as each team gets deeper into its rotation and has to rely on lesser starters.<\/p>\n
Game 3:\u00a0Jake Peavy<\/a><\/strong> vs\u00a0<\/a>Joe Kelly<\/strong><\/a>. \u00a0 Kelly was pretty good in September, lowering his season ERA from the 2.80 range to the 2.60 range, and Kelly pitched a nifty 6ip\/2ER home start in the NLCS. \u00a0Peavy was not good in September, leaking runs left and right. \u00a0Peavy got hammered in the ALCS in Detroit.<\/p>\n All signs point to St. Louis jumping up 2 games to 1 in this series and putting a lot of pressure on the Game 4 starters (perhaps Clay Buchholz<\/strong> and\u00a0Lance Lynn<\/strong>). \u00a0Boston obviously needs to take a game in St. Louis or they’re done. \u00a0And unless they want to take their chances beating\u00a0Michael Wacha<\/strong> in a game 7 back in Fenway, they want to get two. \u00a0Kelly’s no pushover; he may look like an accountant but he throws some serious cheese: 94.4 average two-seam velocity with a peak of 98.8 this year<\/a>. \u00a0Boston has its work cut out for them.\u00a0 Meanwhile Peavy hasn’t been good, and I think the Cardinals jump on him quickly.<\/p>\n Because they’re in St. Louis, Boston has had to choose between sluggers, and Mike Napoli<\/strong> misses out.\u00a0 This takes away a slugger in the middle of Boston’s order and puts a severe defensive liability at first in David Ortiz<\/strong>.\u00a0 I think this and the return home to the charged up St. Louis crowd spells a Game 3 victory for the Cardinals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The series heads to St. Louis after the teams split in Boston. However, the predicting gets harder from here on out, as each team gets deeper into its rotation and has to rely on lesser starters. Game 3:\u00a0Jake Peavy vs\u00a0Joe Kelly. \u00a0 Kelly was pretty good in September, lowering his season ERA from the 2.80 […]<\/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":[319,605,1022,1260,897,1953,626],"class_list":["post-8023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-post-season","tag-clay-buchholz","tag-david-ortiz","tag-jake-peavy","tag-joe-kelly","tag-lance-lynn","tag-michael-wacha","tag-mike-napoli"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8023","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=8023"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8023\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8027,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8023\/revisions\/8027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}