No. Twins home for all

mwm said:

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SIAP but the 'stros have signed La Pina for a year's extension in 2021 with a club option for 2022.

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We hit on it before the game, but this is good news. He's still an above avg players and is nice and cheap.

Mr triple crown for the Tribe is getting hit hard.

mwm said:

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SIAP but the 'stros have signed La Pina for a year's extension in 2021 with a club option for 2022.

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Since you prefaced with a "sorry" I'll just give you a good natured "Germans!"

Rough crowd tonight. Good thing we didn't lose this afternoon.

BMX Bandit said:

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No. Twins home for all

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Thanks. That hardly seems fair. Well then again with a sub.500 record I'm not going to complain. Now if I were the ChiSox fan I'd be pissed that in this round they don't get a "home" game.

1st kid
Winning playoff game
2nd kid

Cimber has a weird stance.

I will accept my serving of crow in regards to Dusty's pitching changes. I thought it was a bad idea, but the results were stellar. Guess that's why he gets paid the big bucks....

I liked the choice of going to Valdez today. However I would have let Zack take the 5th, then go Valdez in the 6th

Worked out in the end though

According to the post game show on 790 apparently the choice to throw Framber behind ZG was planned. They wanted ZG to get 5 and piggyback Framber but felt he needed to come out when he did and Framber was gonna be their guy regardless.

Now whether the thought to piggyback your HOF ace is justified of not is up for debate but apparently that's what the plan was. Get ZG 5 and piggyback him with Framber.

It worked and all but I don't know. I expect a piggyback with someone like Lance or Javier but not Zach.

scrimp said:

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I will accept my serving of crow in regards to Dusty's pitching changes. I thought it was a bad idea, but the results were stellar. Guess that's why he gets paid the big bucks....

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Something about blind squirrels

bullard21k said:

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Any manager who specifically "plans" to pull a starter on a specific inning in post season baseball is not very bright.

ZG had given up two hits on the day one of which was a dinked sand wedge and the other his 90 year old right fielder should have caught.

Why is it so hard for managers in post season baseball to stop tinkering and if a pitcher is getting outs just let him keep getting outs. Sit down, shut up, chew on your tooth pick and get out of your own way

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To be fair, the regular season strategies hadn't been paying off lately.

bullard21k said:

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Any manager who specifically "plans" to pull a starter on a specific inning in post season baseball is not very bright.

ZG had given up two hits on the day one of which was a dinked sand wedge and the other his 90 year old right fielder should have caught.

Why is it so hard for managers in post season baseball to stop tinkering and if a pitcher is getting outs just let him keep getting outs. Sit down, shut up, chew on your tooth pick and get out of your own way

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Yep. Over the course of the regular season, every single guy needs to pitch, and if someone is on a pitch count or something, we get it. Sometimes you just limit the inning count.

But in the playoffs, every run and every out is precious. Especially in a three game series. You can go into the game with multiple plans of attack based on how the game unfolds (how the starter is pitching, how he says he's feeling, the results, size of strike zone, etc.) but don't have a specific inning-based script. Maybe you can have a number of times through the lineup restriction even. But when someone is getting ours easily, you don't interrupt him.

I don't know why playoff managers insist on using everyone in the bullpen either. That's one good thing Dusty didn't do. Look at the Twins. If you put enough guys in, eventually one of them just isn't going to have "it" that day and is going to get in a jam and give up runs. These are typically statistically your least consistent pitchers and you elect to trot five or six of them out there. Not to mention longer series, where teams will start getting more looks on the same pitcher. You want to reduce that probability, so I love using back end starters as relievers. When we won In 2017 it's what we did. When we lost in 2019, Hinch fell back in love with the bullpen and they got hit and it cost us.

How do we not have analytics on this stuff yet?

Farmer1906 said:

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Because his was getting hit hard and didn't have his normal control. His xBA was almost .300 if I remember correctly. Even "aces" see a sharp decline when the PC gets up and you get to the third time through the line up. ZG is a likely HOFer but he hasn't played like it as of late. I think the move was totally rational. Especially in a 3 game series where you have an abundance of arms.

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Is mid 70s a high PC? They didn't even let him complete a full second turn through the order.

Either way, my beef isn't about the timing of the move in this game specifically, but in the original mindset of "starter for five innings, then Framber"... It's nonsensical to put anything in terms of innings. Maybe they had multiple plans but that's a dumb plan if it's your only one. There's no nuance.

It's pretty clear the plan of "Grienke then Framber" was from the front office. Dusty has a history of riding his star too long and going on "feel". I seriously doubt he came up with that.

Pulling him 1 inning early was decision he and Strom made us my guess.

Today I assume Javier will come in for multiple innings of relief. Hopefully he's only needed for 2-3

I'd like to see Diaz get a shot.

Hopefully we don't need him at all today!

Quote:

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Mattress Mack is back.

The famous furniture magnate is doing what has made him famous outside of Houston betting on the Astros as insurance to pay back a potential promotion if they win it all.

Last Thursday, Jim "Mattress Mack" McIngvale placed a $10,000 bet on the Astros at 30-1 to win the World Series at the South Point in Las Vegas. He then flew to the Scarlet Pearl Casino in Mississippi on Tuesday morning to get more down, placing $250,000 at 24-1 odds for the Astros to win the whole thing as well as $250,000 at +150 odds for them to win Game 1 of their Wild Card series against the Minnesota Twins on Tuesday afternoon.

If the Astros win the World Series, between his two futures bets, McIngvale would net $6.3 million. If they win Tuesday's opening game against Minnesota, he would net $375,000.

McIngvale told The Action Network that he has a little less than $6 million in exposure from a furniture promotion that would pay off if the sixth-seeded Astros won the 2020 World Series.

While sales slowed down in the first months of COVID-19, McIngvale said his Houston area furniture stores are booming again.

"They're coming in in droves," McIngvale said. "I mean, how long can you stare at that nasty couch?"
McIngvale famously lost more than $13 million on the Astros last year when they lost the World Series to the Washington Nationals. He bet on the team to hedge a similar promotion that would pay back customers if the team won the World Series. Because they didn't win it all in 2019, "Mack" came out ahead, having not had to give roughly $25 million in rebates.

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I agree that going into a playoff game rigidly saying "Pitcher x is going 5 innings, pitcher y is going 3 innings and pitcher z is going to close" isn't smart. But I don't really have a problem with how we handled yesterday.

Any playoff game is important, but game one of a best of three series is extremely important given how it shapes the rest of the series. IMO, our best chance to win yesterday was for Greinke to start and Framber to take it home.

So while rigid inning/pitch counts for pitchers in the playoffs isn't smart, neither would it have been to plan for Greinke to go as long as possible and then hand it off to some combo of Raley, Parades, Taylor and Pressly.

I can certainly understand the quibbling around pulling Greinke after 4 and not letting him go another inning or two, but Framber ideally needed to enter the game to start an inning.

Greinke had a 6.08 ERA in September, which included quite a few runs allowed late in his outing. And while we remember his game 7 gem last year, he didn't make it thru the fifth inning in 3/5 of his playoff starts last year.

I didn't have an issue with erroring on the side of getting him out of the game too early instead of too late. Just like I wouldn't have had a problem with pulling him in game 7 after 6 innings IF Cole was ready to start the 7th and take the last 3 innings.

I think the recipe needs to be the same today. Urquidy/LMJ starts, error on the side of yanking too soon rather than too late, and get Javier in the game to take it home (or as far as he can). Ideally, none of our relievers will pitch in this series.

I want to see Diaz play over Reddick but if they're dead set on Reddick playing what about switching Reddick and Altuve in the lineup? Sounds crazy but here's my thinking

• Reddick was actually pretty good in the 2 hole earlier this year
• He can't be any worse than Altuve in the 2 hole
• He'll certainly see better pitches hitting behind George and in front of Bregman and Brantley.
• Correa may see some better pitches with Altuve behind him (maybe not at this point)

Just a thought to maybe hide him better in the lineup if they're dead set on playing Reddick. Just makes no sense to hit Josh behind Yuli, Tucker, and Correa.

You might get flamed for that but I don't hate the idea. Tell him to 100% focus on hitting situationally. Gimme all the rinky dink hits to left field. No trying to pull 450 foot dingers.

It seems ridiculous at first when you just say it but thinking about it I don't think it's a bad idea.

Ag_07 said:

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I want to see Diaz play over Reddick but if they're dead set on Reddick playing what about switching Reddick and Altuve in the lineup? Sounds crazy but here's my thinking

• Reddick was actually pretty good in the 2 hole earlier this year
• He can't be any worse than Altuve in the 2 hole
• He'll certainly see better pitches hitting behind George and in front of Bregman and Brantley.
• Correa may see some better pitches with Altuve behind him (maybe not at this point)

Just a thought to maybe hide him better in the lineup if they're dead set on playing Reddick. Just makes no sense to hit Josh behind Yuli, Tucker, and Correa.

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Reddick in the 2 hole this year
.250
.333
.325
.658

Altuve in the 2 hole this year
.233
.307
.384
.690

Those pesky facts.

If you stick him in the 2 hole then you got L, L, R, L in the 2 thru 4 spots.

As has been mentioned, Greinke had a bad finish to the postseason. I had said a couple of days ago that I trusted Urquidy more at this point, and now it sets up great for us the way it worked out. There have been a few starts this season where Greinke had a good 4-5 innings only to have the train come off the tracks once the pitch count started getting higher and he had been through the order a couple of times.

Ever since getting shelled in the ALDS last year, Greinke has made 5 effective postseason starts. In 4 of 5 of those he has thrown around 80 pitches (the other was WS G3 where he took 95 pitches just to get through 4.2 and we won after a great committee RP performance). In 3 of them he has gone 4, 4.1 & 4.2 IP - in the other 2 he took only 83 and 80 pitches to get through 6 and 6.1 IP.

So ever since the ALDS he has been on a pretty short leash and responded with a 2.84 ERA in those 5 postseason starts. Obviously would have liked to have seen what he could do had he stayed in WS G7...but I can also understand what their strategy is now.

As far as Diaz vs. Reddick, I know it's a small sample (111 lefty ABs/129 righty) but something to note is that lefties are hitting .180 against Berrios this year while righties are hitting .287. Reddick is 0-5 against him with a couple of Ks. Diaz is 1-3 (Brantley is 0-15!).

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Those pesky facts.

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Right on cue

Harry Dunne said:

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As has been mentioned, Greinke had a bad finish to the postseason. I had said a couple of days ago that I trusted Urquidy more at this point, and now it sets up great for us the way it worked out. There have been a few starts this season where Greinke had a good 4-5 innings only to have the train come off the tracks once the pitch count started getting higher and he had been through the order a couple of times.

Ever since getting shelled in the ALDS last year, Greinke has made 5 effective postseason starts. In 4 of 5 of those he has thrown around 80 pitches (the other was WS G3 where he took 95 pitches just to get through 4.2 and we won after a great committee RP performance). In 3 of them he has gone 4, 4.1 & 4.2 IP - in the other 2 he took only 83 and 80 pitches to get through 6 and 6.1 IP.

So ever since the ALDS he has been on a pretty short leash and responded with a 2.84 ERA in those 5 postseason starts. Obviously would have liked to have seen what he could do had he stayed in WS G7...but I can also understand what their strategy is now.

As far as Diaz vs. Reddick, I know it's a small sample (111 lefty ABs/129 righty) but something to note is that lefties are hitting .180 against Berrios this year while righties are hitting .287. Reddick is 0-5 against him with a couple of Ks. Diaz is 1-3 (Brantley is 0-15!).

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Quality post

Berrios does seem like the type of guy that Altuve would have fits with...but the ceiling for Altuve is so much greater than Reddick I dont want to have a 50% chance of Altuve having less at bats than Reddick

And the Lefty v Righty splits for Berrios are interesting...


I wonder if Brantley is DHing again today