Nationals Arm Race

Wouldn’t it be nice to see Price in a Washington uniform? photo unk via strikesportsnetwork.com

Nothing like a Bill Ladson inbox to start off your week!  This one is dated 10/4/13 and was posted late friday.  As always I write my response here before reading his and edit questions for clarity and conciseness.  Here we go.

Q: This past season, Adam LaRoche had a .403 slugging percentage, which might fly at shortstop, but not at first base. Do you think that Tyler Moore is good enough to be in a platoon with LaRoche, or should the Nats go after someone like James Loney to start most of the time?

A: Adam LaRoche‘s season was a disappointment for sure.  In addition to the noted poor slugging percentage, I’ll give you two more interesting stats.  He posted a bWAR of 0.9 for the year, which is only slightly better than the bWAR of 0.7 posted by Billy Hamilton during his two weeks of base-running terror in September.  And he ranked 20th of qualified first basemen in the league in terms of fWAR for the year.  James Loney put himself in a position to get a decent contract this year, with a nice slash line, a 118 OPS+ and a 7.2 UZR/150 at first.  But Loney’s problem is that he just doesn’t hit for enough power.  The Nats need LaRoche’s power, and I think at this point they stick with what they have for one more year and hope he rebounds.   I don’t think Tyler Moore is ready for prime time and will continue to be a power RH bat off the bench.  Lastly; who is taking LaRoche off our hands if we decide to replace him?  We’d have to pay most of his salary, get little in return, and I just don’t see this management team doing that.  Ladson agrees.

Q: How does Ross Ohlendorf fit in with the Nationals’ future plans? I see him as a great No. 4 or 5 starter.

A:  Ross Ohlendorf is in an interesting spot.   He was signed as a MLFA this past off-season, but did not accrue enough service time to get to 5 full years, so I believe he’s still tied to the club.  He should be arbitration eligible, and (per springfieldFan’s big board work) seems to have 2 options left.  So, on the one hand he pitched pretty well for us and I’d definitely tender him a contract for 2014; he’ll be relatively cheap even through arbitration.  I see him competing for the 4th/5th with the other obvious candidates (Karns, Jordan, Detwiler, Roark), but his longer term history as a starter in 2011 and 2012 does not inspire confidence.  His new motion helped him to a 3-1 record with a 3.52 ERA in 7 starts this year, but ultimately I see him settling into a long-man role similar to what he had this year.  Ladson agrees; he’s arb eligible but doesn’t seem like he can stick as a starter.

Q: I feel like the Nationals should go after center fielder Jacoby Ellsbury. How do you feel about that?

A: Nope.  Jacoby Ellsbury is a nice player, but I feel like he’s somewhat of a one-season wonder.  Look at his career homer records and tell me how he hit 32 in 2011 when he’s never hit more than 9 in any other season??  Doesn’t that outlier scream out PEDs?  Plus he can’t stay healthy; he missed 30 games this year, half of last year, basically all of 2010.  He’s a Scott Boras client who is already making noise about getting more for Ellsbury than he got for Carl Crawford.  Would you pay $150M for 7 years of Ellsbury??

But here’s the other thing; as with LaRoche, this team has a center fielder under contract for 2014!  If the Nats want to make a change in center they’ll be selling somewhat low on Denard Span.  Personally I wouldn’t mind putting Harper in center, acquiring a big bopper for left and adding some muscle to this lineup.  But I just don’t see Mike Rizzo doing that and admitting defeat on the Span acquisition.  Ladson points out that Span’s great finish means he’s clearly not in line to be replaced; organizationally they have to be hopeful that his 2014 will resemble more closely the end of 2013, not the middle.  Fair enough; I can get on that bandwagon.

Q: Have you noticed how similar the home run swings of Wilson Ramos and Andres Galarraga are? Every time Ramos goes yard, he reminds me of The Big Cat.

A: I had not noticed, but sure, whatever.  No real question here otherwise.  I like Ramos, and he’s finally showing signs of durability after an injury-plagued career.   This is the kind of hard-hitting question that Ladson is known for taking.

Q: Do you think the Nationals should go after another pitcher or two during the free agency period?

A: I think the Dan Haren experience may have scared them off the FA market for a bit.  And this coming off-season’s FA market for Starting Pitching is really thin.  After spending $13M each of the last two years for Haren and Edwin Jackson (and getting bWARs of -0.1 and 2.0 respectively) the Nats have to be thinking that there’s better ways to spend money.  I wouldn’t be surprised in the least to see another deal similar to the Gio Gonzalez deal, where we package a slew of close-to-the-majors players together for one decent-to-good pitcher.   The problem would be finding such a team; Oakland’s current slate of young starters mostly struggled this year and none of them are arb-eligible yet.  Maybe Tampa lines up; not only do they have to deal with David Price‘s rising salary but Jeremy Hellickson is arb-eligible for the first time too.  Hellickson took a major step back though in 2013; would Tampa use this to their advantage and keep him at a lower arb-number for one more year instead of selling low?   Would you trade, say, Karns, Roark and Kobernus for Hellickson?  Too much?  Too little?  Ladson says he could see them going after a pitcher either on FA or in Trade.

Q: Will Jhonatan Solano be the backup catcher out of Spring Training or will the Nationals try to bring in someone else? 

A: This is one of the bigger questions for this team this coming off-season: do the Nats go into 2014 with Ramos and a minor league call-up as his backup, or do they go for a veteran backup?  I’m guessing they may go the veteran FA route; there’s a ton of catchers on the FA market this year.  Jhonatan Solano may have peaked as a player: his AAA slashline as a 27 yr old this year was .214/.245/.279.   He’s been bouncing between AA and AAA since 2009.   Sandy Leon seemed like he was the future answer, but he bottomed out this year too after looking great in 2012.   I’d go with a veteran backup (Kurt Suzuki is a FA …) and wait out the kids one more season.  Ladson thinks FA route.

Q: Do you think a new manager will be able to change the hitting philosophy of the team and play more small ball instead of over-swinging and trying for home runs all of the time?

A: Is that the perception of this team’s offense in 2013?  That they over-swing all the time?  I think they just don’t hit well in the clutch.  Small-ball is a century old concept mostly debunked by modern stats in the game as being out-dated strategy.  Honestly, I want a manager who stands up for his players, who keeps them in line, who isn’t afraid to order a bean-ball when it is called for, and who doesn’t come across as a feeble old man (sorry Davey Johnson; that’s how I interpreted your last season).  Ladson says the hitting has settled since the firing of Rick Eckstein and the hiring of Rick Schu. 

Q: I think that left-hander David Price would be the ideal arm to add to the Nationals’ rotation. If he is willing to agree to an extension, do you think that he would be a good fit for the Nationals?

A: Price would be a great fit on every team in the majors.   Duh.  The problem is extracting him from Tampa.  Tampa is shrewd, drives a hard bargain, and wants to win every trade.  They’re not exactly the best team to try to negotiate with.  We’ve had this argument on this site many times; what would it really take to get Price out of Tampa?  Giolito, Jordan, Kobernus and Rendon maybe?  Would you make that deal or is that too much?

Of course, that being said … ask yourself this; was starting pitching *really* the reason this team failed in 2013?  No I don’t think it was.  Yes, the team was 10-19 in Haren’s starts … even if they’d finished .500 in Haren’s starts they were still out of the WC game.  No; this team took a significant step backwards offensively.  So the way to fix that should be to address the offense.  Problem is; all 8 starting fielders are under contract or under team control for 2014.  What do you do?  Get a couple of bench guys who can hit?  How does that help?

Ladson punts with his patented ‘lets see what happens’ line.

I missed on the Oakland-Detroit game yesterday; one bad inning undid Bartolo Colon, who gave up 3 in the first and that was all Detroit needed as Max Scherzer took over.  For the post-season we’re 8-for-9.  Should have gone to Vegas 🙂

Gut feeling on today’s games: always take the aces.  David Price and Justin Verlander going today.  Not much time for deeper analysis.  Price has been awesome against Boston this year, especially at Fenway.  Meanwhile Verlander’s disappointing season finished on a decent note, with two double-digit strikeout games to finish off the season.

Look for Detroit to sweep in Oakland and for Tampa to leave Boston with a split.  Both results seem rather acceptable: Boston had the upper hand on Tampa this year (winning 12 of 19 on the season series) but Price is tough to beat.  And Oakland got healthy on Houston (winning 15 of 19 on the year) and might not be quite as good as its 96 wins indicates.

We’re on a roll; 5-for-5 so far in predictions for individual games.  Lets see if we can keep it going now that all four divisional series are in full swing.  Cnnsi probable pitchers are here, along with some good stats.

NLDS Game 2: Pittsburgh-St. Louis: The Pirates are going with young phenom Gerrit Cole while the Cardinals curiously are going with their least effective playoff starter in Lance Lynn.  (Side note: I thought Lynn would be left off the playoff roster by virtue of being the 5th best St Louis starter; instead it turns out the Cardinals are moving Shelby Miller to the bullpen for the playoffs, ostensibly because Miller “looked tired” down the stretch.  BS: he lowered his ERA during the month of August.  How is this not a “shutdown” of some sort, and if so where’s the righteous indignation that followed the Nats shutting down Strasburg in 2012 for a medical reason?).   Lynn pitched to a 91 ERA+ on the year, struggled for most of the season but finished strong by posting a 2.82 ERA in September (going against a bunch of also rans for the most part).  He pitches significantly better at home, perhaps one reason to get his NLDS start in now before the teams move to Pittsburgh.  Lynn has faced Pittsburgh 5 times this year, but more importantly was his last two outings against the Pirates in August.  Both times they got to him; 4 runs in 5 innings on 8/15, 7 runs in 4 innings on 8/31.

Meanwhile Pittsburgh counters with its 2nd best pitcher in Cole.  Cole’s potential and minor league pedigree are well known to prospect watchers, and his arrival to the majors was heralded as the coming of the next big thing.  Oddly though, initially Cole looked mortal; it took him 17 MLB starts before he had a scoreless outing.  Like Lynn, Cole vastly improved once September came, capped off by 7 innings of shutout ball he threw at Texas and a 6 inning/12 strikeout outing in late September.  To be fair, like Lynn Cole’s September starts were also filled with also-rans.

The Cardinals hit.  And they especially hit right-handers (best in the NL in several macro batting categories, including BA, OPS, wOBA and wRC+).  Despite my liking Cole, I have a feeling the Cards are eventually going to get to him.  Will the Pirates get to Lynn first?  I’m betting so; after last night’s beating and emotional letdown, I think the Pirates re-group and take game 2.

NLDS Game 2: Los Angeles-Atlanta: The Braves are in trouble; after getting embarassed by Clayton Kershaw last night they have to go up against a pitcher of nearly the same quality in Zack Greinke.  Greinke was hurt early, and struggled to find his form until the season was half over.  But now he’s on a roll; he hasn’t given up more than 2 runs in an outing since July 25th.  In his last 6 starts he’s given up a total of 7 runs.  The Braves are going to have a hard time scoring on him.   In Greinke’s only start against Atlanta in June, he pitched 7 shutout innings, giving up just 4 hits.  I see a similar outing tonight; perhaps 7 innings giving up 1 or 2 runs and punching out 7-8 guys.

Meanwhile, Atlanta counters with Mike Minor, who hasn’t pitched badly per se down the stretch but certainly hasn’t pitched that dominantly; Atlanta has lost his last 6 starts.  However, in two starts against LA Minor has been good.  I can see Minor holding the Dodgers at bay and getting this to the bullpens, where Atlanta has the very distinct advantage.  I’m predicting a very close Atlanta victory tonight to send it back to LA.

ALCS Game 1: Tampa-Boston: After a disastrous 2012 season, Boston is back and is set to bash their way through the playoffs with its league-best offense.  In game 1 Boston throws its ace Jon Lester, who has lowered his season ERA three quarters of a point in the last 2 months going against mostly a solid diet of playoff-calibre and AL east teams.  The Rays hit left-handers pretty well (108 wRC+) but Lester has mostly handled them in 4 match-ups this season.

Meanwhile Tampa is hampered by its two play-in games costing them their two best arms.  They start the ALDS with their #3 starter Matt Moore, no slouch himself at 17-4 with a 3.29 ERA and 116 ERA+.  However Moore is struggling down the stretch; since a fantastic 2-hit shutout in Boston in late August, Moore has finished 6 innings just one time and has had to be taken out of games early due to high pitch counts and unusual wildness (Moore leads the league this year in wild-pitches; very odd considering how well he controlled the ball in the 2011 playoffs).  Boston is just as patient a team as Tampa at the plate (they’re #1 and #4 in terms of BB% in the majors), and Boston can wait out Moore to get to Tampa’s fatigued bullpen.

All in all, I think Boston waits out Moore, gets into Tampa’s bullpen and gets a win.  Lester holds Tampa at bay and Boston takes game 1.

ALDS Game 1: Oakland-Detroit: Presumed AL Cy Young winner Max Scherzer gets the ball in game 1, going against the ageless Bartolo Colon, who at 40 may have just had his best season (his WAR for 2013 is a full 1.1 wins better than his Cy Young winning season in 2005).  Scherzer may be averaging 10 K/9, but the last time he hooked up with Oakland he got beat.  Likewise, the last time Colon faced Detroit he shut them down.  With Miguel Cabrera hurting and the Tigers offense limping into the post-season, with Scherzer oddly inconsistent down the stretch, and with Colon entering the post-season nearly unhittable (he’s given up just 4 earned runs in his last 5 starts, three of them on solo homers), I think we’re about to see an upset in game 1.  I’m going with Oakland.

Can Kris Medlen stop the Kershaw train tonight? Photo unknown via totalprosports.com

I’m 3-for-3 so far predicting the play-in games.  Called the Texas-Tampa game, then the NL wild-card, then the AL wild-card.    I didn’t mean to start the post-season by offering predictions, but some email messages with friends turned into analytic efforts which turned into blog posts.  Now i’ll continue the trend and try to guess the winners each day as best as I can.

Next up in baseball’s post-season: the first games of each NL divisional series.  Here’s some quick hit thoughts.  The si.com probable-pitcher page is a nice little resource, giving the probable starters and a quick little stat history.

Without doing a ton of research (not much time today):

Pirates at Cardinals.  Pirates #2  A.J. Burnett goes against St. Louis ace Adam Wainwright.   Wainwright is tough at home, tough all year, has been good down the stretch, and probably isn’t getting beat in his own stadium.  He’s a quality right-handed pitcher going against a Pirates lineup that doesn’t score a ton of runs and isn’t that great against right handed hitters.  I also think the Pirates may have a bit of a letdown early in this series, having blown their Ace and a lot of emotional capital in the wild-card game.  Burnett has faced the Cards six times this season, most recently a month ago in St. Louis and got hammered.  I think the Cards wear down Burnett on the road again and cruise to an easy game 1 victory.

Dodgers at Braves.  The Dodgers have their rotation lined up and put out ace Clayton Kershaw in Atlanta for game 1.  Meanwhile the Braves send to the hill Kris Medlen, who has been fantastic down the stretch to get the nod as the replacement Ace of the Braves staff for Tim Hudson.  Medlen’s strong close to the season is muddied by looking at his competition; the last time he faced a playoff-calibre team was a month ago, when he was good but not great against the Cardinals.   Meanwhile Kershaw’s unreal 1.83 ERA on the season represented an ERA+ value of 194, tied for the 46th best ever such season and ranking him ahead of a couple of  Sandy Koufax‘s dominant mid-1960s seasons.  Kershaw led the league with 232 strikeouts; the Braves as a team only trailed the hapless Astros and Twins in team strikeouts.  Atlanta only hit .239 on the season against all lefties, let alone the best left-handed starter in the league.   I just do not see Atlanta getting a ton of baserunners tonight.  Plus I don’t entirely trust Medlen against a good team and I think he’ll have a quality start but get the loss, something like 3-1 to the Dodgers.

Can the effusive Swisher lead his rag-tag team to victory? Photo via wikipedia.

At first glance, knowing that the Rays have been travling around the country for the last two weeks like an indie band chasing side gigs, you would think the Indians would be favored in this matchup.

But look closer and you’ll see an Indians team that has a lot of heart but may not really be as good as their record indicates.  They readily beat up on the two weak teams in their division (going 17-2 versus the White Sox and 13-6 versus Minnesota).  They went 6-1 against the hapless Astros.  That’s a combined 36-9 against these three awful teams.   Against the rest of the league, just 54-51.  They lost the season series to Tampa, winning just 2 of 6 games.  They lost 15 of 19 against Detroit on the season.  They lost 6 of 7 to both Boston and New York.  So I think this is a weaker team than its 90-72 record; in fact I feel like in a different division they’d probably be just a .500 team.

You can only play who they put in front of you though.  They still had 90 wins and a fantastic 10 game winning streak to end the season  … but those 10 games were all against the 3 worst teams in the league.  What will happen when they play a battle tested, playoff-veteran AL East team like Tampa?

Tampa earned its way into a game 163 with tough road series victories at the end of the season, and earned its win over Texas in its first do-or-die game.  Unfortunately they burned their ace in the process and now will go with #3 starter Alex Cobb.  Not that Cobb doesn’t give them a great chance at winning: he’s 11-3 on the season, has pitched to a 138 ERA+.  His away splits are *better* than his home splits.  He’s been very solid since returning from the D/L and I would expect a solid outing tonight.  Perhaps 7 innings, 2 earned runs with 6 strikeouts.

Cleveland had to play it “straight” all they way til the end to guarantee a playoff spot and thus finds itself depending on 23-yr old Danny Salazar, he of exactly 10 major league starts, in this coin-flip game.  Salazar’s numbers in short sample sizes are good; 2-3, 3.12 era, 1.13 whip, 65/15 k/bb in 52 innings and a 121 ERA+.  The blogs rave about his heat and his change-up.  He gets a ton of Ks.  But he’s young, he throws too many pitches, and he’s likely only going to be able to give his team 5-6 innings in a best case tonight.   The Rays see a lot of pitches and are a patient team (2nd in the league in BBs); they and manager Joe Madden knows they can wait out Salazar, get into the Indians bullpen and take their chances.  The Indians pen is a mess, closer Chris Perez is lost, and they’re in the bottom third of the league in most macro categories (bullpen ERA, FIP, fWAR).   Their bullpen is righty heavy, so they can’t play matchups very well.   And the Rays are one of the better RH hitting teams in the league (top 10 in wOBA, top 5 in wRC+).

The Indians are at home (where they’re good), and they’re incredibly hot right now (21-8 in September).  They hit righties at about the league average and have a ton of left-handed/switch hitters at their disposal.   But I somehow see the Rays asserting their dominance, getting into the Cleveland bullpen and eking out a win.  I’m thinking perhaps a 4-3 victory for Tampa.  I’m not as confident here as I was in my first two predictions for the 2013 post-season … but have faith that Tampa will take the next step over the surprising Indians.

Kershaw leads the best rotation in the playoffs. Photo via wiki.

Now that the playoff fields are set … who has the most formidable playoff rotation?

Unlike previous rotation rankings posts, the playoffs focus mostly on the 1-2-3 guys.  Your 5th starter may not even be on the playoff roster and your 4th starter usually just throws one start in a series where you can line up your guys, and some teams skip the 4th starter altogether if they at least one veteran pitcher who can all go on 3 days rest (there’s enough off-days in the 2-3-2 format to allow most guys to go on regular rest).  So the focus here is on the strength of your top guys.

Here’s how I’d rank the 10 playoff teams’ rotations, despite the fact that two of these teams will be wild card losers and never get a chance to use their rotations:

1. Los Angeles: Kershaw, Greinke, Nolasco, Ryu (Capuano left out).  As great a 1-2 combination Kershaw and Greinke are, Nolasco has for stretches outpiched them both since his trade, and Ryu is a #2 starter talent in the #4 slot.  They’re going to be a tough out in any short series where Kershaw gets two starts.  Easily the #1 playoff rotation.
2. Detroit: Scherzer, Verlander, Sanchez, Fister (Porcello left out).  Hard to believe that a guy who most thought was the best or 2nd best pitcher in baseball (Verlander) may not even get the start in the first game of the playoffs.  But they’re still the 2nd best rotation.
3. St. Louis: Wainwright, Miller, Wacha, Kelly (Westbrook and Garcia hurt, Lynn left out).  The knock on St Louis’ current rotation is their youth; two rookies and a 2nd year guy who was in the bullpen all last year.  Are there any innings-limit concerns here that could force a shutdown  It doesn’t seem so at this point?  It continues to amaze me how well St. Louis develops players.  Carpenter and Garcia out all year?  No worries we’ll just bring up two guys in Wacha and Miller who are barely old enough to drink but who can pitch to a 120 ERA+.
4. Tampa Bay: Price, Moore, Archer, Cobb (Hellickson left out); A tough top 4, if a little young on the back-side.  Moore has quietly returned to this dominant form upon his call-up and gives Tampa a formidable 1-2 punch.  Price has already pushed them past game 163.
5. Pittsburgh: Liriano, Burnett, Cole, Morton (Rodriguez hurt, Locke left out).  The team previously said that Cole would likely a reliever in the playoffs, but I’ll believe that when I see it; he’s been fantastic down the stretch.  It is difficult to put a rotation headlined by the burnout Burnett and the reclamation project Liriano this high, but their performances this year are inarguable.
6. Boston: Lester, Buchholz, Peavy, Lackey (Dempster, Doubront left out).  Buchholz just returning mid September after a hot start; could push this rank up.  I don’t necessarily trust the #3 and #4 spots here in a short series, but Boston can (and probably will) bash their way to the World Series.
7. Cincinnati: Bailey, Cueto, Arroyo, Cingrani (Leake left out, Latos hurt).  Cingrani may be hurt, Cueto has returned to replace the sore-armed Latos.  Leake’s performance may push him over Arroyo if they get there, but the odds of them beating Pittsburgh were already slim after their poor finish and were vanquished last night.  Still, isn’t it nice when you have more quality starters than you need heading into a season, Mike Rizzo?
8. Atlanta: Minor, Medlen, Teheran, Wood (Hudson hurt, Maholm left out).  If Wood is shutdown, Maholm makes sense as the #4 starter but has struggled most of the 2nd half and finished poorly.  I may have this rotation ranked too low; they’re solid up and down, just not overpoweringly flashy.
9. Cleveland: Jimenez, Kluber, Kazmir, Salazar (Masterson in the pen, McAllister left out).  How did these guys get a playoff spot?  Amazing.  They’re all solid, nobody especially flashy, and they won’t go away.
10. Oakland: Colon, Parker, Griffen, Gray (Milone, Straily left out, Anderson in long relief).  I didn’t want to rank them last, considering Oakland’s record over their last 162 game stretch.  But here they are; on an individual level one by one, they just do not stack up.  The age-less wonder Colon is easily the staff Ace.  The rest of these guys’ seasonal numbers are just not impressive.

These teams obviously didn’t make the playoffs, but were in the hunt until late, and since I had already typed up this content might as well say where I’d have ranked them, had they made the playoffs…

• Washington: Strasburg, Gonzalez, Zimmermann, Haren (Ohlendorf, Roark left out, Jordan shut down)  Perhaps you’d replace Haren with Roark based on September performances;  I just can’t imagine trusting Haren in a 7 game series..  I’d put them about #4, just ahead or just behind Tampa.   Gonzalez and Zimmermann have shown themselves to be oddly vulnerable here and there coming down the stretch, and I just don’t put Strasburg in the same elite category as Kershaw right now.  Too bad months of indifference cost them the 4 games they needed to make up in the standings to reach the WC game.
• Kansas City: Shields, Santana, Chen, Guthrie (Duffy, Davis, Mendoza left out): Duffy may be a better choice than Guthrie based on small sample sizes.  I’d have put them just behind Cincy at #8 in terms of rotation depth.
• Texas: Darvish, Garza, Holland, Perez (Tepisch, Grimm left out, Harrison hurt): Great Ace in Darvish (even if he has occasaional blowups), but falls off badly after that.  The Garza acquisition has just not worked out, and the rest of the rotation is good but not overpowering.  I’d put them behind KC but just ahead of Baltimore.
• Baltimore: Tillman, Chen, Gonzalez, Feldman (Norris, Garcia, Hammel and others left out).  They’d probably be behind Atlanta at #9, only ahead of Oakland/Cleveland.
• New York: Sabathia, Kuroda, Nova, Pettitte (Hughes, Phelps left out): Kuroda has been the ace of the staff this year, but you’d always lead off with Sabathia (though, had they made the playoffs it would be unknown if Sabathia could even go with his late-season injury).  Either way, this would be behind any other playoff team’s rotation.

Will Liriano pitch the PIrates deeper into the post-season? Photo by Rich Schultz/Getty Images

The Reds sputter into the one-game playoff tonight having lost 5 of their last 6 games at home.  Those 6 games were against the hapless Mets and the same Pirates who they now face in a do-or-die wild card game.  Meanwhile 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.

Before we even look at the starters, clearly Pittsburgh has momentum on their side.

The Pirates are going with their ace Francisco Liriano, who had a complete career turnaround this year, finishing 16-8 with a 3.02 ERA and a K/inning.  Liriano 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 and Bruce) in the first five batters.  Choo in particular is just brutally bad against lefties, likely nullifying Cincinnati’s otherwise dynamic lead-off hitter.

However, interestingly, in the four games Liriano has pitched against Cincinnati this year, Pittsburgh is 0-4.  Despite 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.  Liriano is 8-1 with a 1.47 ERA in 11 home starts this year, and that one loss was against Pittsburgh.

Meanwhile, Cincinnati got some bad news when their “ace” Mat Latos bowed out of the one-game playoff with a “sore arm,” leaving it to their opening day starter Johnny Cueto (and pre-season actual “Ace”) to make the start.  Cueto’s season has been peppered with D/L stints and he’s only made 11 starts.  He’ll be going on 8 days rest and has been reasonably effective since his latest return.  Interestingly, Cueto’s best start of the season came in Pittsburgh, where he threw 8 innings of one-hit ball en-route to a 3-0 victory in May.  Meanwhile, Pittsburgh is dead-last in the majors in wOBA against right handers this year.   But presumptive NL MVP Andrew McCutchen 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).

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

Who do you think is favored in this game?

Rivera’s last Yankee Apperance. Photo Jim McIsaac/Long Island Newsday.

As cool and awesomely thought out as it was for the Yankees to get Metallica to perform a live version of Mariano Rivera‘s signature walk-on song Enter Sandman earlier this week, this was even cooler; Derek Jeter and Andy Pettitte coming out to pull him from his last home game.  The 5 minute ovation was great, but I gotta admit this video is pretty moving.  You’re not a baseball fan if you’re not a least a little choked up here.

A legend moves on.  The greatest reliever by any measure (opinion or stats) will set the bar pretty high going forward for any hall-of-fame calibre closer to achieve once he’s enshrined.

Tampa or Texas tonight, who you got?  Gut check says Tampa.  Reasons:

John Feinstein, a guy whose opinions on things I used to read and look forward to, completely lost my respect with his ridiculous Sept 25th column where he argues, somehow, without anything in the way of proof, that the 2012 Stephen Strasburg shutdown affected the 2013 team.  He lost most of my respect last year with a similarly ridiculous article (discussed further on) but this one took the cake.

This column was so bad that the mild-mannered Adam Kilgore felt the need to post a rebuttal, to his own Washington Post colleague, online soon after it was posted.

This column was so bad that noted Nats troller Craig Calcaterra of HardballTalk (who has clearly criticized the team for the 2012 shutdown) lambasted the article in this nbcsports.com blog.  Seamheads.com’s Ted Leavengood posted a similar critique.

This column was so bad that when asked for a response, Davey Johnson called Feinstein “an idiot” during a radio appearance.

Do you know when the last time Feinstein wrote an article about baseball was?  Take a guess.  Yup; October 13th, 2012, the day after the Nats were knocked out of the NLDS, in a clearly canned article the he probably wrote in late August waiting for the Nats to lose in the playoffs.  Go back and read the 2012 article and see how awful it was as well; dripping with lazy sportswriter narrative and with not one mention or occurence of these key words: doctor, injury, medical or rehab.  You know, all the words that were key reasons as to why Strasburg was shutdown in the first place.

My opinion on this is pretty clear (most succinctly stated in this article titled “Innings Limits and Media Hypocrisy” earlier this year); if you want to criticize the Nats decision to shutdown Strasburg, then you HAVE to similarly criticize all the other “shutdowns” of pitchers we see.  If you don’t, then you’re a hypocrite; the placement of the team in the standings should NOT dictate medically-driven decisions for a 24-year old.  What really gets me is writers like Feinstein who don’t even bother to address the medical reasoning for the shutdown and act like its 1950.  Thankfully Feinstein doesn’t have a Hall of Fame vote or else he’d be posting drivel like what we get out of Murray Chass and making inane arguments about why the modern revolution of statistics is “stupid” and “ruining the sport.”

Feinstein needs to stick to his little niche of College Basketball with occasional complaints about how the PGA tour has screwed him, and keep his nose out of sports that he clearly doesn’t understand.