{"id":11303,"date":"2015-10-06T09:38:48","date_gmt":"2015-10-06T13:38:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=11303"},"modified":"2015-10-06T09:38:48","modified_gmt":"2015-10-06T13:38:48","slug":"rotation-reviews-of-your-2015-playoff-teams-wc-picks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=11303","title":{"rendered":"Rotation Reviews of your 2015 Playoff Teams &#038; WC Picks"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_11306\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/Arrieta_jake-via-mlb.com_.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-11306\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11306\" src=\"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/Arrieta_jake-via-mlb.com_-300x168.jpg\" alt=\"Arrieta makes for a great WC matchup this week in Pittsburgh. Photo via mlb.com\" width=\"300\" height=\"168\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-11306\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Arrieta makes for a great WC matchup this week in Pittsburgh. Photo via mlb.com<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Welcome to playoff baseball.\u00a0 Lets look at the playoff rotations of the 8 playoff teams.<\/p>\n<p>Reference links: <a href=\"http:\/\/thebiglead.com\/2015\/10\/04\/2015-mlb-wildcard-and-league-division-series-schedules\/\">MLB post-season schedule<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rosterresource.com\/mlb-chicago-cubs\/\">Depth Charts<\/a> for all teams, baseball-reference for stats.<\/p>\n<p>NL Divisional Winners:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>New York Mets: deGrom, Snydergaard, Harvey, Matz (Colon)<\/li>\n<li>Los Angeles Dodgers: Kershaw, Greinke, Wood, Anderson (Bolsinger)<\/li>\n<li>St. Louis Cardinals: Lynn, Wacha, Garcia, Lackey (Lyons)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Discussions\/Thoughts<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>NY Mets: Only the Mets so far\u00a0 have announced their rotation order.\u00a0 <strong>Matt Harvey<\/strong> has quelled shut-down-gate talks by finishing out the season and saying he&#8217;d take the ball in the NLDS: hard to see him getting beat in his home game 3 start against the Dodgers, especially given his last outing (6ip, 11Ks).\u00a0 <strong>deGrom<\/strong> struggled somewhat down the stretch and <strong>Snydergaard<\/strong> is only 22; hard to see them beating the seasoned vets Kershaw\/Greinke at home.\u00a0 We still don&#8217;t know if <strong>Matz<\/strong> is going to be healthy for game 4, but the potential LA opponent isn&#8217;t exactly scaring anyone, so I could see this go to a game 5 back in LA with Kershaw getting a 2nd divisional start.<\/li>\n<li>LA: We say this every year: <strong>Kershaw<\/strong> is the greatest &#8230; and he has a 5+ post-season ERA.\u00a0 I&#8217;ll never bet against him in the playoffs, especially not after the September he had.\u00a0 <strong>Greinke<\/strong> either wins the Cy Young or finishes a close second, and <strong>Wood<\/strong> is an effective 3rd starter.\u00a0 This is a tough rotation to handle.\u00a0 But they&#8217;re going against probably the 2nd best rotation in the post-season, meaning this could be a tight 5-game set.\u00a0 Or not; watch every game will be 8-7.<\/li>\n<li>StL: They don&#8217;t look tough &#8230; but this rotation led the Cardinals to a 100 win season in a division with two other 97+ game winners.\u00a0 That&#8217;s pretty amazing.\u00a0 Bet against them at your own peril.\u00a0 They were 11-8 versus the Cubs, 10-9 (and got outscored) against the Pirates, so I&#8217;m guessing they&#8217;re rooting for a Pittsburgh win in the WC play-in game.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>NL Wild Card<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Chicago Cubs: Arrieta, Hendricks, Haren, Lester (Hammel)<\/li>\n<li>Pittsburgh Pirates: Cole, Liriano, Happ, Burnett (Morton)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Discussion\/Prediction: <strong>Arrieta<\/strong> has <a href=\"http:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/gl.cgi?id=arrieja01&amp;t=p&amp;year=2015\">given up 3 runs<\/a> in the last month &#8230; and two of them were in his road start in Pittsburgh on 9\/16\/15.\u00a0 I could see a similar start from him again in the Wednesday WC game.\u00a0 So what can the Cubs do with <strong>Cole<\/strong>?\u00a0 They have also seen him twice in the last month, got <a href=\"http:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/gl.cgi?id=colege01&amp;t=p&amp;year=2015\">shut down at home<\/a> but got to him on 9\/15\/15 in Pittsburgh.\u00a0\u00a0 Tough one to predict but I&#8217;m going with your presumptive Cy Young winner to hold serve in Pittsburgh, sending home the 97 win Pirates for the 2nd straight year in the play-in game.\u00a0\u00a0 <span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><strong>Prediction: Cubs win<\/strong><\/span>.<\/p>\n<p>If the Cubs win, they&#8217;ll be at a huge disadvantage against the Cards.\u00a0 If the Pirates win, <strong>Liriano<\/strong> and <strong>Happ<\/strong> have been pitching well enough to get them back to their ace quickly and make a series of it.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>AL Divisional Winners<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Toronto: Price, Estrada, Buehrle, Dickey\/Stroman<\/li>\n<li>Kansas City: Cueto, Ventura, Volquez, Young (Medlen)<\/li>\n<li>Texas: Hamels, Gallardo, Holland, Perez\/Lewis<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Discussion:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Toronto is setup for the playoffs and will get <strong>Price<\/strong> twice.\u00a0 The back-end of their rotation doesn&#8217;t exactly inspire confidence in a playoff series, but Toronto isn&#8217;t about top-notch pitching.\u00a0 They hope to bash their way to the title and just may do it.\u00a0 Would you roll the dice and sit <strong>Dickey<\/strong> for the 4th spot in favor of <strong>Stroman<\/strong> and his live arm?\u00a0 Do you insult the veteran <strong>Buehrle<\/strong> and leave him off your playoff roster (probably not).<\/li>\n<li>Kansas City: blew <strong>Cueto<\/strong> in an attempt to keep home field and were successful, so <strong>Ventura<\/strong> likely gets two NLDS starts.\u00a0 Nationals re-tread <strong>Young<\/strong> suddenly looks like the #4 starter for a WS contender.\u00a0 Who would have thought that?<\/li>\n<li>Texas burned <strong>Hamels<\/strong> just to get to the playoffs; they&#8217;ll struggle to compete against two David Price home starts.\u00a0 Who is their #4 in the playoffs?\u00a0 Will Toronto average 6 runs a game against this staff?\u00a0 Could be a short-post season run for the Rangers; no judgement here; they&#8217;ve done fantastically just to get into the playoffs given the number of rotation injuries and their poor start.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>AL Wild Card<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Houston: Keuchel, McHugh, McCullers, Kazmir\/Fiers<\/li>\n<li>New\u00a0 York\u00a0 Yankees: Tanaka, Severino, Pineda, Nova (Sabathia)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Discussion\/Prediction: well, it doesn&#8217;t look good for the Yankees; Keuchel is scheduled to start and has <a href=\"http:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/gl.cgi?id=keuchda01&amp;t=p&amp;year=2015\">thrown twice against New York<\/a> this year: he threw a 6-hit shutout with 12 Ks against them in June and then threw 7 innings of 3-hit shutout ball in late August.\u00a0 He&#8217;s your shoe-in Cy Young Winner and seems likely to pitch the Astros into the divisional series.\u00a0\u00a0 New York counters with Tanaka; in his sole appearance vs Houston he got lit up (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/gl.cgi?id=tanakma01&amp;t=p&amp;year=2015\">5ip, 6runs<\/a>) and the Yankees seem like they&#8217;re struggling just to field a lineup at season&#8217;s end.\u00a0 They get the home game but likely go out a loser to end their season.\u00a0 And if the Yankees somehow won, they&#8217;d have thrown their best pitcher &#8230; and one of the presumptive rotation members just <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mlbtraderumors.com\/2015\/10\/cc-sabathia-alcohol-rehab-yankees.html\">checked himself into Alcohol Rehab<\/a>.\u00a0 <span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><strong>Prediction: Astros Win<\/strong><\/span>.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Interesting collection of guys with Washington ties featuring prominently in the 2015 playoffs.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Dan Haren was nearly released mid-season because he was so bad in Washington 2\u00a0 years ago, now he&#8217;s the #3 starter on a 97 win team.<\/li>\n<li>Marco Estrada was waived by the Nats after a long and uninspiring minor league career; now he&#8217;s the #2 starter for the AL favorite?<\/li>\n<li>Chris Young played a whole season for Syracuse in 2013, working his way back from an injury.\u00a0 When he didn&#8217;t make the 2014 roster he signed with Seattle and has been pretty effective since.<\/li>\n<li>Marcus Stroman was an <a href=\"https:\/\/docs.google.com\/spreadsheets\/d\/1pZpAxtq3K6SxrHb6YSe3_NF6Cay0MkeYwW1Dc2_KHrE\/edit?hl=en#gid=0\">18th round pick out of HS<\/a> by the Nats; he was listed as a SS (he&#8217;s only 5&#8217;8&#8243;) but went to Duke, became a power arm and was a 1st round pick by the Blue Jays 3 years later.<\/li>\n<li>Colby Lewis signed on with the Nats back in the bad years, failing to make the team out of Spring Training in 2007.\u00a0 He hooked on with Oakland, playing most of the year in Sacramento before signing a 2-year gig in Japan.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Welcome to playoff baseball.\u00a0 Lets look at the playoff rotations of the 8 playoff teams. Reference links: MLB post-season schedule, Depth Charts for all teams, baseball-reference for stats. NL Divisional Winners: New York Mets: deGrom, Snydergaard, Harvey, Matz (Colon) Los Angeles Dodgers: Kershaw, Greinke, Wood, Anderson (Bolsinger) St. Louis Cardinals: Lynn, Wacha, Garcia, Lackey (Lyons) [&hellip;]<\/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":[700,1912,343,868,47,2020,349,426,242,247,2913,2593,983,223,286,589,1910,1221,412,785,2653,324,2329,1036,890,770,221,970,2912,897,2914,2915,1336,2735,339,1889,2166,1666,408,1953,2893,1184,2326,781,477,2911,1954,2232,1251,254],"class_list":["post-11303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mlbpitching","category-post-season","tag-aj-burnett","tag-alex-wood","tag-bartolo-colon","tag-brett-anderson","tag-cc-sabathia","tag-charlie-morton","tag-chris-young","tag-clayton-kershaw","tag-colby-lewis","tag-cole-hamels","tag-collin-mchugh","tag-dallas-keuchel","tag-dan-haren","tag-david-price","tag-derek-holland","tag-edinson-volquez","tag-francisco-liriano","tag-gerrit-cole","tag-ivan-nova","tag-ja-happ","tag-jacob-degrom","tag-jaime-garcia","tag-jake-arrieta","tag-jason-hammel","tag-johnny-cueto","tag-jon-lackey","tag-jon-lester","tag-kris-medlen","tag-kyle-hendricks","tag-lance-lynn","tag-lance-mccullers","tag-luis-severino","tag-marco-estrada","tag-marcus-stroman","tag-mark-buehrle","tag-martin-perez","tag-masahiro-tanaka","tag-matt-harvey","tag-michael-pineda","tag-michael-wacha","tag-mike-bolsinger","tag-mike-fiers","tag-noah-snydergaard","tag-ra-dickey","tag-scott-kazmir","tag-steven-matz","tag-tyler-lyons","tag-yordano-ventura","tag-yovani-gallardo","tag-zack-greinke"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11303"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11303\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11311,"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11303\/revisions\/11311"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}