Tuesday, October 20, 2015

Through Three Games


No time for a full synopsis.  (or a spell check)

Just a few musings.

1.  Alcides Escobar is a gamer.  A .980 fielding percentage at Short for the season is stellar.  Tony Fernandez had a career .983 fielding percentage and he had more game than anyone I've seen.  Escobar is special.  Guess that's why he was an all star.  I'm pretty sure it wasn't his .257 average.  But the kid is hitting .394 for the post season.  Really?  Here's a look at the three games against the Jays, the number is the total pitches he saw in the at bat and the (O) means out while the (H) means hit.  For the sake of argument, one of the hits is actually a hit batter but it amounts to the same.  Game 3; 2 (H), 2 (O), 2 (H), 4(H), 3(H); Game 2; 1 (H), 3 (O), 5 (O), 1 (O); Game 1; 1 (H); 1 (H), 2 (O),  2 (H).   So when he reaches base he sees an average of 1.875 pitches per at bat.  When he fails to reach base he sees 3.25 pitches.

Why?  Who the hell knows.  Maybe he over thinks deeper in the count.  Maybe he doesn't think enough.  Doesn't matter.  What does matter, is that he needs to see more pitches!  No more 1st pitch fastball strikes.  I'm hoping Dickey can mess him up today, but Estrada needs to nibble with this kid, no more strikes.

2.  There was lots of talk about Stroman gutting it out when he didn't have his good stuff.  I totally disagree with that one.  Escobar's lead off triple was botched by birthday boy Joey Bats.  I'm not going hang him out, but if there was a way to charge an error on that I would have.  I'm not saying he should have caught it.  Not at all.  But he played it to the side like a rookie, the only option was for the ball to hit his glove.  When he decided to charge instead of playing the hop, he needed to play it to bounce into his body and smother it.  No excuses.  Neil Pendlebury would have done that.  Scott Peters would have done that.

It should have been a single.  Period.  Zobrist grounds out to 2nd which would have been the lead runner or a double play.  Cain flies out to Pillar.  Hosmer grounds out to 2nd.  The kid should have been out of the inning unscathed.  For Christ sakes he gave up a run on a bull shit triple and only threw 7 pitches in the innings!  Touched up?  I think not.  Let down?  You bet.


3.  The Jays 1st inning was a major key to the game even though they didn't score.  The only change I would have made coming into the game would have been switching Pillar and Revere as Cueto is SO bad against righties, you may as well make him uncomfortable right from the start.  Didn't matter.

Revere flies out on 6 pitches.  Donaldson pops out on 6 pitches.  Bautista walks on 6 pitches.  The key here is Edwin's at bat.  18 pitches through the first 3 hitters getting 2 outs.  Not terribly efficient.  If he can get Edwin quickly he can still retain hopes of getting into the 7th inning.  Remember, there is that 100 pitch total in everyone's head.  Encarnacion would have an 8 pitch at bat driving the pitch total up to 26.  No hits, no runs, but they exhausted 1/4 of his pitch count.  Well done.

4.  The Jays 2nd inning.  Another 25 pitches for Cueto.  That's now half a game through 2 innings.  On top of that, so many pitches in a short span, plus pitches made under stress are exhausting.  He's starting to labour.  Two keys in this inning.  First Pillar.  He hit what could have been a double play ball that a lot of guys would have given up on with runners at 1st and 2nd.  He beats it out for the fielders choice with Tulo going to 3rd.  Then Goins and Pillar.  Goins takes a strike.  He swings through a strike.  Then he has the nerve to take a ball and let Pillar steal second.  Then Goins.  Ball, foul, foul, foul, ball and then lays the barrel on an outside pitch hitting a soft liner off field over Short.  Welcome back Ryan.

5.  After a 16 pitch 2nd inning, Stoman pitched a 16 pitch 3rd inning.  In both innings he gave up 2 hits.  39 pitches through 3.

6.  The Jays 3rd is a shit show.  Cueto would leave the game without retiring a man in the inning.  His line is 2 innings, 6 hits, 4 walks, 2 K's, 8 Runs, all earned and his post season ERA rises to 7.88.

7.  Stroman throws 6 pitches in the 4th inning.  So not at 50 pitches yet and looking strong.  And the only run he's given up shouldn't have scored.

The Royals 5th pissed me off though.  Escobar single (surprise), Zobrist doubles him to 3rd.  Cain lines out to Bautista and the runners hold.  With Hosmer up and an 0-1 count, Martin gets lazy trying to back hand a ball in the dirt instead of smothering it with his body.  Of course he'd start smothering them latter in the game, but this is when it mattered.  You have to do it all the time.  The run scores and the other runner advances.  Hosmer would strike out.  It should have been 2 out with runners at 2nd and 3rd and a huge avalanche of momentum.  Instead, it was two out and a runner at 3rd and a run in.  To add insult to injury, the ball that gets by Martin is a Wild Pitch (because it bounced) instead of a Passed Ball.  Anyone who has ever put on catchers gear would tell you that they HAVE to make that play.  (Right Gina?).  I'm not saying it would have been a clean inning, but I am saying that he got let down again and its not a reflection of how he pitched.

 8.  Kris Medlen!  If the Royals win this series, they can thank Medlen after they have the Escobar parade.  Knocking out Cueto was huge.  But they missed an opportunity.  Medlen is not a key to the KC pen.  If they could also knocked him around and got into their meaningful guys in the 4th or 5th they could have decimated the KC  bull pen for the rest of the series.  Instead, the Royals are not overworked and are ready to go, thanks to Medlen.  All Medlen did was eat up 5 innings, 3 hits and 2 runs.  An amazing job well done!

9.  Liam Hendricks.  Our pen is getting shorter and shorter.  He may get another changes but we now have Hawkins, Hendricks and Loup that should just be getting guys water at this point.

10.  John Hirschbeck is a dick.  He was the recipient of the Robbie Alomar spitting incident.  That was a bad move on Robbie's part, but given the choice of spitting and breaking a bat over his head, he may have chosen well.  You know, when an umpire screams "I'll kill you" to a future hall of famer in front of witnesses, there might be an anger management issue.  Hirschbeck made an ass of himself for initiating conflict with Bryce Harper by imitating him and tossing him from a game.  (HARPER).  You can see here how Hirschbeck tried to pick a fight with noted hot head Yasiel Puig who was smart enough to walk away.

Hirschbeck, or, the dick, was 3rd in the league in ejections this season.  But here's what you need to know about the dick.  Joe West, who I find to be a bit of a pain in the ass umpire is 5th all time in games umpired.  Not surprisingly, he's 5th all time in players ejected.  The ratio SHOULD average out when we're talking about literally thousands of games, right?

The dick is 62 in games umped. He's 28th in ejections. More than a little disproportionate.

FINALLY.....

I'll go all hockey here and if I were to pick 3 stars, this one is home grown for me.

1.  Ryan Goins (Bob Marley, Redemption Song playing in the background), after the game 2 bull shit, he fields flawlessly (despite not taking a force at 2nd when it was an easier play, anyone else see that?) goes 2/4, scores twice and drives in 3.  Fantastic night.

2.  Kevin Pillar (Pink Floyd, The Wall playing), Nothing against anyone else, but he is starting to look like a series MVP is the Jays can pull this out.  1/4 with 2 runs and an RBI and two stellar catches (again) in Center Field, the second of which broke the wall.

3.  Marcus Stroman (Beatles, HELP! playing).  Stroman's last 3 starts have progressively been "the most important starts of his career and the kid continues to deliver.  6 1/3 innings.  Four runs, all earned and 11 hits.  This is a BS line.

The Jays can come back and win this thing.  But the defense NEEDS to improve.

4 comments:

Beech said...

Doug, can you please take a couple weeks off work so we can have a blog after every game??? lol

Danny said...

4th star. Donaldson. He's coming around (hopefully)

G.Heisz said...

This team will be the death of me. Hopefully it means I'm dying happy as they win the World Series! Thanks for the great read, as usual, DD.

G.Heisz said...

I know, right??? He's letting us down.