At the beginning, Kaat was awful, but got better. The best Costas to me was the pop up to Yuli that he called Moreland with the catch. And he kept pronouncing Gurriel like L'Oréal. Just with a G. Don't they have pronunciation guides?
Sox are 3rd in MLB in OPS against "ground ball pitchers". Pomerancz has totally shut the Stros down in his 2 starts this year. Gonna be a tough game. My butterflies have butterflies right now.
1st inning, Gattis at the plate he cries yard on a popup to shallow LF...then c.y.a. with "must have gotten it off the end of the bat"
Seems pretty odd that Costas/Kaat were only selected to broadcast that one game... but that's it for them for this post-season. Joe Davis and David Cone are calling the Astros game today, and will be the commentators for the rest of the series as long as Indians-Yankees is still going (Vasgersian-Smotlz gets all those games, including tonight's on MLBN).
I was always more worried about Pomeranz than Sale, strangely enough. I know you're going to say I'm crazy, but I'm more worried about Bauer than Kluber, too. There's something about power pitchers... we eat them up without a sweat. You just cannot sneak a first pitch fastball by this team. But if you throw a bunch of offspeed junk and breaking pitches, it exploits our aggressiveness in a negative way. That said, I think that DK will show up and show out today and we'll win a squeaker.
I agree we are better at attacking power pitchers than we are being patient vs off speed ones. But if we can be patient and make him throw strikes, then we are good to go. But if we fail to make the adjustment and swing often at pitches out of the zone, then today could be frustrating. This is how (IMO) opponents have adjusted to DK. They have learned to fight their nature to swing when it looks like its going to be a strike, knowing that most of his secondary stuff will fall out of the zone by the time it gets to the plate. This works especially well when the UMP isnt calling that low strike.
I'm worried about Chris Young. It was a blessing that he was off the roster. Now he's probably going to find the train tracks...I'm just hoping he rocks it just left of the pole
I saw Altuve's 3 HRs as the main (top-center) story on ESPN.com, MLB.com, USA Today Sports, CNN Sports.
I was delayed because of work and trying to avoid everything all day. I accidentally went to espn.com twice, and luckily it wasn't the main story. (Main story was the Pats--towards the end of the game, and then after the game) Also on Mike & Mike, I listened to their 1 hour "top stories" mashup of their 4 hours. They went over the main stories of the day, of which the Astros were 2nd (behind the Indians). After that, they spent time talking more deeply on segments. Long time on the Indians/Bauer/Francona, then long time on the Pats/Bucs with a couple of guests. When they wrapped with Smoltz, they started with the wild card games, then the Indians, then about 90 secs on the Astros (of Smoltz's 10 mins).
I find it interesting that the Red Sox pitching coach was making an excuse for Sale based on his huge workload (215 innings) and leading the league in innings pitched. How times have changed....the 215 innings is the lowest amount to ever lead the AL in a non-strike season.
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/...b-56-superstar-jose-altuve-may-now-be-its-mvp Gotta know that inside, he knows he's exorcising those playoff demons--and it's because he has held the KC series inside him for 2 full seasons until yesterday.
Demons are impossible for such a small sample size. Let's not mention anything bad happened... in fact, let's forget anything happened
You almost have to wonder if the Baseball Gods were looking after us. I am not a superstitious person, so talk of this kind is in jest, but if you told me before the season started that our guys would pitch great but wear down by the playoffs, and there was a way for me to do something about it, giving most of our staff time off over the summer would be a good answer. And as things have turned out, we got to playoff time with arguably everyone healthy and in good form (minus LMJ) with the added bonus of guys being somewhat fresh. Not saying I totally buy in on Sale's demise being PC oriented, but a month or two vacation over the summer couldn't have made it worse either.
