The city Atlanta is the biggest sport choke city in USA. Do you notice that team failed to win that Super Bowl with a 21 point lead? The same thing went to Bulldogs, they never beat Alabama even with a 10 point lead with a few minutes left for the game. I predict that this Bravos will choke just like their other sport teams, maybe there is genetic choke gene in that city, at least keep it in this year.
Astros in 4 or 5. The baseball Gods are on the Astros side because we know the Astros are the scapegoat's for what was leaguewide sign stealing.
This is our chance at redemption, and silence the rabid doubters and haters. I want this so bad for the fans and for the city of Houston.
has this team figured out how to hit charlie morton? because i'm genuinely concern facing against morton
Last year's offense is nothing compared to this years so I think they'll score some runs off of him. Morton has an ERA over 4 in the postseason against teams not named the Astros, so he's hittable and likely only going 4 or 5 innings.
Its amazing how expensive tickets are for the Braves home games vs. Astros. Starting at $1000 each for nosebleeds. Obviously three factors: 1) been 22 years 2) weekends make it easy to travel 3) potential for seeing a win spikes prices from games 4 onwards. I got two tickets for G2 for $400 each - happy to be there even if I have to take a lot of stairs. The airfare from NY to Htown was only $150 rt each.
We should win this series in 5 or 6, but it's baseball. Anything can happen. If we can at worst get 1 (preferably 2 if needed) wins in the Morton games, this series should be ours. Max Fried we should be solid against, and Ian Anderson's FIP is close to 4. Tyler Matzek has been dominant for them, but he has pitched in all but one game this postseason. AJ Minter is the only other tough one in their bullpen. The only glaring question marks I see for us are: 1. How will our top 3 starters fare? Framber with command is an ace and Urquidy aside from last start has been very consistent. Can Luis again give us what he did last start in this series? Braves will use a bullpen day for game 4 due to injuries with us having Jake probably up there. If he can just give us 5 - 6 IP of only 3 runs, we should be in good shape. 2. How much will the hole at the bottom of the lineup hurt us in NL games? It's going to be basically 2 almost certain outs each time with Maldy/Pitcher. Travis D'Arnaud isn't the best hitter, but he produces results. We cannot afford Correa to do awful this series. Altuve for the most part was also pretty bad last series aside from a massive homer in game 4. Tucker prior to his 3 run homer was not doing well after beasting vs the White Sox. 3. Can our defense be steady this series? In the games we were embarrassed in so far in the postseason aside from one of the Red Sox games, our defense had an implosion during the innings. Altuve specifically had some awful lapses where he botched inning ending double plays in both the White Sox series and the Red Sox series. In the White Sox meltdown inning with Yimi Garcia, he was just stuck with horrible defense/bad luck on our part. The 5 hits he gave up that inning were according to Statcast all very very low quality expected Batting Averages (under .300). Yordan in left during the NL games will be a bit worrying. While according to Outs Above Average, he was only a -2 in this regard. But he is going to be tested quite a bit since I noticed that a lot of the Braves hits have been to the left aside from Eddie Rosario.
The differences from last year's lineup add if you can think of more: Yordan is not sitting out with the knees. Yuli is having a renaissance. Tucker has taken 3 leaps forward. Carlitos is chasing a lifetime contract. What is always true: The moment will always find Altuve and dr. Smooth will be a professional professional.
