Will Smith giving up 3 hits in the 9th inning is not going to impact Verlnders bid for a Cy Young at all. "Gee...I was going to vote for Verlander, but Will Smith gave up 3 hits in the 9th inning"
Yea. In the grand scheme it was meaningless other than JV getting closer to that cy young. We were playing for nothing. But Phillies flirted with no hitting us last night. Would have been satisfying to hang one on them tonight. But bigger fish to fry. Wrap this guys in bubble wrap. Enjoy the bye. Line up our aces and take advantage of weary arms in thr ALDS.
A no-hitter does NOTHING for JV’s CY Young. He is already winning it. Big picture here. Playoffs, not a combined no-hitter against a hung over team.
Yeah, just disappointing Dusty ran out Smith. Other options available. In the grand scheme of things, after calming down, I'll take a WS ring.
I was surprised about it as well. However, no better way to see how he handles high leverage situations right before the playoffs than that. I thought he failed but then proceeded to strike out the last 3 batters with the bases loaded once he settled down,
The Braves won 11 playoff games last year. Will Smith was on the mound in the last inning of all 11 games. I am pretty confident that he knows how to mentally and emotionally handle high leverage situations.
Will Smith had an extraordinary season last year for the Braves. He led the league with 60 games finished. He saved 37 games. He had 6 saves in the postseason and a 0.00 ERA en route to winning the World Series (sadly). That's amazing. The Braves must not have been sold on the repeatability of these accomplishments, since they went out and got Kenley Jansen in the offseason. I have no problem with the Astros trading their 7th starter to try to find out if they can recreate the 2021 spark with Will Smith. At the same time, Smith's body language just looks off and he appears to lack confidence.
Hah, Matt's hanging out on this board somewhere! Good material here. Big time Dusty apologist anyway.
Who knows what is going through Dusty's head, but I could see a scenario where Dusty is on the fence about whether or not Will Smith should be used in high leverage playoffs situations (torn from his performance in the playoffs last year versus how he has looked this year) and wanted to take the opportunity to put him in a high leverage situation now to test him. With the division and best AL record locked up days ago, this scenario is the closest we would get to a playoff type pressure prior to the actual playoffs, so maybe he threw Smith out there to see what he would do? Kind of mixed results, so I couldn't begin to guess at what conclusions he would have drawn, but I could see that being a reason for the choice of who to pitch the 9th.
The seeding is dumb. I'd much rather be the 2 seed on both sides of the bracket. Much less afraid of Cleveland and STL than Toronto and NYMs
The seeding is no different than what it normally is in a format of top 8. the top 2 just have a bye The thing that comes into play here is the division winner gets one of the top seeds. that's where it becomes dumb instead of record. Record would have switched Toronto/Clev as well as Mets/Stl. that will probably get addressed at some point down the line
The Astros pitching staff really has been absurdly good this season. Since August 1, there is only one Astros pitcher (Bielak ) with an xwOBA over .320. Over that same span nearly a third of the league have entire staffs whose average xwOBA greater than 0.320.
