Face of cheating? Astros. Faces of the steroids Era? Bonds (Giants) Mcguire (Cardinals) Sosa (Cubs) Those smaller teams just can't stop cheating!
Spoiler Grab your burnt umber and fill in the blank space: the Phillies must have discovered that McCullers was tipping his pitches. Run with it if you like. But here’s what really happened at Citizens Bank Park Tuesday night: McCullers threw 82 percent of his pitches in the narrow range of 82 to 89 miles per hour. Eighty-two percent. McCullers can throw as hard as 96 miles per hour, but he uses his fastball like a demitasse spoon, which is to say only on special occasions. The Phillies knew this coming in. They could sit soft all night. With the Phillies adopting that approach, McCullers was never going to get them off balance. The best he could do was execute at a high level, which means breaking off nothing but nasty sliders, curves and changeups. But whenever he left his soft stuff in the strike zone—against a red-hot offense that’s cranked out seven runs per game while going 6–0 at home during the postseason—you watched Fireworks Night at the ballpark. “I got whooped,” McCullers said. “End of story ... This had nothing to do with tipping. I was out there. They beat me. They beat us.” Says Philadelphia hitting coach Kevin Long, “We went in with a good game plan and the guys did a great job executing it.” If the Phillies didn’t know exactly what was coming, they knew the narrow window of speed in which it was arriving. The pitches were too easy to time. The real anatomy of a disaster for McCullers begins with the first at-bat of the game: a walk to Kyle Schwarber in which McCullers threw him six pitches, all of them breaking pitches between 83 and 85 mph. On Oct. 3, Schwarber had homered off a first-pitch fastball from McCullers. There was no way McCullers was going to throw Schwarber another fastball—and Schwarber knew it. He took all six pitches for his walk, never off balance. The Phillies knew that McCullers had thrown only one fastball to a lefthanded hitter all postseason. The Schwarber home run was one of only 29 fastballs McCullers threw to lefties all regular season. They eliminated the fastball to lefties. There was something else the Phillies noticed in that walk to Schwarber. “It was either after the first or second pitch,” Castellanos says. “He looked down at his hand or his fingernail like something was wrong. We saw it. He didn’t look comfortable. Everybody noticed.” After he crossed the plate, Harper celebrated with Castellanos. Then he pulled Castellanos close and told him something. Was it about tipping? “He told me, ‘This is your time now. It’s your spotlight now,” Castellanos says. “That’s Bryce. He’s a great teammate.” When Harper returned to the dugout, he called over Alec Bohm, the on-deck hitter behind Castellanos. Did he say something about tipping? “No,” Harper says. “I can’t even remember exactly what it was. Something about having a good at-bat. We talk all the time.” Bohm led off the second inning. He was sitting on a first-pitch fastball. Why? According to a Phillies source, the team noticed that in the ninth inning of Game 2, after Astros closer Ryan Pressly gave up a double to Bohm on a 1–1 curveball, catcher Martin Maldonado shook his head in disgust. The Phillies understood that head shake to be a sign that the curveball was a mistake. With that last at-bat in mind, Bohm sat on a fastball and got it. He smashed it out of the ballpark for home run No. 2. The Phillies are swinging it. Their lineup is far deeper than the Houston lineup. They are playing with supreme confidence in a madhouse of a ballpark. Such is their swagger that they consider a pitcher in trouble against them just on the sight of the guy checking his fingernail after a pitch. You are not beating them by throwing 82% of your pitches around the same speed. https://theathletic.com/3754599/2022/11/02/world-series-astros-mccullers-tipping-pitches/ It’s not October baseball without a conspiracy theory electrifying social media. Framber Valdez’s hand. Martín Maldonado’s bat. And Tuesday night at Philadelphia’s deafening Citizens Bank Park, Lance McCullers Jr.’s supposed tipping of pitches. Nothing can be ruled out. Often we do not learn the truth about certain games until months and even years after they happen. But the much more persuasive explanation for McCullers’ disintegration in Game 3 is that he failed to properly locate his pitches against a team that knew exactly how to prepare for him. Hence the Phillies’ five homers off McCullers. Hence, Phillies 7, Astros 0. Here are the key facts, and they have nothing to do with the position of McCullers’ hands or the height of his leg kick. During the regular season, McCullers threw only 29 fastballs to left-handed hitters. In his two previous postseason starts, he threw only one. And Tuesday night, he threw only one again, to Bryson Stott. Such an approach is nothing new for McCullers, who in 2017 unfurled 24 straight curveballs to finish the Yankees in Game 7 of the American League Championship Series. Normally the right-hander’s breaking stuff is quite effective even against opposite-side hitters; left-handed hitters during the regular season and in his two postseason starts batted only .170 against him. Lest anyone forget, he also throttled the Phillies on Oct. 3, holding them to one run in six innings the night they clinched their wild-card berth with a 3-0 victory. Tuesday night was different. McCullers repeatedly missed locations. And the Phillies, bless their slugging, No. 6-seed hearts, were laying in wait. Of McCuller’s 78 pitches, Statcast identified only 20 — 14 sinkers and six cutters — as fastballs. The Phillies effectively locked in on his pitches in the 82 to 88 mph range, his sliders, changeups and knuckle curves. And when McCullers repeatedly left balls in the zone, well, the results were almost predictable. McCullers, turning more to his cutter and changeup, recovered from the home runs by Harper, Bohm and Brandon Marsh in the first two innings to retire eight straight hitters. But in the fifth, the Phillies erupted against him again with back-to-back shots by Kyle Schwarber and Rhys Hoskins. Before the game, several Phillies recalled Schwarber’s leadoff homer off a first-pitch fastball from McCullers on Oct. 3, joking the left fielder wouldn’t see a fastball all night. “He wasn’t going to throw me one,” Schwarber said. And McCullers didn’t. Afterward, the Phillies talked about how Bohm knew to expect a fastball in his first at-bat, remembering that in Game 2, Maldonado expressed visible frustration after Bohm hit a ninth-inning double off a Ryan Pressley curve. Sure enough, McCullers threw Bohm a first-pitch sinker. Sure enough, Bohm hit it out. That’s intelligent baseball from an intelligent team. For all the intrigue about what Harper said to Bohm in the on-deck circle, such conversations are not unusual. Maybe Harper was reminding Bohm to hunt the fastball. Maybe he was simply offering him encouragement. It wasn’t necessarily an a-ha moment. The Phillies knew McCullers wanted to throw his slider. Early on, they detected weakness in his body language. And then, in their lion’s den of a ballpark, they pounced. “From the first couple of pitches against Schwarber, he immediately started flicking, looking at his nail,” Castellanos said. “It’s hard to play here in Philly, man. We could all see that he was iffy from the start of the game. We, as a group, sensed that, and we didn’t let our foot off the gas.” Hold your conspiracy theories: Tipping most likely was not the reason for this whipping. Sometimes, a pitcher just fails to execute. Sometimes, a team just gets beat.
One win at a time Win tonight and series becomes best of 3 with 2 potential games at MMP Lets go fellas
Doesn't matter who pitched last night, you're not winning with 0 runs. I feel slightly better about tonight's game but I'm not sure beyond that.
Agreed. Javier wouldn't have gotten lit up, but he would've been wasted on a night the Astros 1-5 hitters looked completely disengaged. Hopefully the team was sufficiently embarrassed last night to the point where they actually show up this evening.
On the Phillies side, it looked like the home run derby at the All Star game. On the Astro's side, it looked like an exhibition game played by the Little Sisters of the Poor. What a listless, uninspired, and pathetic performance! Are the Astros saving their worse games for the World Series? So far, Verlander and McCullers have set WS records for incompetence. Our hitters are swinging at pitches in the dirt, and look emotionless. Losing is understandable, but stinking up the place is not.
I think that's what frustrated me the most. Lance getting lit up was bad enough, but I'm still having trouble processing that there were zero mound visits from Dusty, Miller, or Maldy over 4 1/3 innings. It's like the entire team(save for the bullpen and a few hitters at the bottom of the order) decided to take the night off.
Tipping or not the Phillies figured out LMJ so he probably shouldn't go out there again unless we're out of a pitchers in an extra inning game. Hopefully next season he can make some changes and come back but if the Phillies can do it everyone else can.
I really believe the Astros Players don't like Lance McCullers after maybe wanting to be the Game 3 Starter and wanting Game 7 Just Selfish on Lance part, everyone knows Christian Javier is a better pitcher than Lance. Christian now is put in a pressure situation because of Lance being selfish. Lance will always be a thrower not a pitcher. How many styles of pitching has he tried, 3 styles. Keep throwing that slider, that will injure your arm easily.
He could've yelled what pitches they were. If it's a flat 85 MPH nothingburger over the middle of the plate, it's going to get crushed by even Myles Straw. I've been a Dusty supporter but this is equally on him and Lance. It was clear early that he didn't have it and he should've been pulled in the 2nd after the Bohm hr. Why wasn't the pitching coach going out there at all? Granted, he could've only given up one hr and we still would've lost since the offense was complete s***. But I'm still confident this team has the fortitude to get right back in it tonight. I know it's not technically a must-win scenario but it is a must-win at all costs scenario. I think we will again hit Nola early and hard. No chance our 1-5 goes 1/18 again and Christian Javier becomes a star tonight.
Do or die today. If we lose, yea sure mathematically we could win three straight. Psychologically after seeing the lack of fight in our offense last night we are not. So today is a must win. Today is a must score first day in my opinion. Would be nice to hang 6 or 7 on them and let them feel the gut punch. Right now they feel like they can just take it out and slap us across the face with it. Right now they are right. COME ON ASTROS. GO FIGHT TONIGHT LIKE YOU CARE!!
The hitters were their normal selves. They were listless, flat, and non competitive. We have seen them like that so many times. Our hitters, for some reason, collectively go back into their turtle shells in the world series. Happened against Washington, atlanta and now philly. Also happened in the ALCS that we lost to Tampa and also Boston in 2018. It also happens frequently in the regular season.
No I am not a casual fan. The man’s bat speed and foot speed have definitely taken a turn. look, Altuve at 70 percent of what he was is stil better than most MLB players. However, when you are depending on him as a key source of power, it can cause problems. BTW, I still think we win this. Just a feeling I have.
