Kershaw has yet to give up a sac fly this year. He gave up 1 last year. It's really easy to say just put it in play. He is extremely f**king good.
Gomez has been CLOSE this entire game. 1) 1st inning throw to home 2) 6th inning stealing home 3) 8th inning loooong foul SMGDH
Not sure if there's any data on it, but this team actually seems to do unusually well against good pitchers. The HR-or-bust mentality can produce results like yesterday's, where they beat Greinke with just 3 hits because they hit for power. Against bad pitchers, moving people over and trying to string together hits makes sense. Against a Kershaw or Greinke, though, the odds are against actually putting several hit together. So going for HRs and/or things like stealing home make a lot of sense in general.
Did you watch the World Series last year? Anytime the Royals or Giants had a leadoff walk or hit, they would make teams pay with speed and moving runners over. Manufacturing runs is what winning teams do. And the Astros will face nothing but the likes if Kershaw if they make the playoffs. It's especially important to manufacture runs against good pitching. This isn't a team that gets a lot of base hits, but if you can hit major league pitching you can learn to drop a bunt, even against Kershaw.
Why does Hinch insist on bringing in Sipp in close games? Qualls has earned being put in close games, Sipp has not. If he just wanted to have a lefty in there, Perez was the obvious choice.
