Our pitching will decide our fate this postseason. We need some pitchers to get hot. The good news is that McCullers, Framber, Urquidy, and of course Greinke all have successful postseason experience. We don't have dominant pitchers like Cole/Verlander (even though we are paying Verlander), which is a vulnerability. Our hitting is definitely World Series-winning caliber. Pitching needs to hit a hot streak at the right time. I regret that we didn't go after a front line pitcher at the deadline.
Exactly. Home field and matchups matter. That being said... any of our six can throw near perfection for 5 innings... but any of our six can also give up 5 runs in 2 innings.
Opposition and scenarios would change all this, but my guess would be: 1/5: McCullers 1-5, Stanek 7, Graveman 8, Pressly 9 2/6: Greinke 1-3, Garcia 4-7, Javier 8, Maton 9 3: Urquidy 1-4, Odorizzi 5-7, Graveman 8, Pressly 9 4: Valdez 1-5, Javier 6-7, Y Garcia 8, Stanek 9 7: Greinke 1-3, Garcia 4-6, Graveman 7, McCullers 8, Pressly 9 With Raley available as the lefty out of the pen. Extra inning games in the playoffs would be very bad for the Astros.
There is very little doubt they will be playing the White Sox first and odds are we will have home field advantage. So I would see it playing out like this. McCullers Valdez Greinke Urquidy McCullers Garcia home/road splits are bad. That is why I think he is bullpen. I don’t think you take McCullers/Valdez out of the 1-2 spots and given Garcia’s poor road showing I think that makes it difficult for him in the divisional series. If we make it to the Championship series and it is TB then you could it gets difficult and depends on rest days going into the round. It might mean Garcia makes his way back into a start, maybe game three.
This from The Athletic. Neither Greinke nor Urquidy are particularly good matchups for the White Sox, the Astros’ likely ALDS opponent, because they have reverse platoon splits and the White Sox have a right-handed-dominant lineup. Tim Anderson, José Abreu, Eloy Jimenez and Luis Robert all bat from the right side. Yasmani Grandal and Yoán Moncada are switch-hitters. The splits in Greinke’s case are especially pronounced. Right-handed hitters have a .830 OPS against him and account for 22 of the 28 home runs he’s allowed while left-handed hitters have only a .546 OPS against him. “It got a little bit better when my slider was doing good for a while. It’s been bad again the last two games especially,” Greinke said after Tuesday’s start, in which he allowed seven earned runs in five innings against the Rangers. “Righties just hit me good. I can’t get any free strikes against righties. Every time I throw a strike, it’s like a swing pitch. Against lefties I throw just a fastball away and get a lot of taken strikes or an outside curveball and it gets taken a lot. But righties, I don’t get any taken strikes. So if I’m not getting ‘em to swing out of the zone, it’s tough for me to get ‘em out.” Greinke’s best pitch is his changeup, which plays best against lefties. If he can rediscover the good version of his slider before the playoffs, he should be better able to neutralize righties than he has lately. But the dwindling schedule puts him in line for only three more starts in the regular season. Those performances will be telling.
This year will be different in that in past years, we had 2 or 3 dominate starters that we would throw out there without regards to matchups and or who the opponent was. This year, the matchup/opponent means a lot more. I don't think we can even begin to calculate our playoff starters until the regular season is done.
If TB, CWS, NYY, Tor, Boston, Oak, Seattle, or NL team with or without Homefield Advantage: Framber LMJ Garcia Greinke Personally, I'd swap Urquidy and Greinke, but don't expect that to happen.
I don’t see a scenario where Greinke is not in the rotation, but his last two games do not inspire confidence. They were both against the same team and he had some bad luck, but I’d feel a lot better if his next outings are more inline with the rest of the season.
I wonder if the Astros limited their starters innings to 3/4 in the playoff, if they could shorten the rotation down to three. It sure would be nice to see McCullers be able to pitch games 1-4-7, old school. McCullers, Javier Urquidy, Garcia Valdez, Odorizzi and having Greinke pitch if the game goes to complete ****.
The last two games are the scenario. This is the end of the season. Pitchers do get dead arms. There might be zero upside of having Greinke pitch at all, until the playoffs ... and then with an extremely short leash.
Zach is just setting guys up . He will Throw a devastating change up to righties . He’s pretending he doesn’t know what he’s gonna do . dude has like 10 pitches .
For a month I’ve been thinking it shouldn’t be Greinke. I just don’t see it. And I say that as a guy that loves the entire Greinke experience. He isn’t one of our 7 best pitchers. He shouldn’t pitch any important innings outside of mop up work against the White Sox.
