Carpenter had a pretty bad September, and he isn't 100%. I'll take Pettitte over him ANY day of the week. Pettitte wins playoff games in his sleep! Bring on Carpenter on 3 days rest!!!
Unless I've missed something, LaRussa hasn't announced, or even speculated on, his starters past Carpenter in Game 1. All we do know is Pettitte, Oswalt & Clemens are scheduled to pitch 6 of the possible 7 games, with Backe going at home in Game 4, none on short rest. This beats the hell out of how the rotation stacked up last year, with Munro & Backe starting 2 games each in the LCS.
From Yahoo Sports: Wed, Oct 12 8:05 pm EDT A. Pettitte vs. C. Carpenter Thu, Oct 13 8:05 pm EDT R. Oswalt vs. M. Mulder Sat, Oct 15 4:05 pm EDT M. Morris vs. R. Clemens Sun, Oct 16 4:05 pm EDT C. Carpenter vs. B. Backe Mon, Oct 17 8:05 pm EDT M. Mulder vs. A. Pettitte Wed, Oct 19 4:05 pm EDT R. Oswalt vs. M. Morris Thu, Oct 20 8:05 pm EDT R. Clemens vs. C. Carpenter I'll take that with a grain of salt, since it's not coming straight from the genius's mouth. However, LaRussa has been known to "ride his stud" in the postseason. See: Stewart, Dave.
hmm Carpenter going 3 times eh? looks like we'll show him what the astros are all ABOOT. BRING IT! STROS in 6!
Did you know: Biggio and Bagwell, previously known for postseason futility, are hitting a combined .292 with four homers and 15 RBI in Houston's 16 playoff games the last two years. Astros in 7... Revenge is a dish best served cold (just don't wear those alternate road jerseys anymore, we lost Game 7 against the Cards last year and Game 2 against the Braves this year wearing those!!!).
Here is a little article about pitchers going on 3-days rest that I found interesting. http://www.baseballthinkfactory.org/files/main/article/danwerr_2003-10-27_0 Digging in the AstroDirt: October 27, 2003 by Dan Werr The World Series is over, the Florida Marlins triumphant. Again. And they owe much of the credit for their Game 6 victory to pitcher Josh Beckett, who not only pitched a complete game shutout, but did it with just . . . Three Days' Rest . . . Three days' rest. It's like having twenty minutes to change planes at the airport. Like swimming a half hour after eating. It turns good pitchers into crying, frightened children, at the mercy of cold-blooded hitting monsters. I once saw a kids' tee-ball game where the batting tee was working on three days' rest. Within moments, horrified spectators fled screaming from the spectacle of unremitting offense. When crews arrived the next day to bring order to the site, they found deeply rutted basepaths from the sheer number of baserunners. They found half-inning scores so large that all the parentheses in the world couldn't cram them into a line score. They found the fielders cowering behind the equipment shed, gloves thrown away--as peace offerings? Indications of surrender? And they found the tee, broken, misused, destroyed, worthless; they found it lying on top of home plate, shattered, in piles of its own plastic dust--they found pieces as far away as second base. Second base! All for working on three days' rest. Isn't that right? Isn't short rest a harbinger of pitching mayhem, a losing proposition, an open invitation to disaster? Well, to find out for sure, we need to study the issue a little further. The best way to do this is to observe two groups of pitchers. One group will pitch on three days' rest, and the other group will pitch while they are blindfolded, hogtied, and being attacked by the evil flying monkey creatures from "The Wizard of Oz." And as I demonically cackle, "Fly, my pretties, fly!", I then carefully observe whether these two groups of pitchers have similar results, which would prove conclusively that pitchers pitching on three days' rest might as well be tied up and assaulted by fictional airborne simian monsters such as Don Zimmer or Bill Seitz. However, this methodology is prohibitively expensive. So instead, I have looked at all the pitchers who have thrown in the postseason on three days' rest since 1995, when the current playoff format started. Specifically, I have taken some specific steps that I believe help interpret the data in the best way possible. I looked at pitchers who pitched in the postseason or one-game playoffs, and for every pitcher who pitched on three days' rest, I noted how they did in that start and how they did in the prior start. This is a useful comparison to make because it guarantees that we are control for pitcher quality and era--specifically, if we aggregate the data, we know that each start by a pitcher on three days' rest is matched in the control group by a start by that same pitcher in the same year on full rest, almost always against the same offense. No starts were included on three days' rest if the prior start had also been on three days' rest, but this appears to have only happened once, with Curt Schilling in the 2001 World Series. Relief appearances were ignored, as were starts on two days' rest. There are several ways to look at this data. Aggregate ERA is one, but that can be heavily affected by a few very bad starts. Aggregate peripherals are another, but those are hard to transform into a clear idea of performance. The best way, in my opinion, is to look at game scores, and not just the average game score, but the distribution of game scores, because the most important information is how often pitchers do well and how often they do poorly. To calculate a pitcher's game score, begin with fifty points. Add two points for each inning completed after the fourth, one point for each out recorded, and one point for each strikeout. Subtract four points for each earned run, two points for each unearned run, two points per hit, and one point for each walk. The result is the game score. A game score of 50 is considered average, 100 would be phenomenal, and zero would be abysmal. A game score of 70 is very good and 30 is pretty bad. Game scores are not perfect, but they are a handy way to rate individual starts, and there won't be a case where a particularly bad start has a good game score. I found 53 pitchers who worked on three days' rest in the playoffs from 1995 to 2003. Their aggregate ERA in the prior start (on full rest) was 3.84. Their aggregate ERA in the start on three days' rest was 4.71. That doesn't look very good. The average game score of full rest was 54.08; on short rest it was 49.04. That difference doesn't seem as significant. But it's the distribution of game scores that really counts. Of 53 starts, pitchers on full rest had a game score of 50 or higher 31 times, and lower than 50 22 times. On short rest, pitchers had game scores of 50 or higher 30 times, lower 23 times. Here's the full distribution of game scores: Game Score Full Rest Short Rest 100+ 0 0 90-99 1 0 80-89 2 2 70-79 10 6 60-69 10 8 50-59 8 14 40-49 10 8 30-39 7 4 20-29 4 5 10-19 1 5 0-9 0 1 Less than 0 0 0 Pitchers on short rest appear a little less likely to be great, a little more likely to be average, and more likely to be terrible. However, the difference does not appear to be very large. The number of good starts made on short rest is very close to the number made on full rest (31 starts (58%) 50 or higher on full rest, 30 (57%) on short rest; 41 starts (77%) 40 or higher on full rest, 38 (72%) on short rest). Interestingly, pitchers on three days' rest had one stretch of terror from 1999-2000. During that time, eight pitchers started on three days' rest, and none lasted longer than five innings or allowed fewer than four earned runs. Three allowed at least seven runs, and three lasted one inning or less. Outside of the two-year stretch of three-day terror, pitchers on full rest had an aggregate ERA of 4.00; pitchers on three days' rest had an aggregate ERA of 3.51. The average game scores were effectively identical. However, there were 25 above average game scores on full rest and 30 on three days' rest. There's no reason to ignore those bad performances, but this shows how much a small number of bad starts can skew the aggregate numbers. All in all, it's probably not a terrible gamble to start a pitcher on three days' rest. The scary numbers that indicate otherwise are largely the product of a few spectacularly bad starts, and frequently go back just far enough to include the atrocious stretch that isn't typical of the results before or since. Each case can be evaluated on its own, of course, and performance does appear to suffer a little on shorter rest, but I see nothing in this data to indicate that the difference is at all large.
Exactly, yahoo's guessing, but it wouldn't surprise me given the success Carp's had against the Stros. Then again, trying to guess what TLR will do is a pretty futile exercise. If Mulder can't go in Game 2, Marquis, Suppan or Morris will. Who knows how it'll shake out? TLR's giving a press interview right now, damn espnnews cut away after about 3 questions to show more of the same highlights they've been showing all night & day. I'm in the middle of nowhere on a dialup connection, so I can't, but someone could probably listen to the whole thing on mlb.com in a little bit. I'd imagine LaRussa talked about it at some point. Some info on Mulder & the rotation here: http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/sp...E914A8BF52DA714286257097001A6141?OpenDocument and here: http://stlouis.cardinals.mlb.com/NA...t_id=1245399&vkey=news_stl&fext=.jsp&c_id=stl Nothing official on mlb.com yet.
sounds good. hope you're not missing your astros! maybe we can all hook up to watch a game if you get back in town.
I'm starting to think that their bullpen is going to be the key. They are without Al Reyes (injured/2.15 era - and their best reliever), Kiko Calero (traded to A's/He of the great slider), and Steve Kline (lost to Free Agency/LH Specialist). Julian Tavarez has been hit by the Stros all season (6.00 era). Ray King has not been himself. Finally, we have gotten to Isringhausen twice this season. If we can get to their bullpen, I think we have a helluva chance.
King won't be there Wednesday. I believe his father passed away. He's had a down year because his father was battling cancer.
Astros in 6. I was really going to pick the Cards, but man, this team has a better bullpen than last year and better starting rotation than last year, and we still took the cards to 7 games last year. Our offense may be worse, but at the end of the day, the bats are still as opportunistic as last years team. Maybe this Astros team will be like the 88 Dodgers. Not many big offensive names, but they got the job done.
Pettitte and Clemens were both better than Carpenter in the regular season and Oswalt was very close. Just because a group of writers decides he's the best pitcher doesn't actually make it the case.
