Columbus Day holds the pleasure of 12 hours of baseball, weather permitting. The Astros and Red Sox open the day at 1 PM EDT with Charlie Morton facing Rick Porcello. Morton makes is second career post-season start. In the 2013 NLDS, the Pirates were up two games to one on the Cardinals. Morton started game four, gave up two runs, and the Pirates lost 2-1 as Michael Wacha pitched an outstanding game. The Astros have to hope it’s not deja-vu all over again.
Morton upped his strikeout rate this season. It wasn’t his pitch selection that changed that much, it was his velocity. Throwing harder allowed him to up his use of the fastball, and likely made his off-speed pitches more effective. It may have just taken him a long time to find his velocity after Tommy John surgery and various other injuries:
Astros manager A.J. Hinch said Morton’s delivery is in sync and he’s pitching with minimal effort, giving him encouragement he’s found something in his delivery.
It held up for the season.
Porcello’s ERA jumped a run and a half from 2016. He allowed 40 more runs in twenty fewer innings. A good number of those came from the extra 15 home runs he allowed, but his hits allowed were way up as well. He appears to have abandoned his cutter in favor of more fastballs and sliders. If that’s true, it didn’t work well. The Astros were not fooled by him in June, as they scored seven runs against Procello in six innings. Houston knocked out ten hits, two of them home runs in that game.
Max Scherzer leads the Nationals against the Cubs and Jose Quintana in game three of the NLDS at 4 PM EDT. Scherzer pitched with mixed results at Wrigley in his career, making two excellent starts, one okay start, and a very poor one in 2016. He is coming off a minor hamstring injury that pushed him back to game three, so I suspect the Nationals will have him on a short leash, even though an injured Scherzer is probably better than most MLB pitchers.
This will be Scherzer’s 13th start and 15th apperance in the post-season, and the results are mixed but mostly good. He walked more batters that one would expect from him, but he’s facing much better hitters.
Quintana gave the Cubs the rotation boost they needed, going 7-3 in fourteen starts after the move north. His three-true outcomes with the Cubs were very good, but his ERA was hurt a bit by six of the nine home runs against him coming with men on base. He makes his first appearance in the post-season.
The Indians and Yankees try to square off in New York between the rain drops as Trevor Bauer tries to repeat his series opening performance, and Luis Severino tries to come back from a poor showing in the wild card game. The game is scheduled for 7 PM EDT. Bauer was devastating in game one of the series, walking one and striking out eight batters in 6 2/3 innings, allowing just two hits. He is pitching on short rest, however. The Workload Regularity Score allows us to pick out moments when Bauer deviated from normal use. All but one of those deviations involved long rest. His one start on short rest came this season on June 7th at Colorado. He faced seven batters in the previous game, allowing two hits but no runs (a rain delay forced him out). He came back on short rest to allow five hits, five walks and four runs in 3 1/3 innings.
Severino last just 1/3 of an inning in his first post-season start, giving up three runs on two home runs. He has pitched well against Cleveland in his brief career, 2-1 with a 2.49 ERA in four starts. They did hit three home runs against the last time they met on Aug. 28th.
Finally, the Dodgers and Diamondbacks start at 10 PM EDT with Yu Darvish facing Zack Greinike. Darvish made nine starts for the Dodgers, posting a 3.44 ERA. His walk and strikeout rates were great with Los Angeles, but he allowed seven home runs in just 49 2/3 innings. That’s also the story of Darvish’s post-season appearances. He walked one and struck out 11 in 11 2/3 innings, but four home runs allowed gave him a 5.40 ERA.
Greinke is 2-4 with a 4.46 ERA with the Diamondbacks against his former team, the Dodgers. He only allowed one run in each of his last two starts, however. He pitched great for the Dodgers, not so great for everyone else.
Enjoy!
from baseballmusings.com http://ift.tt/2xu6vzK
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