The Houston Astros and the Los Angeles Dodgers make an intriguing match-up for the World Series. The Astros have historically great hitting; the Dodgers have historically great pitching. They say pitching wins, and LA is the home team, so they ought to have an edge. They have a deep roster as well and are playing superb baseball right now. They kicked the crap out of two good teams, losing only one post-season game so far. I suppose my familiarity with the Dodgers makes them seem more formidable, I don't know the Astros as well, but they are obviously a great team and it should be a good contest. I expect Houston will rely on big starts from Dallas Keuchel and Justin Verlander, they don't seem to have the quality in their 'pen that LA does. But in a short series anyone can get hot and tip the scales. I'm rooting for the Astros to pull off the upset, no surprise there. They are listed at +120 or 6/5, with the Dodgers at -140 or 5/7. Enjoy!
--M.C.
16 comments:
They are the two best teams, with Washington and Cleveland not far behind. The dodgers do have the best team. Has anyone yet this year accused Altuve of Steroids? His tiny 5 ft, 5 inch frame looks seriously bulked up. Amazing how he can hit so many more homers than someone like Posey. Two of the largest land mass cities will go at it head to head. Let the games begin.
Ron Wotus to 3B, Hensley Meulens to bench coach.
This guy thinks Bam-Bam is being groomed as Bochy's replacement.
10 bucks sex Magic Johnson is a Trump supporter.
Sorry, that's "sez". Fucking generous Baltimore martinis.
Epic game in LA tonight. Glad Houston hung on to win.
It's been good to watch the Doggers lose. I hope this continues. Jose Altuve is my new favorite player. I wish my favorite was a Giant, but no.
Springer makes a dumb play in Center and gives the dodgers the lead. Looked like something Span would do, or Blanco in the past.
What happened to the great dodger pitching staff? They score 12 runs and lose 13-12. Jansen gets another loss. When you look at these games, you wonder how the dodger's pitchers threw so well in the national league.
Houston can really hit, esp the first five guys, and so can LA, they always have really disciplined PAs. The pitching staffs on both teams look gassed.
Remember the baseball adage, that "good pitching, always beats good hitting". You can throw that one out the window. Around August I posted an opinion about the dodgers and their reliance on relief pitching. Not sure if it was on this blog. But I mentioned the old Billy Martin burn out theory. Martin used to throw his pitchers into the ground, and try to build a big enough lead to get to the pennant. It worked sometimes, and sometimes the pitchers just fizzled out too soon. By August the bums had used their relievers for a very inordinate number of innings. Yet they were good, and continued to win games. They got a little tired armed for a few weeks and the dodgers struggled, but they already had a huge lead. Then the arms seemed to come back. The also had enough good arms in the minors to bring up and also acquired cingrani late in the season. But here comes the post season, and now into late October the Dodger arms seem to be losing a mile or two per hour on their pitches, and also losing some classical late movement on their pitches. When it comes to the world series, Kershaw "ain't" no Bumgarner, for that matter he "ain't" no Vogelsong either.
Astros led baseball in SLG% and also had the fewest strikeouts. They put the ball in play AND hit for power:
“I don’t want guys swinging at a pitch unless they can hit a homer,” said Dave Hudgens, the Astros’ hitting coach.
https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/the-absurdity-and-insanity-of-game-5-and-of-the-astros/
I failed to get the link to the quote attached.
'Astros led baseball in SLG% and also had the fewest strikeouts.'
I wonder whether that has ever happened before ... truly amazing!
Unfortunately, the Dodgers' lineup should be very good for years. But, I would truly enjoy a great performance & a win tonight by Verlander & the Astros.
Then, we can get to work on re-building our Team. I assume that finding some credible Relief Pitchers will be a big part of that exercise. Relief Pitchers can be so flaky. Houston's current formula (have 7 decent Starting Pitchers on the Roster) seems to have some promise, but I don't think that we can assemble that many Starting Pitchers.
I wonder if we'll see more experiments with the "tandem starter" approach. Seems like that might be fruitful.
Someone's thoughts.
https://www.vivaelbirdos.com/2017/10/31/16518934/cardinals-trade-rumors-san-francisco-giants-randal-grichuk-stephen-piscotty-jedd-gyorko
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