Posts tagged ALCS at FanHouse

Managing a major league game is tricky business. You play hunches, ignoring trends and numbers, and then fail. On the other hand, you can play the numbers and miss, because baseball is a game played by humans, not PECOTA. No matter, though, if your team fails due to substitutions or suicide squeezes, the blame isn't likely to be placed far from the manager.

Unfortunately for Joe Maddon, he pulled every string incorrectly with his bullpen in Game 5 and had to deal with the second guessers. Grant Balfour, Dan Wheeler, and J.P. Howell were touched up for nine hits, two home runs, eight earned runs, and two walks over the course of 2 2/3 innings to close out a devastating 8-7 loss. Predictably, Maddon was maligned for the manner in which he used the bullpen after the game.

In Game 7, however, every string pulled made him look like the proverbial puppet-master. He went through five pitchers in the eighth inning, and then let the kid (we've introduced you to David Price by now) close it out by getting the last four outs. Had they lost, Maddon would have bee skewered again.

Instead, in the post-game press conference, he was now the media's darling. He had found his redemption ... someone cue up the Bob Marley.

From the Windup is FanHouse's daily, extended look at a particular portion of America's pastime.

The World Series cannot possibly live up the ALCS.

Please don't misconstrue the above statement and assume I'm being negative. It's actually the complete opposite. That was one incredible ALCS. If you are a baseball fan, but a fan of neither the Rays nor the Phillies, you are bound to be disappointed by the World Series. Don't expect an encore. Obviously, I can't accurately predict the future and tell you who is going to win and in how many games. I can tell you that while this upcoming series excites me, I also realize it just can't reach the lofty bar which was set over the past week by the Boston Red Sox and Tampa Bay Rays.

Let's just revisit some of the drama we witnessed over the course of seven stellar games.

Last night, with a trip to the World Series on the line, Joe Maddon turned the game over to a fire-balling 23-year-old pitcher named David Price who pitched so little during for the Rays the regular season that he's still going to be considered a rookie next year. To many hardcore baseball fans, this move wasn't a big surprise at all. To everyone else, Maddon seemed insane for trusting an untested pitcher in such a big spot.

So. Who is David Price?

A little more than a year ago, Price was the first pick in the June draft of the then Tampa Bay Devil Rays. He was the consensus No. 1 after rolling to an 11-1 record with a silly 194 strikeouts in 133 1/3 innings in his senior year at Vanderbilt. He started his pro career this year in high Class A, where he made six dominant starts and was quickly promoted to AA. He did the same thing in Montgomery, making nine starts, averaging about a strikeout an inning with a 3.72 K/BB ratio.

His fast track to the big leagues seemed to slightly derail when he was promoted to AAA Durham at the end of this season. He only worked 18 innings in four starts and struggled with his control a bit. I went to see Price pitch at the end of August and wasn't that impressed, openly wondering if he could help the Rays at all down the stretch this year, even if he only worked out of the pen.

Which is why I'm not a scout.

My first thought after watching David Price strike out J.D. Drew with the bases loaded in the eighth inning last night was "Wow!" My second thought was, "Hey, Joe Maddon, why didn't you use Price in Game 5."

Beyond Matt Garza's phenomenal performance and Rocco Baldelli's inspiring comeback and the general WTF of the Tampa Bay Rays being the American League champions, the story of last night was the redemption of the Tampa bullpen after Thursday night's debacle. Moreover, it erased the idea that Maddon shouldn't be left alone with the chance to make decisions about what pitcher to use in what situation.

In Game 5 Maddon left Grant Balfour and Dan Wheeler in the game to face lefties in big spots and got burnt each time. There's something to be said for trusting your guys, there's something more to be said for winning. Given a second chance, Maddon managed his relief corps with aplomb. He summoned J.P. Howell to get David Ortiz and then called on Price for the biggest of all spots and got rewarded. It's hard to kill Maddon for not using a rookie with five games of big league experience in Game 5 but, damn, Price is clearly ready for prime time.

His ascension should continue in the World Series. Chase Utley and Ryan Howard should probably get on the horn to Vanderbilt for some extra tape on Price because they will be seeing a fair amount of him later this week.

When a team finds itself in the position that the Rays were in entering last night's Game 7, that is having lost two straight games to turn what could've been an easy series win into an epic struggle, the most important player on the field is the starting pitcher. Matt Garza's job last night was to keep the Rays in the game at all costs, to avoid a "Here we go again," moment. To say that he only accomplished that would be an understatement on par with "The eleventh year of the Rays' existence went much better than the first ten."

Garza turned in a gem of Beckett-esque proportions in Game 7 last night. He allowed a solo home run to Dustin Pedroia in the first inning, then no hits at all until Jason Bay's single in the seventh inning. He struck out nine Red Sox, mixing his rising fastball, a pitch that he placed perfectly all night, with his big curve and a nasty slider. He kept the whole Red Sox lineup off-balance all night and they didn't even threaten to score until the seventh.

I'm actually struggling to put in to words how good Garza was tonight. The Rays needed a big performance and he stepped up and gave them a huge one. This has to be what Andrew Friedman had in mind when he traded Delmon Young and other for a package including Garza and shortstop Jason Bartlett this winter. Even after the huge series that B.J. Upton and Evan Longoria had, it's hard to argue that anyone but Garza deserved the MVP award that he was given after the game.

The Rays and Red Sox have played 24 times this year, but those first 24 meetings will officially mean nothing when they take the field in Tampa tonight shortly after 8 pm EST (click here to follow along on the AOL Sports Scoreboard) for Game 7 of the American League Championship Series. Matt Garza and Jon Lester will be taking the hill for their respective squads as one of the most heated burgeoning rivalries in baseball will play itself out tonight.

Through six games, this series has had everything. The young Rays are growing up on a national stage, as they've been swatting home runs all series long and ran out to a 3-1 lead. The Red Sox fought back with one of the most memorable comebacks in playoff history in Game 5, then won Game 6 to set the stage for this ultimate showdown at Tropicana Field tonight. The Red Sox have all the momentum and their ace on the mound, but the Rays haven't backed down from any challenge the Sox have thrown their way all year.

How's this one going to play out? Join us for a live chat tonight starting at 7:45 pm EST while we see how it unfolds.

Personal history and numbers don't always guide on-field performance, but they can give us a quick insight into who carries the advantage -- if ever so slight -- into a particular game. Tale O' Tape breaks down the starting pitchers to find an edge.

It's on. Finally, we get to see a decisive game in the postseason, meaning that there were no series in the first round that reached Game 5, nor did the NLCS reach Game 7. It seems like they rarely run all the way anymore, doesn't it? So we, as baseball fans, need to enjoy this one. We already covered this matchup between Jon Lester and Matt Garza before Game 2. What we'll look at here are any differences and what new information we've learned in that matchup and since.

Matt Garza

Personally - The kid was nails in the hostile environment that is Fenway Park last time out. He worked six strong innings, only yielding one earned run while striking out five. The one issue was that he piled up 116 pitches, and only 63 of them were for strikes. He needs to keep pressure off the bullpen and work more efficient innings tonight.

Home Splits - He's a much better pitcher at home, if the regular season splits are any indication. His home ERA was 2.89. He only allowed five home runs this season at the Trop, as opposed to 14 on the road in a very similar amount of innings.

Unlike the Rays, I don't need to tell you that the Red Sox have a chance tonight. Everyone knows this team has a chance in Game 7. There are a number of places to start when discussing why the Red Sox can win this game tonight but I'm not starting with any "They have so much momentum!" voodoo. No, the best reason the Red Sox will win this game tonight is their starter: Jon Lester.

OK, so Lester got pounded in Game 3 against the Rays. But the Rays would've pounded the crap out of Lefty Grove in Game 3 with the way they were swinging the bats. Over the second half of the season and the ALDS, Lester was dominant. He destroyed the Rays this year during the regular season, holding them to just three earned runs over 18 innings in three starts.

On top of having Lester, the Sox have a huge psychological advantage right now. If the Rays get a lead and the Sox start to score, it's "Oh no, here we go again." If the Sox take the lead, it's "How are we ever coming back with the way these guys are playing?" Maybe you believe in momentum and maybe you don't, but I think there's a very real mental aspect to games like the one that's going down tonight.

As someone that picked the Rays (in seven!) before this series started, I'm struggling this afternoon to find a reason why they still have a chance today. Surely the chips are stacked against them. If given the choice, I'd take Jon Lester to start my Game 7 over Matt Garza, even knowing how Game 3 of this series played out. And with the Red Sox' historic win in Game 5 and their punctuation mark on that win with another in Game 6, it's just hard to see the Rays bouncing back tonight.

After rolling over these scenarios in my head all morning, it finally dawned on me that these things are exactly what give the Rays a chance tonight. They've spent all year as the underdog to the Red Sox, defying expectations to hold on against them and win the AL East, then doing it again in racing out to a 3-1 ALCS lead. Once they got that lead, they took on a new role; they became the overwhelming favorites.

They didn't handle that role well at all, but they're no longer the favorites. Most people have written them off almost entirely after their two straight losses and the Red Sox' recent history of playoff comebacks. In a way, the Rays might be able to feed off of their new/old role as underdog in this game tonight.

I was stuck in a bit of traffic on my way home tonight, listening to the start of Game 6 of the ALCS on the radio but excited to finally get home and settle in for an evening of baseball. Imagine my surprise, then, that I got home to find that baseball wasn't on TBS.

I checked FOX to be sure I wasn't wrong about the channel, then sat dumbfounded as an episode of "The Steve Harvey Show" unfurled before my eyes. I was about to call the cable company when, finally, a scroll appeared on the screen informing me that technical difficulties were keeping the game from the air and I stopped wondering what the hell was happening.

Look, I understand the vagaries of broadcasting. As Donald Rumsfeld once said, "Stuff happens." It's never happened to anyone else televising a playoff game, not that I can remember, but, hey, first time for everything. But how do you not affix a graphic to the screen letting people know that they haven't slipped into some awful netherworld where watching Steve Harvey is the national pastime?

It's really poor form by TBS as is refusing to discuss what happened with The Associated Press. I hope that right after MLB makes sure they don't need a hamster wheel to keep their equipment working, they tell them to be a little more transparent about the fact that they've screwed up. Between the incessant "Frank TV" commercials, Chip Caray and this massive snafu, I can't imagine many baseball fans are thrilled with the decision to give TBS a piece of the playoff pie until 2013.