FanHouse NLCS

So apparently there's some kind of debate happening at Hofstra tonight? Whatever. I'm all for being politically aware, but I'm guessing you could splice together footage from the first two debates and end up with the same result: "Change! ... Maverick! ... Change! ... Maverick!"

In the meantime, it's a freaking elimination game in the NLCS! Can Cole Hamels and the Phillies shut the door? Or will Chad Billingsley save the day for the Dodgers? Check back here in a few minutes and join us as we find out!

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. Thus far, we've accurately predicted six of the eight advantages in starting pitching based upon the stats.

Well, we are here ... the Dodgers' proverbial backs are against the wall, and the pitching matchup doesn't appear to bode well for them. Chad Billingsley is pitted against the Phils' ace, Cole Hamels. Let's see if the numbers bear out that knee-jerk reaction.

Chad Billingsley

Personally - We've covered his personal success from this past season already, and he provided us with a bad outing against the Phillies in his last time out. He didn't last through the third inning, giving up eight hits, seven earned runs, and walking three. He did strike out five batters, but he obviously wasn't fooling the majority of the Philadelphia batting order.

Home Splits - He's a better pitcher at home. Not as much better as the record shows (10-4 at home and 6-6 on the road), because the ERA difference isn't huge. He sported a 2.95 ERA at home this year, as opposed to 3.33 on the road. He does have much better control at home (112/35 K/BB as opposed to 89/45 on the road in nearly identical innings pitched), so we'll see if he can be effective within the strike zone tonight.

Once his Yankee bullpens moved beyond the push-button nature of the late-90s, Joe Torre always struggled to find the right combination of pitchers to get his team through games. He'd burn out guys he liked while letting others die on the vine from disuse, causing his usual placidity to take on a deer in the headlights look. Last night's 7-5 loss to the Phillies offered evidence that the move to Los Angeles hasn't cleared him of this problem.

I thought he pulled Derek Lowe too soon. 74 pitches, even on short rest, isn't a ton and it's not like the game was being played on June 27. He compounded that error by burning through three pitchers, two of them lefties, to get out of the sixth inning before finally handing the ball to Hong-Chih Kuo for a lights out seventh. Kuo stayed in to start the eighth, begging the question of why Torre didn't go to him in the sixth if he was willing to keep him in the game for more than three outs.

Asking your bullpen to come up with 12 outs is never going to be easy, but Torre didn't put his team in the best position to pull it off. All the mixing and matching left Torre without a lefty to counter the move to Matt Stairs in the eighth and, well, we know how that turned out.

What does a team do when they've become mired in a 3-1 series hole? Losing Game 4 of the NLCS in heartbreaking fashion tonight means that the Dodgers can't lose again if they're planning on going to the World Series. There's plenty of second-guessing to go around after their loss last night, but none of that matters a whole lot right now. The Dodgers need to be focused winning Game 5. Pointing fingers for Game 4's loss is only going to make winning Game 5 that much harder.

In all honesty, I think that Matt Stairs' pinch-hit homer last night probably ended the Dodgers' season for all intents and purposes. The turned a 5-3 lead and what seemed like a fairly easy win into a 7-5 deficit in the blink of an eye. In order to bounce back from that, they need a good start from Chad Billingsley, who was rocked in Game 2, in Game 5. That seems like a tall enough task, but after them they'll have Hiroki Kuroda on the road in Game 6 and Derek Lowe, who's been less than stellar in this series, on short rest again on the road in Game 7. That's not a great lineup for a team with no margin of error.

And yet, I don't really feel like the Dodgers have been overwhelmed in this series. Game 1 was very close and Game 4 was very close, while Games 2 and 3 were blowouts in opposite directions. In some ways, it feels like all losing last night did was narrow the Dodgers' focus. They don't need three wins; they need one win. The problem they now face s that even if they play a perfect game, the Phillies can beat them. In the wake of their heartbreaking loss last night, that's no longer something they can afford.

I think it's pretty safe to say that tonight's Game 4 could potentially be the swing game in this year's National League Championship Series. If the Phillies win, they've got a huge 3-1 lead with Cole Hamels and two games in Citizen Bell, where they haven't lost to the Dodgers this year, looming. If the Dodgers win, the floodgates are officially open and things are moving in the wrong direction for the Phils.

The Dodgers are sending Derek Lowe out to the mound on short rest tonight, and it's a situation he's certainly been in before, pitching on short rest in the 2004 ALCS with the Red Sox. There's even some thought (or at least hope among Dodger fans) that the sinkerballer will be better on short rest. Joe Blanton takes the mound for the Phillies. He had a middling regular season, but came up very big in closing out the Brewers in the division series. Join me and my FanHouse friends after the jump as we break down the biggest National League game of the season to this point.

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.

In what is sure to be a high-intensity game -- even higher than usual playoff games following the fracas from last night -- the Dodgers come in with the momentum and home-field advantage. Joe Blanton and Derek Lowe get the call, so let's size 'em up.

Derek Lowe

Personally - We already examined Lowe before Game 1 of this series, but tonight he comes off three days rest. The numbers don't look great. He only started once on short rest this season, and he was crushed in five innings. The final tally was seven earned runs on ten hits. Last time around Lowe didn't have a bad outing, but it wasn't great either. He dealt for five innings and then fell apart with two quick swings of the bat in the sixth.

Home Splits - Lowe is stellar at home. His ERA is more than two runs better within the confines of Dodger Stadium at 2.30 and the home WHIP is a minuscule 0.93.

You're not going to see benches clear in the playoffs very often. So when you do, you should appreciate it and enjoy it ... as long as nobody gets hurt. And nobody got hurt in tonight's bench-clearer during Game 3 of the NLCS. But some people did get nasty after Shane Victorino found a pitch come close to his head courtesy of Hiroki Kuroda, seemingly in retaliation for some brushbacks in Game 2 and earlier in Game 3 against Manny Ramirez and Russell Martin.

"Someone was bound to get hit. The situation called for it. Just don't throw at my head," Victorino explained after the game.

Dodgers third base coach Larry Bowa and Phillies first base coach Davey Lopes appeared to be two of the angriest participants in the near-scuffle, yelling at each other before the teams cleared the field. Ramirez also came in from left field and had to be restrained by teammates, manager Joe Torre and an umpire.

"It wasn't at his head, it was over his head," Martin said. "We're just trying to make a statement. It's part of the game. Manny looked a little more steamed than I was."

Our buddy Matt Snyder hit it square on the nose: Hiroki Kuroda's ability to win at home gave the Dodgers the clear advantage in Sunday night's Game 3. Turns out that he was more correct than he realized.

Not only did Kuroda pitch well with six innings of baseball enable the Dodgers to crawl back into the NLCS, his retaliation pitch which sailed over Shane Victorino's head and cleared the benches helped to not only bring the brushbacks to an end, but it won the everlasting respect of his teammates.

Of course, the five-run first inning also helped. But between Manny Ramirez having a Brett Myers pitch sail behind him in Game 2, and Russell Martin getting brushed back in the second inning on Sunday, the Dodgers needed somebody to stick up for his teammates and give the dugout a good feeling. Chad Billingsley didn't do it on Friday, so it was up to Kuroda to man up ... which he did. And no matter if you think he aimed at Victorino's head or over it (and whether he was right or wrong with his location), the pitch indeed had a purpose to help his hitters and help his team feel better about life. Mission accomplished.

What Game 3 means for the Dodgers is that not only do they not have to attempt what only three teams in professional sports have done, coming back from down 0-3 in a playoff series, but it means that the Dodgers have a renewed confidence, and a great chance to even this series on Monday with Derek Lowe going on three days rest against Joe Blanton and not Cole Hamels. After that is anyone's guess with Hamels going against Billingsley in Game 5, but I'm sure the Dodgers wouldn't mind worrying about that with a tied series.

It's just one loss, right? There's no need to press the panic button after one loss, right? That's probably the truth. The Phillies are still winning the NLCS two games to one, even after their 7-2 thumping at the hands of the Dodgers in Game 3 on Sunday night. They still only need two wins in the last four games to lock up their first World Series berth in 15 years. Still, the Phils shouldn't let that lead mask some serious concerns after three games.

Even with two hits from Ryan Howard last night, he and Jimmy Rollins still only have three combined on the series. Maybe Howard's starting to break out of his postseason slump, but I think I need to see more than a double and a single from the big man to be convinced he's back. And beyond that, Jamie Moyer and Brett Myers have now given up 11 earned runs in the last two starts for the Phillies. Their bullpen is good, but they're going to need either one of those two or Joe Blanton to step things up, because Cole Hamels can't win two games by himself with only one start left in the series.

All of this likely sounds like an incredibly negative outlook for a team that's still up 2-1 in the series. It probably is. But it was hard to not get the sense that the series was swinging around significantly between the beating the Dodgers laid on Moyer and the brawl that took place after Shane Victorino watched a Hiroki Kuroda fastball sail over his head. They say that momentum is only as good as your next starter, so it's up to Joe Blanton to be the Phillies' stopper. If he can do it, the Phillies should have the series on lock. If he can't, well, I don't think the Phillies want to think about that.

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.

The Dodgers face an uphill battle, after falling behind 2-0 against the Phillies. They'll look for some home cooking as a remedy.

Hiroki Kuroda

Personally - Japanese import Hiroki Kuroda ended his first season in the U.S. 9-10 with a 3.73 ERA in a little over 180 innings. He doesn't strike many out (116), but he doesn't walk many (42) either. Kuroda's game is keeping the ball down and letting his defense field ground balls all game. He, like many of his teammates, was hot down the stretch, compiling a 2.57 ERA in his last 11 starts. He comes off a solid outing against the Cubs, though you could argue giving up 8 baserunners in 6 1/3 innings, the way the Cubs were swinging it, isn't really that great.

Home Splits - Interesting here, in that his ERA is virtually the same on the road and at home ... but he's 6-2 at home with two shutouts as opposed to 3-8 on the road with none. His K/BB at home is considerably better (62/14 home, 54/28 road). He also allows less than a hit per inning at home and more than one per inning on the road. It's really odd that his ERA isn't much different, but the W/L category ends up actually reflecting his better command at home.