I dunno how hard I can 2nd guess that one. Carpenter had an 8th inning ERA of 1.57 (and not a small sample size for the year either) coming in.

On the other hand, you play 4 games & it's do-or-die time ... and your best pitcher ends up working only once in the entire series :(

I have no idea why Matheny didn't pitch Miller in game 2. :banghead:

To be honest, it's sort of like a cross between a large office building and an airport concourse. There's a hotel, a few high end restaurants, a food court with a bunch of lower end places, some shops, and offices.

On of the ground floor there is a large show room that has an example of every GM (Chevy, Cadillac, GMC) car and truck. You can get them, look around and the like. It's fun to walk through. There is a restaurant at the top that does have a nice view.

If you're in Detroit, it's worth stopping by.

Shedding some sarcastic tears for the Braves this morning.

Report: Braves Players Boycotted Chipper Jones's First Pitch

I'm really enjoying this whole "the entire internet hates the Braves" thing.

McCann seems like a crotchety sort of guy so I'm assuming he lead the charge here.

Here's to hoping the Red Sox can win and knock those stupid cowbells out of the playoffs.

With the bosox winning, at least one good thing happened in sports this week.

Between the cowbells and Joe Maddon's constant over-managing I hate Tampa Bay. Some NL team should pick him up so he can go double-switch and pitch 8 relievers every game to his heart's content.

Additional bonus from my perspective - game-tying run came from pinch hitting Xander Bogaerts for Stephen Drew against a lefty. Maybe Farrell is learning!

PS - I may regret saying this soon, but I'm also really excited to get away from TBS. Between their terrible camerawork, lack of replays, and their announcers saying multiple nonsensical things every game that make me question if they actually researched either team ("With Victorino and Ellsbury it's like the Red Sox have 3 centerfielders out there" (if we just ignore the LF) "All 3 Red Sox outfielders have great arms" (Ellsbury can't throw to 2nd base without one-hopping it) "After that walk, Xander Bogaerts is a threat to steal" (17 SB, 16 CS in 4 minor league seasons)) it can't happen fast enough.

Couldn't have happened to a more deserving bunch ;). Acting like "we enforce the unwritten rules" douches tends to get you well deserved hate. And its delicious.

The good news for Braves fans is that Arizona looks to be a strong contender for that crown next year Arizona Diamondbacks GM: 'It's going to be an eye for an eye' ArizonaSports.com

If Wainwright makes it through the 1st couple innings, the Cards win.

Correction: 8 relievers that the streaking Red Sox could only get 3 runs off of. It was a great strategy (considering we only really have 3 quality starting pitchers) that if we scored ourselves, would've set up a Game #5 with David Price. Which was what all that was about.

That's ok, TBS. You can admit that they missed a call. It would have just been a runner at 1st with 2 outs so it's not a huge turning point. But it was the wrong call.

SI

I'll stay away from getting in an argument about debating something was the right strategy or vice versa based on the result and not the process - for example in game 3 having Koji Uehara pitch to Jose Lobaton was the perfect strategy, even if Lobaton hit a walk-off HR, and just say Maddon could've started Archer over Hellickson in Game 4, particularly if he planned to have a ridiculously short leash on Hellickson (pulling him without giving up a run).

Name - ERA (full season) - (post-ASB)
David Price - 3.33 - 2.87
Alex Cobb - 2.76 - 2.41
Matt Moore - 3.29 - 2.93
Chris Archer - 3.22 - 3.39
Roberto Hernandez - 4.89 - 4.85
Jeremy Hellickson - 5.17 - 6.23

And it would've been interesting to see what happened if that game went to extras and TB eventually won - he had Price warming up for the 10th because there were no more relievers left (partly because he'd had 4 of them pitch less than an inning, including 2 pitches total to one batter by Archer). Sometimes you have to trust players to come through to get to those stars - Craig Breslow wouldn't be my first pick to face the heart of the Rays order, but he struck out the #3-6 hitters in a row.

What I saw looked damn close.. either way.

Matt Adams is a BEAST! Congrats to Waino on the complete game!

The read on Hellickson was that he was well rested, has more stuff than Archer, but was vulnerable to giving up explosive innings.

The read on Archer was that he didn't have enough variety in his pitches to survive a 2nd round through the Red Sox lineup.

So if Hellickson was "on" then he would have saved us a lot of time and trouble, but he's been getting rocked lately...hence the short-leash.

So what does Hellickson do? Solid 1st inning, inconsistent 2nd inning...just like we have seen a few times recently. No outs, bases loaded? Gotta get him out of there.

BTW - This is NOT an example of moneyball analysis. :)

If you want to use advanced stats instead, Archer had a lower FIP and xFIP over the whole season, and a FIP 1.24 below/xFIP 1.42 below Hellickson in the 2nd half. Hellickson did have the slightly better numbers vs. Boston this year (18.1 IP/7 ER vs. 8.2 IP/5 ER), although Archer's 2 starts vs. Boston were among his first 4 in the big leagues, and that seems a real bad idea to focus on those combined 5 starts over Hellickson's last 10 - where he got through 6 innings once, and given up less than 3 runs once - vs. Archer's last 10, where he got through 6 5 times, and gave up less than 3 runs 7 times. Saying Hellickson was "well-rested" isn't worth anything either, because the decision to start Hellickson and put Archer in the bullpen was made before the series started. Qualifying things by saying "if Hellickson was on" is also silly, because he hasn't been for even a single start since like June.

The Rays do a lot of good "moneyball" things, like signing cheap reclamation project relievers/1st basemen at the GM level, or embracing defensive shifts at the managerial level, but there are times when Maddon over-thinks things and tries to get too cute imo, and this was one of them. From our side, Felix Doubront and Ryan Dempster had the lowest ERA's vs. TB this year, but there was never any question we were going to start our 4 best pitchers.

Maddon took the lessons he learned from Scioscia (ever the tinkerer) and amped them up to an even higher level.

Aren't you focusing on the results instead of the process?

No question.
In a vacuum, I'd rather have Koji pitching to those hitters. In that situation though, it made more sense to leave Breslow in and hope he could succeed. Breslow (who's probably our 3rd best healthy reliever) came in bottom 6th w/2 outs down 1-0, struck out a lefty, and then we scored 2 in the Top 7 to take the lead. At that point (Up 2-1 going to the bottom 7th, Longoria+ coming up), Farrell could've thrown Koji in, or mixed and matched 3 different relievers, but instead he trusted Breslow, and we had our 2 best relievers lined up for the 8th and 9th, with 4-5 more fresh guys in the bullpen if the game went to extras.

There's a continuum between managing for the long term and maximizing immediate results. Francona/Farrell lean a little too much for my tastes toward the long-term (mostly when it comes to their deference to veterans), but Maddon seems to be the poster child for swinging too far the other way (i.e. he'll burn multiple pitchers or sacrifice outs doing things like bunting so the Rays will be up by 1 after the inning they're in, instead of focusing on how best to win the whole game or series.) He's quirky, and he does a lot of things, so the media likes to give him credit when the Rays win, but I think Friedman is the one who deserves most of the credit, and it's not a huge coincidence that Maddon's lost 4 straight playoff series.

If you want to pick apart Maddon's strategy more effectively, I'd suggest you shy away from quoting me to prove your points. :)

Bottom line though, I have a lot of faith in what Maddon does because he varies his strategy so much and succeeds more often than not. Which was 92 times in the regular season, and then the elimination of the Texas Rangers (91-72), the Cleveland Indians (92-70) from playoff contention (both on the road by the way) and then only in the Red Sox 3-1 ALDS elimination did the Rays finally falter. And the game where you are picking Maddon apart was lost 3-1 and the true failure was the Rays offense rather than the pitching....and had the Rays offense managed 4 or 5 runs, then Game #5 would've seen a "well rested" David Price. The one thing that could've easily put the Rays over the top in the entire series. But we'll never know....but not because of Joe Maddon.

Verlander has it going on, no hitter through 6 in Oakland.

TIGERS!!!!

Scoreless in 15 innings pitched.

I think manager's are overrated and for the most part pitching (particularly starting pitching in the regular season) wins games. When the Red Sox collapsed in September 2011 it was because our pitchers all were injured or fell apart, and for all the stuff Valentine did wrong, nobody was going to make the playoffs with the year our starting pitchers had (you can plausibly argue they'd would've pitched better under Farrell, but we still had Aaron Cook, Daisuke and Daniel Bard starting 40 games for us). This year the top 7 AL clubs in ERA were KC, Oakland, Detroit, Texas, TB, Boston, Cleveland. The top 5 in the NL were Atlanta, LA, Pittsburgh, Cincy and St. Louis.

Unless I'm mistaken, TB was the only team that had 4 starters with at least 20 starts and ERA's under 3.50, and they had 5 relievers with 60+ innings and ERA's between 3.09 and 4.14 (with a 6th - Alex Torres being marginally better at 1.79). I'm of the belief that any "old-school" manager could've let his starters pitch until they were getting tired, then thrown in any of the 6 relievers for one inning each at a time and won about 92 games. I don't think Maddon's a bad manager, but I also don't think he's any better than Bob Melvin, Terry Francona, John Farrell or Jim Leyland, and he gets the genius label from much of the media just because he does more things than the other 4 (and has a personality). Most of those things do work out, but it's not because of some smart plan, it's because he's replacing one solid pitcher with another solid pitcher. Then, when the manager makes 6 moves and the team wins, he gets the credit, while if a manager leaves one non-star player in (say, Breslow in Game 4) and he gets the job done, the credit goes to the player.

(I would say let's see how he does next year without Price, but knowing Friedman's track record I expect him to convince the Twins to trade him Buxton and Sano or the D'Backs to trade Skaggs and Bradley for him. :) )

I want to say that's 30 straight scoreless innings for Verlander against the A's.

Bring it on LA!

True, if Maddon had a $175M annual team payroll (instead of $60M), we'd probably never know just how clever he is. It's amazing what an additional $115M can buy your baseball team.

(EDIT: haha...*drops the mic* :) )

F this ump and his strike zone

Carlos Beltran is a golden god. What a great, great player.

Carlos Beltran doubling in a run off of Zack Greinke in the playoffs, neither for the Royals. Sigh.

SI

Wacha has become quite the pitcher.

Not complaining as a Sox fan but that was shitty base running there by the Tigers with a pitch getting by the catcher and the runner on third not advancing and then next batter he is forced at home.

Become?

What are the Cardinals going to do next season? We have 7 legit starters. Waino, Kelly, Wacha, Lynn, Garcia, Miller, Rosenthal, Martinez. And Carpenter?

I hope we deal for a SS.

I think the Sox should complain a bit more, they haven't enough yet tonight.

I don't doubt that you watch a lot of games, but I also think you're probably either utilizing very small samples to determine what you think about Maddon and also buying into what the media thinks about Maddon. He actually does not bunt that often and also very often talks about not giving up an out. There are many, many times that sometimes I think he should be bunting and doesn't.

I also think that you have to consider his strategy probably doesn't change much going from regular season to postseason and they've won 90+ games the last 5 of 6 seasons with a payroll around $60m, give or take a few each year.

Well.. they rested him a ton this season, so we really didn't get to see him in consecutive starting roles.

I like Waino - Wacha - Kelly - Martinez - Miller myself. Rosey has to be the closer and move Motte for a SS if possible.

Better not be his girlfriend.

*sigh*

Max should have never left the game

A) You have not eat that ball and not throw it.
B) How does Prince Fielder fail to use his gigantic self to block that ball?

The bottom of ninth has been like a collection of ways to give a game away.

And Erin Andrews a casualty of the Gatorade treatment during post-game interview.

I know the Tigers got the split and are nicely set up in term of starters but that felt like the series being lost right there.

Dunno. If I'm that lady and some random guy does that, I'm pressing assault charges.

So from that perspective, it better BE his girlfriend, or getting dumped is the least of his worries.

Give that woman a signed ball, and smack around the idiot who stole the ball from her.

And then we get to the little kid waving to Prince after the close play at the edge of the crowd.. the Reverse Bartman?

And more reasons to smack the idiot.. apparently he's a racist idiot.

Angry Red Sox fan thrown out for HR ball toss also allegedly ranted racist remarks in stands - Yahoo Sports