Little things. Of the two starting pitchers last night it's Greinke who is the hitter - but Joe Kelly's little hit with 2 out and the bases empty in the 3rd turned out to be as big as any swing all night. Carpenter followed with some great plate discipline and a walk as, despite Carp's current slump, Greinke was trying to be very careful with the LHer with a man on. As I said - LHers are Greinke's vulnerability. Then the big guy - also from the left side - did the damage for the only 2 runs off Greinke over his entire 8 innings.
Tremendous pitching on both sides all night - but LAD swung at far more pitches off the plate.
The Cardinal Way prevailed again.
The Dodgers seemed a little tight/anxious/aggressive at the plate - they were only 1 for 10 with RISP. Uribe's single up the middle on that first pitch FB was it - and even that one got just under Kelly's glove - but Uribe is a stone cold killer. He scares me as much as Ramirez - maybe more.
Talk about anxious/aggressive - Mattingly sure was when he tried to force the action by pinch running for Adrian Gonzalez in the 8th. I was really surprised by that move. Are you going to try and steal vs Molina? And you're going to give up Gonzalez' bat in a tie game plus maybe more importantly Ramirez' protection in the L/U - all for the slight edge of scoring from first on a possible double? The risk/reward on that move seemed ridiculous - a gift to the Cardinals - Gonzalez gone and the bat out of Hanley Ramirez hands the rest of the night. Thank you Donny.
We might see even more tightness/anxiousness/over aggression on the part of the Dodgers today with them staring at the possibility of going down 2 games to 0. If the Cards L/U can do any business vs Kershaw, the RedBirds have a chance for a real kill shot - going up in the series 2-0 over the Greinke/Kershaw outings without Wainwright even taking the mound. Although the Cards were under .500 vs LH starters - something like 19-23 - they were ironically 2-0 vs Kershaw this year. The Cards ss Kozma hit him as good as anyone has. Wacha - making only his 11th start in the Bigs today - is in far better spot and certainly under less pressure today after last night's W - plus he's taken no hitters into the 9th and 8th innings in his last 2 starts - vs the Nationals and Pirates.
Found it strange that Darling/Ripken let it go last night when the play-by-play guy said Joe Kelly had a wider spread in his velocity differential than Greinke re the change up. Talk about an erroneous interpretation/use of a stat - Greinke is one of those guys who uses his breakers - esp that slow curve - not his straight change as his primary way to change speeds/disrupt timing. No pitcher in the game has a wider differential - it's key to his success - and that data point on the str change is as useless as the g in lasagna. After the game it was reported that Greinke had pitches between 94 to 68 - threw at 26 different velocities in the game.
Going w/ STL again today with 1 Unit 5 inn. 1 Unit Game and 1/2 U Alt. RL.
Last edited by BeatingBaseball; 10-12-13 at 04:49 PM.
Reason: typo
Thank you gentlemen. Those were sure two great ball games to watch. Dodgers now obviously up against it knowing they'll be facing Wainwright next and need to win 3 of the next 4 just to have the chance to face Wainwright a second time in a game 7 at Busch.
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