{"id":17447,"date":"2013-10-13T10:52:41","date_gmt":"2013-10-13T09:52:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/?p=17447"},"modified":"2013-10-13T10:59:58","modified_gmt":"2013-10-13T09:59:58","slug":"championship-series-thoughts-on-a-rainy-sunday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/?p=17447","title":{"rendered":"Championship Series thoughts on a rainy Sunday"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>For many in the U.K., today is the sort of Sunday where you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re glad to be able to stay indoors to shelter from the wind and rain.<\/p>\n<p>Saturday night\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s two Championship Series games were the perfect gift for anyone trying to find something to occupy the mind whilst huddled up away from the elements.<\/p>\n<p>If you don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have the time or inclination to re-watch the games in full then the Complete Game videos on MLB.com are a good way to catch up on the main flow of each game, even if the lack of commentary does take a bit of getting used to. Alternatively the Pulse of the Postseason video follows the timeline of the day in one neat 10 minute package.<\/p>\n<p><iframe src=\"http:\/\/wapc.mlb.com\/shared\/video\/embed\/embed.html?content_id=31135853&amp;topic_id=62219982&amp;width=400&amp;height=224&amp;property=mlb\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"400\" height=\"224\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>First up on the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcPulse\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 video is the St. Louis Cardinals\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 1-0 triumph over the Dodgers to take a 2-0 series lead as the teams head out to L.A.<\/p>\n<p>Rookie Michael Wacha was impressive once again, but the most telling part of the tale came in Trevor Rosenthal\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 1-2-3 ninth inning to seal the Dodgers\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 fate.<\/p>\n<p>With Matt Kemp done for the season, Hanley Ramirez and Andre Ethier battling injuries and Yasiel Puig battling a loss of form, they are severely restricted when it comes to scoring runs and whilst pitching can take you a long way \u00e2\u20ac\u201c good pitching beats good hitting, and so on \u00e2\u20ac\u201c you can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t win if you can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t score runs.<\/p>\n<p>Puig looked completely lost at the plate throughout the game and none more so than when he struck out to lead off the ninth inning, lumbering him with the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcgolden sombrero\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 for four strikeouts. Juan Uribe, no one\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s idea of a number 5 hitter on a World Series contender, then wildly hacked his way to the next strikeout, before Andre Either came off the bench to end the game striking out on three pitches.<\/p>\n<p>L.A. have received two strong pitching performances from Zack Greinke and Clayton Kershaw and both have gone to waste due to their scuffling batting lineup. That lineup will now have to face the Cardinals\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 best pitcher, Adam Wainwright, in Game Three whilst the Dodgers are likely to send Hyun-Jin Ryu to the mound knowing that he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s dealing with arm soreness and has been ineffective of late.<\/p>\n<p>The Dodgers aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t done just yet, but the Cardinals couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be in a better position.<\/p>\n<p>The other game of the night also finished 1-0 as Anibal Sanchez and the Detroit Tigers\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 bullpen came within two outs of no-hitting what has been a potent Boston Red Sox batting lineup.<\/p>\n<p>This series has been billed as a match-up between the Tigers\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 starting pitching and the Red Sox\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s offence and in that respect it was Detroit\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s strength that won out in Game One. However, I suspect that it will be Detroit\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s batting lineup that will determine the result of this series and in that sense the first game showed Boston how they could make it to another Fall Classic.<\/p>\n<p>Even though they were handcuffed by the Tigers\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 pitching \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Boston fans have some reason to point to Joe West\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s strikezone as a contributory factor too, although all hitters know they have to adjust to the zone being called on the night \u00e2\u20ac\u201c they were always in the game because their own pitching was able to limit the Tigers\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 offence.<\/p>\n<p>Whilst Detroit are justified in having faith in their starting pitchers \u00e2\u20ac\u201c not least in Max Scherzer for Game Two tonight \u00e2\u20ac\u201c they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll know that it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s unlikely they can win four games in this series against a strong Boston team if they can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t find a way to get the offence going around a clearly hobbled Miguel Cabrera.<\/p>\n<p>You expect the Tigers to pitch well and, even in the face of this, you expect the Red Sox\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s offence to score runs. What we should expect from the Tigers\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 offence is less clear and finding out should make this a fascinating series.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Saturday night\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s two Championship Series games were the perfect gift for anyone trying to find something to occupy the mind whilst huddled up away from the elements<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[101,111,132,553,119],"class_list":["post-17447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mlb-2","tag-boston-red-sox","tag-detroit-tigers","tag-los-angeles-dodgers","tag-mlb-2","tag-st-louis-cardinals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17447"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17447\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17451,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17447\/revisions\/17451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}