• Changing RCF's index page, please click on "Forums" to access the forums.

2019 MLB Postseason

Do Not Sell My Personal Information
My main hope from the Nats winning is to show the various "nay-sayers" that the Tribe is still contending for the title.
Let's compare:
Nats/ Tribe - same record in 2019
Nats/ Tribe - strength of club is starting pitching
Nats/ Tribe - a couple of good bullpen pieces
Nats/ Tribe - a couple great players in the lineup & a handful of role players doing a job

The Tribe is not in need of spending $40M in free agency to get a couple of pieces and the Tribe is not in need of massive tear down & rebuild.
They are in a position to contend in 2020 & moving forward.. Breaking spring training with a legit chance to win is all I hope for each year..
Awful comparison; the Nats had the 3rd highest payroll in baseball this year, even ahead of the Dodgers. It's pretty easy to speculate that they wouldn't have won without doling out the money for Corbin.

The Indians aren't going to win anything by continuing to cut costs.
 
Awful comparison; the Nats had the 3rd highest payroll in baseball this year, even ahead of the Dodgers. It's pretty easy to speculate that they wouldn't have won without doling out the money for Corbin.

The Indians aren't going to win anything by continuing to cut costs.

Then start showing up like Nats fans.
 
Told all you idiots the Nats were winning this. Christ. Never listen.
 
Washington hovered around 11-16 in total attendance for the league, Cleveland is definitely bottom tier and I'll never understand why our fans hate putting at least 26k in the house. I usually blame April/May for ruining the averages.

But yea I agree, fill in some extra green seats and don't give ownership a reason to cut costs year after year while having one of the better transcendent players in today's game. 2019 was a wasted year.
 
Then start showing up like Nats fans.
You can obfuscate the point by talking about attendance all you'd like (and I won't even disagree with you there.) But my original point stands, cost-cutting isn't conducive to winning a title.
 
So can anyone tell me why Rendon turned down 200+ mil? Is he not sticking around in Washington?
 
Twitter, always a level-headed place, is really upset that Hinch didn't throw Cole

Can't help but disagree considering he was only on 2 days rest. Hinch basically did the opposite of what Dave Roberts did in Game 5 of the NLDS, where Roberts trusted a very good starter on short rest rather than his very good bullpen. Will Harris had been great all season and all postseason, up until Game 6

I also don't get the criticism of yanking Greinke too early. Greinke was cruising until he wasn't. He just gave up a HR and walk the 3rd time through the order, in what was then a 1 run game in Game 7 of the World Series.

Sometimes your bullpen just doesn't get it done. Go Nats and hopefully Cole doesn't end up with the Yankees

On Cole my only argument is if you're going to warm the guy up, put him in the game. It seemed odd that he got ready and then just never came in. I'd rather see Cole than Urquidy, Smith, or Pressly.

On Grienke, he gave up a solo homer to Rendon then walked Soto on what seemed like an intentional walk after he fell behind 3-1 (on a pitch that should've made the count 2-2). He had given up 2 hits (Rendon HR, Soto single) and 2 walks in 6.1 IP at that point and was only at 80 pitches. If you're bringing Cole in, sure, but I'd rather give Grienke another few batters than any reliever. The Nats were going to win or lose with their best arms and let Scherzer battle, which I agreed with. Just my two cents.
 
On Cole my only argument is if you're going to warm the guy up, put him in the game. It seemed odd that he got ready and then just never came in. I'd rather see Cole than Urquidy, Smith, or Pressly.

On Grienke, he gave up a solo homer to Rendon then walked Soto on what seemed like an intentional walk after he fell behind 3-1 (on a pitch that should've made the count 2-2). He had given up 2 hits (Rendon HR, Soto single) and 2 walks in 6.1 IP at that point and was only at 80 pitches. If you're bringing Cole in, sure, but I'd rather give Grienke another few batters than any reliever. The Nats were going to win or lose with their best arms and let Scherzer battle, which I agreed with. Just my two cents.

Hinch did a Q&A with The Athletic, some pretty insightful answers

The first major decision point pertained to whether to pull Greinke in the seventh after the homer and the walk. It’s the third time through the order, obviously. There’s a runner on first in a one-run game. But he’s also allowed only two hits. Why (pull him) there?

So going into the game, (the mindset is) it’s Game 7. I’ve been through a lot of them. I remember pulling Charlie Morton at like 60-some pitches in the ALCS (in 2017). I remember pulling Lance McCullers after two-plus innings in the World Series in ’17. So, there’s a natural feeling of being ready to go to the ‘pen early.

When Zack was going through his outing and was doing very well and pitched himself out of any base runners — he got a couple double plays, he got some big swings and misses — the game kept extending to the point where you get to the seventh inning and you start counting outs. We have nine outs left. Who’s going to get them?

Zack had pitched effectively the second time through, and I remember going over our plan of ‘Do we want him to face the middle of the order the third time through? When is that third time through going to be?’ The thought was that it was going to be perhaps the fifth inning or even the sixth inning, but it got to the seventh inning.

At that point, you’re going batter to batter. You have nine outs left to finish out. You have a two-run lead. When (Anthony) Rendon hit the homer to make it 2-1, it obviously amplified those feelings of wanting to have the perfect matchup in the area of the lineup that we were in. Having him face (Juan) Soto I liked because of his ability to slow the ball down. He can throw the slowest of breaking balls. He can throw the changeup whenever he wanted. He rarely made mistakes with his fastball. And Soto had hit everything the entire series. And I thought Zack pitched him carefully — near misses, didn’t get our calls, didn’t execute, the at-bat got a little bit longer and then I’m faced with the (Howie) Kendrick decision.

Will (Harris) was up from virtually the beginning of the inning for Kendrick or (Asdrúbal) Cabrera. I always target somewhere later in the inning. If things start to go south for Zack, I had our best reliever this postseason ready to go. Losing two hitters in a row, Kendrick having had the most history against Zack other than Cabrera on their team led me to go to Will Harris.

Will Harris had struck out Kendrick earlier in the series in a big spot. He was our most effective reliever throughout the postseason. I had given him a little bit of leash, so to speak, of a couple hitters to get the outs and Zack was never going to face Cabrera given their history together.*

And so I went to Will. Will threw a first-pitch curveball, he gets the swing and miss. He throws the down-and-away cutter on the corner as low in the strike zone and as far down and away in the strike zone and Kendrick hits the foul pole. And that was the result. But the process that led me to putting him in, I was extremely comfortable with.

(*Note: Cabrera is 18-for-41 with four doubles and a triple in his career against Greinke. And while almost all of those at-bats occurred in 2012 or earlier, Cabrera was 2-for-4 with a double off Greinke in the World Series.)


You said in your end-of-season presser that Cole wasn’t coming in mid-inning no matter what. The clean inning for a starter coming into a game in relief concept isn’t new. But in 2017 (in Game 4 of the ALDS in Boston), you did do it with (Justin) Verlander and he gave up a homer. Did that color your feeling about doing that?

And in 2015 with (Dallas) Keuchel. I did the same thing. And (Mike) Fiers, in ’15. So I have a lot of memories of starters coming into games on short rest not being optimal. The rest was just as much on my mind as anything. I had just been asked relentlessly two series ago why I would start Justin Verlander with full prep on three days’ rest. Now we’re looking at a pitcher on two days’ rest. There’s a health concern with Gerrit entering free agency and having emptied his tank, in his words, after Game 5. There’s also the execution issue of ‘Is a guy going to be sharp?’ I watched JV not have his slider in Tampa. I did watch Fiers and Keuchel come out of the ‘pen in ’15 and not be able to be at their best. That was certainly in the back of my mind. But I wanted to make sure that I could utilize our other guys and have Gerrit as a backup plan rather than have Gerrit as the primary reason.

Will Harris, Joe Smith, Roberto Osuna were most likely always going to pitch in front of Gerrit on two days’ rest. And I felt like they had earned that based on how they had pitched during the World Series.




Quite a few other insightful answers from Hinch too, but I feel like I've already shared too much from The Athletic. Hinch does mention that Cole started warming up on his own, fwiw
 

Rubber Rim Job Podcast Video

Episode 3-13: "Backup Bash Brothers"

Rubber Rim Job Podcast Spotify

Episode 3:11: "Clipping Bucks."
Top