Multiple times this post season, the Astros would have an inning with 1 HR, 2 hits, a walk....and come out with 1 run. It happened in game 7, I believe. Yuli's HR that inning was the only run in an inning FULL of Astros on base. The Astros lost the World Series because they left a battalion of men on base.
I certainly didn't. But arguing they should've used their best pitcher in a high-leverage situation of a close, winner-take-all game is not exactly going out on a flimsy limb....
I don't know if this was posted already, but a Fangraphs analysis of Will Harris's pitch. Basically, it was the perfect pitch and the perfect place for Harris. And it was the single weakest spot for Kendrick. https://blogs.fangraphs.com/will-harris-played-well-didnt-get-rewarded/ But this analysis has a central thread that I dispute. At its core, it comes down to the fact that the Astros chose to go with Will Harris, and then he delivered a bad result. From there, you can determine whether Harris was a good ex-ante choice, whether Greinke could have stayed in, or any number of possible detours. In framing it this way, it’s implied that Harris did a bad thing. Maybe he was the least likely person to give up that home run or maybe he wasn’t, but Hinch picked him and he caused the Astros to lose. To me, that’s simply untrue. (image on website) This wasn’t some middle-middle cupcake of a pitch; it was on the black, almost precisely on the lower outside corner. It wasn’t a flat fastball, either; it was Harris’s signature cutter, with glove-side break carrying it away from Kendrick’s bat. What’s more, it was located where Kendrick has historically had the least power: (image on website) This isn’t a loose use of the word “least,” either. Break the strike zone down into the 36 sections you see above, and Kendrick has the lowest slugging percentage on contact in the specific zone where Harris threw that pitch. Moving the focus from Kendrick to Harris doesn’t make the pitch seem any worse. In his eight-year career (including the playoffs), Harris has thrown 114 cutters to more or less that location, the low outside corner. Batters have only swung 25 times, which makes sense — it’s a hard pitch to do much with, and it’s close enough to being off the plate that there’s a pretty good chance of having it called a ball. Those 25 swings make for a small sample, but until this pitch, the results have generally favored Harris. Of the 25, seven were swinging strikes and six went foul. Another eight turned into outs; five grounders, two line drives, and a fly ball. Three became groundball singles. The 25th changed the outcome of the World Series. Nor is this a case of a ton of hard contact that simply hadn’t caught up to Harris. The hardest-hit ball, inclusive of Kendrick’s home run, was a grounder with a 99.9 mph exit velocity from earlier this year. Kendrick’s home run was the second-furthest a player hit one of these low-corner cutters in Harris’s career, and it barely made it out of the shallowest part of the park. Put simply, Harris doesn’t allow home runs on low cutters. Take a look at the locations of every home run he had allowed against the pitch before Kendrick’s swing: (image on website) In fact, no one allows home runs on low cutters. Since 2008, between the regular season and the playoffs, there have been 1,741 cutters thrown by a righty to a righty in the rough location of Harris’ pitch that resulted in fair contact. Of those, a whopping two (not counting Harris’) went for home runs. If you’d prefer to include foul balls, the sample is even larger, but the results the same: batters have made contact with 3,160 low and away cutters, of which again two became home runs. Of course, none of these cutters were the exact pitch Harris threw. There was only one of those, and it worked out as poorly as possible for Harris. It’s not fair to absolve him of blame completely. He could have thrown a different pitch; Kendrick had whiffed on a first-pitch curveball. He could have thrown it with slightly more mustard; maybe 92 on the black gets the job done where 91 isn’t enough. But for the most part, blaming Harris misses the point. It’s easy to look at the way the series ended and moralize. Howie Kendrick is the hero, Will Harris is the goat, and A.J. Hinch is the surrogate goat. Those are all true based on the outcomes, but they miss a central element of what happened. Process matters, and Harris didn’t lose because of a bad process or a lack of execution; he lost despite doing exactly what he hoped to do.
All I said was some posters in this thread assumed the Astros could win 2-1 considering they implied that Cole would have meant a victory. I have also said that their lack of hitting with RISP was the main reason they lost this series.
This guy needs to read the black swan. You can’t compare Cole coming into a relief situation because the sample size isn’t big enough. Doing stats like this misses the point. You need a three sigma type event to win when your offense can’t hit. Going with a high variability situation made more sense in this situation, even if Harris threw the right pitch in hindsight. Trusting the process is nice, but you shouldn’t blindly obey the process in games that are different.
This is nonsense. The Astros had a 1 run lead with 8 outs to go and a very good bullpen - the odds were strongly in their favor to win - and the opposing team was hitting worse than the Astros, who were at least littering the field with baserunners. They didn't need to take any kind of crazy risk or go out of character to maximize their chances of winning. That's a really poor understanding of stats and really just throwing random terms out there to sound good.
Lets not forget that Rendon hit a HR off a cutter as well the day before. It wasn't a bad pitch but it was predictable and thats the issue. Thats what happens when you over expose a reliever in the span of a month. There was no game planning for a short rested Cole. We should've won the trophy. We lost back to back games at home for the opportunity to win the world series. The worst part is that we had a lead in both games. Not going out of character? You do realize that its game 7 of the world series right? You do WHATEVER it takes to win. And our bullpen was very good? What are you smoking? The nats tourched the Stros bullpen all series along. The only person reliable was Harris and do you really trust him after giving up an HR the day before?
No, it isn’t. The idea that a game 7 is like every other game is exactly why Hinch lost this. If you want to defend that idea, that’s cool, but let’s not pretend it makes statistical sense to do so.
Exaclty. It’s also exactly why you can’t do something based on regular season stats. It’s inherently predictable, and the context doesn’t exist to evaluate the probabilities of alternative strategies. Major appears to have, at best, a freshmen in college’s understanding of statistics.
http://www.espn.com/espnradio/playPopup?id=27960165 If you listen to the beginning Cole talks about how he felt great the week before on the third day. Cole also said that he was going through the same routine and was feeling normally up to this point. Hence, Cole was ready to throw fire and was aware of what Johnson/Bumgarner did earlier. I bet Cole was good to throw 3+. Lol Stros got Hinch'd. Also its really interesting hearing that Cole use to meet with Verlander after every first inning and he would go over the game plan.Wonder how much of a role Cole played to Verlander's success. I wish we would've kept Cole instead of Verlander. We picked the wrong goose.
You wonder how much Cole played in Verlander’s success???? You mean the same Verlander who was a hall of famer prior to becoming an Astro? Or the same Cole that was struggling to find consistency before meeting JV and the Astros. Do you believe everything you post? We didn’t bet on the wrong horse. We extended a guy who was instrumental in winning a World Series and in the subsequent two years will have, worst case scenario, finished 2nd in cy young both times. Cole will be an unfortunate casualty to having too many awesome players to afford everybody. But paying Verlander was always the absolute right move.
Verlander wasn't a first ballot hall of famer before he came to the Stros. He needed the Stros just as much as we needed him. Cole was struggling before he got the Stros because of the PIrates organization. They never let him embrace his fastball and made him rely on his breaking balls. It wasnt until he got to Stros where he really learned to control his fastball but lets not pretend that Cole didnt have Ace stuff all along. No one here is questioning Verlanders greatness, but he cant be relied upon as the #1 in the postseason no longer. We need another ace on this staff and Im sure Luhnow and company know this better then I do.
JV certainly learned a lot from Strom. But he was already reverting to form before the trade. Had a bad few months to start 2017 that inflate his Tigers ERA that year. The ring is nice for his resume, and I think 2018/19 would not have been quite as good had he stayed in DET (not to mention no playoffs), but had he retired after 2016, he'd already be a 1st ballot HOFer IMO. Anything else is gravy.
You said you wondered how much Cole contributed to Verlander’s success. That implies that Verlander didn’t know how to pitch until Cole got here. Which of course makes no sense. Now you could legitimately ask, how much has Verlander played a role in Cole’s success? Cole didn’t turn his career around until he got here. But that wouldn’t fit in your narrative. Verlander is a legitimate ace. He’s probably coming off another cy young season. I’m perfectly happy with him starting game 1 of next years playoff series. Would I rather have Cole for the next 2 years. I think so. But we’re very fortunate to have JV.
That "fortune" comes with one of the highest paid contracts with a track record to wear down at the end of the year. You make it seem like we have Verlander on a rookie contract. Next season they will restrict his innings and/or keep his pitch count manageable. He simply isn't the same pitcher as the post season goes on. He looses command of his breaking ball which is a tell tell sign he's fatigued. Justin had ONE swinging strike off his breaking ball in game 6. We need another TOR this offseason. Did you not just watch the Nats did this postseason and even the Red Sox last post season. Without another TOR we dont win the world series again.
The real story about Gerrit Cole and the Astros is that they figured out how to magically increase Cole's spinrate on his fastball by like 400 RPM. With the Pirates his fastball was really nothing special, even with his elite velocity. His secondary pitches have also improved (particularly his curve ball) with the Astros as well.
remember when the casuals were arguing just bring Cole in the middle of an inning https://www.usatoday.com/story/spor...-new-york-yankees-spring-training/4849898002/ Cole was in the bullpen warming up with the Astros leading in the seventh inning of Game 7, but never got to take the mound as the Nationals rallied to win. Now, four months later, Cole explains why he never appeared, despite being ready for his first career relief appearance. “We talked beforehand about what I could do,’’ Cole said. “I reconvened with [Hinch] and said, 'Look, you got to put me in position to succeed here. I certainly don’t want to pitch if we’re way behind obviously. But I want to start an inning, and for it to be a tie game or maybe a lead.’ “I had never relieved before so I don’t think the first time should be the seventh inning in a jam. And he agreed. We had enough people fresh to get out of those spots. He said, 'I’ll just bring you in if we’re tied or have the lead to finish it out' ... “It just slipped away from us, man."
He clearly had signs of fatigue in the post season. He took the ball every turn in the rotation last year... in addition to starting the all star game. No missed starts. No load management. No minor injuries. The most innings pitched by him in over 3 years. They can probably do a better job of that this year to keep him as fresh as possible for the possible post season.
