If I had to choose right now, McHugh and McCullers would be 3 and 4 Long way to go though, reality is that after Keuchel and Kazmir the next two decisions will probably be decided by how these guys all do over the next 5 weeks.
I'm not sure about a 3 man rotation. If you can do so with full rest sure, but running guys out there ahead of schedule typically doesn't work out well, particularly if you have good alternatives, which it seems we do right now. If a series were to go 7, ideally Kazmir and Keuchel would start 4 of them, but over the duration of the playoffs you are likely gonna need the 4th guy a few times, if you are fortunate enough to advance. I agree with the consensus that the pecking order is Keuchel-Kazmir-McHugh-McCullers. I'm a little surprised people seem to be so confident in McHugh again, thought him and Fiers would be closer. I wasn't one of them, but there were quite a few people complaining about him for most of the season.
Wild Card game: Tuesday, October 6 ALDS 1: Thursday, October 8 Keuchel ALDS 2: Friday, October 9 Kazmir ALDS 3: Sunday, October 11 McHugh ALDS 4* Monday, October 12 Keuchel/Feldman ALDS 5* Wednesday, October 14 Keuchel/Kazmir ALCS 1: Friday, October 16 ALCS 2: Saturday, October 17 ALCS 3: Monday, October 19 ALCS 4: Tuesday, October 20 ALCS 5* Wednesday, October 21 ALCS 6* Friday, October 23 ALCS 7* Saturday, October 24 WS 1: Tuesday, October 27 WS 2: Wednesday, October 28 WS 3: Friday, October 30 WS 4: Saturday, October 31 WS 5* Sunday, November 1 WS 6* Tuesday, November 3 WS 7* Wednesday, November 4 Ask again in a month.
1. Keuchel 2. Kazmir 3. McHugh Set on that 1-2-3 4. McCullers, with some hesitation. Does he have the experience and maturity to handle this? Fiers & Feldman have been very good as of late.
Fiers sure as hell is making a case for himself. His ERA is his 4 starts with us is 0.67. Even in his first outing with us, he came into a very weird situation and proceeded to get lit up in his first inning, but then gave up 1 run over the next 4. If you wanna push it back to Milwaukee, over his last 19 starts his ERA is 2.73, with an opposing BA around .220. Last season in 10 starts he had a 2.09 ERA and an opposing BA of .175. The longer he keeps this up, the more he looks like McHugh, a great pitcher who's numbers are inflated by a bad stretch early. Those are not numbers that can be ignored.
Why not utilize the tandem system in the playoffs!? Seriously though, you have to put your aces up front in Keuchel and Kazmir McHugh has been on fire with a 1.89 ERA in August. Fiers has been darn good as well with a 2.25 ERA Feldman has had a dominant August with a 1.33 ERA in 4 starts It's difficult to choose who to keep out of the rotation given how good every single guy has been, especially Lance since he's really only had 1 bad game in 15 starts thus far. I think what it comes down to is looking at the match-ups in the series and making decisions based on that. Perhaps I keep any of the starters on a short leash and if we get in trouble, I have McCullers and VV in my back pocket to try and keep us in the game. What about our bullpen? Harris Neshak Gregerson Sipp VV McCullers Qualls Perez? Thatcher? Fields? I'm guessing we leave off one of Thatcher or Perez, with Thatcher probably being the odd man out. But do we even trust Perez and his control issues? What about Qualls? I have flashbacks of him in the mid 2000s just screwing us. I'd rather have Fields than Qualls, but he's not even on the 25 man right now. We have 5 guys who are a definite yes: Harris, Neshak, Gregerson, Sipp, and McCullers. Do we need any one else?
