Talkin' Baseball (MLB Podcast) - 215 | AL Wild Card Game 1 Recaps

Episode Date: September 30, 2020

Jomboy, Jake, and Plouffe are recapping all of Tuesday's games! 3:55 Astros-Twins 15:25 White Sox-A's 23:25 Blue Jays-Rays 33:00 Early settlers 34:45 Yankees-Indians Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to Talking Baseball. Day one of the postseason is in the books. Four games played. Four games ended. A lot of fun results. Let's talk all about it. Oh, and welcome to Talking Baseball. We are a podcast. We talk about baseball, Major League Baseball. We're coming to you live from the Roosevelt Studios in the Bronx. That's RSVLTS.com.

Slash John Boy, get 20% off some nice fun shirts. My name's Jimmy sitting next to me is Jake. We got Trevor Poulouse. Former Minnesota twin rocking a twins jersey, right? You are wearing a twin jersey? It's cut off right now. He's coming from California and producer Bug Bug Dude behind the dish. We had four games yesterday.

We got to recap all four games. I'm already losing my voice and we're at day one of this shit. So I'm excited. Jake, how are you doing? I'm good, James. Our yanks have us in a pretty good mood. They shocked the world yesterday. I think one of my final words on talking baseball was such a guaranteed under in Bieber Cole.

Guarget it. And that's what happened for sure there. I'm good. You know, I'm happy with the results. I think the one thing, the Houston, Minnesota game will obviously deep dive into that one. But otherwise, you know, the Ray's kind of won in Ray's fashion. the Yanks opened up a can and a friend of the family, Lucas Gialito, dropped some serious D yesterday, which was awesome to see.

And I can't even wrap my head around today's slate. So that's kind of working on that. And we'll get to that. I believe we put yesterday's pregame show on this feed on the podcast apps. It won't be there going forward. So if you enjoyed that, Jake went three for four. Trevor went three before I went four four. So I'll just, I mean, collectively?

Oops. We crushed it. as a podcast. That's like a very impressive record. I'm not great at math, but I believe it's 10 for 12. Nobody knows. 4, 8, 12. Yeah. Trev, how are you doing? I'm doing all right. I'm doing all right. I enjoyed the slate of games yesterday. I have some questions. I wish I could get a Zoom call with some of the managers and we'll get into it. But there were some, there were some plays yesterday and some moves I didn't agree with. But all the other games kind of went how we maybe thought they were going to go besides the Yankees just absolutely

demolishing the baseball against the best picture of the show. Yeah, I do think the Twins game, not a lot of people had it incredibly pegged from Dusty's decisions and from the lack of offense from Minnesota. We'll get into that. We have four games today. Tomorrow we're going to have eight games. So how we're formatting these recaps is Bug Bug Bug Dudes going to put 10 minutes on the clock for each game. It's a hard out.

We don't want to get lost down the rabbit hole discussing one single game for 15 to 20 minutes. If we don't hit 10 minutes on one game, the minutes do roll over. And we get more for another if we need it. As soon as Trev's back, okay? You ready, Trev? I'm born ready, baby. And for anyone who wasn't here last postseason, we are a Cron pod. We go Chronicle order.

And Trev smokes so much chronic. He lit Malib on fire. Right now. All right. Game one was Minnesota versus the Astros. I'm correct there. If you are not familiar with what happened,

the Astros won. Minnesota kind of crumbled in devastating fashion in the ninth inning. Trev, this is your team. This is the game that you say you have a lot of takes about. I'll let you just open up. If you want to give a little recap and then whatever you want to go into on this

game, let us know. All right. I mean, look, it was Maeda versus Grinky. And it kind of lived up to the billing of two guys, you know, seemingly at the top of the game. I know Grinky kind of struggled going into the playoffs, but he returned to form. He looked good. And

interestingly enough, I think taking him out was one of the best decisions that could have been made. Even though he'd only given up one run, they brought in Framber Valdez, who was going to start today if he didn't pitch. So Dusty said, you know what? I like our chances this game, apparently, brought him in. And he was lights out. I mean, Framber Valdez, friend of the pod came in and just shoved. He's a friend of the pod? We always just loved his name.

Oh, yeah. Framber alert's great. Framber alert's great. So yeah, I mean, look, Maita did his job. The Twins' bats were silenced by Grinky and Framber, and my takes are really all against Rocco, which sucks because I love Rocco. Your guy. A couple different things went on that I wasn't a fan of. I want to let you guys have your time, but...

Hit them. Okay. Fifth inning comes around. You got two runners on, nobody out, Byron Bucks and up to the plate. I know you're not supposed to bunt. But in the playoffs, Things are different.

Byron can bunt, and Byron bunting isn't the same. It's not like really a sacrifice bun. Like, if it's a sacrifice, that's probably the worst thing that happens to the twins. If he puts the ball down on the ground with a lefty pitcher in, puts him in the third baseline, he's probably going to be safe. We saw Bregman make a few really good plays over there, but it wasn't Byron Bucson running. It was Nelson Cruz and Miguel Sineau.

So that's one thing. They ended up not scoring any runs that inning. And then the other two questionable calls were the pinch hitting. Jeffers started at catcher over Garver seemingly because of for offense. Garver struggled this year. Then it comes time in the, I think it was the six or seventh inning. Garver pinch hits for Jeffers, you know, cold, strikes out looking, I believe. And then you have to bring in a Vila, who's your third catcher in.

Then he comes up in a big spot in the ninth and you pinch hit. a lot Tortuga for him. So I guess there was just no depth on the bench. You brought up one of your best hitting prospects. He's just sitting there. Like if you're going to bring a guy up, and he can hit, either don't pitch hit or pinch hit that guy

because Tortuga is not the answer. And he sprung the first pitch, grounded into a double play, came over. A lot of questionable moves. Twins did not look great. The bullpen was wishy-washy. I'm not going to lay at all on, Romo because I think obviously there was an air there.

He did walk Altuva to put the go-ahead run in. But a lot of bad, bad things happening with the twins. And everyone's just going to say 17 games, 17 games in a row now they've lost in the postseason. It's ridiculous. That's why I have my blood red jersey on day. It's all or nothing today. Yeah. All right.

Jake, you want to take the box and things? a really interesting point, Trev, because that's, again, Buxton had been mashing the ball and hitting all these homers and looking nuts, and he's saying, I can end this game, I can make it a 4-0-0 game. It does spin a little bit into Jake's theory of like, what does the other team not want to see? If you're Houston and you're losing 1-0 and you got two runners on, Framber just came in, God, I would hate to see Buxon lay down a bunt

and put pressure on the defense and all of that. If Alex Bregman, he was shaken, bro. I got to make a play right now. Yeah. And Buxon's like different speed. Like the bunt doesn't have to be great. And even if you do get them and they make a great play, your second and third, you're set up for the wild pitch,

you're set up for sack fly, you're set up for that. So that is interesting in hindsight. And I do love what you're saying about the catchers. You know, they carried all these catchers. The Jeffers start. I'm not going to kill them for. I don't watch every Twins game, so I can't dive deep enough into it. I know Garver struggled, but if you start a guy for offensive reasons and he doesn't get hit,

you know, that looks like a bad managerial decision. And hey, Framber, I think everyone questioned it. Grinky didn't have his A stuff. He had three walks and one K. But he battled and that's why you rely on veterans in the postseason. And hey, shout out to Dusty. Shout out to Framber. Dusty said he had a plan and everyone kind of laughed.

That's what I want to talk about. And Framber comes in. He walks those first batters. then he absolutely drops it for five innings. That curveball was wipeout. So, I mean, shout out to them. And just we haven't talked a lot of Houston yet. A lot of guys in that box score contributed.

And I think that is a big factor in feeling in the postseason when you have to work to get through everyone. Yeah. I want to talk about Dusty's plan and the use of the Astros pitching. Because I, we're in an air, we are seeing a format. we have never seen before. The three-game wild card elimination we've never seen. So we're seeing a lot of guys get cute with it.

In four games, we saw two teams get super cute. We're about to see more NL teams get cute, fancy, and try to outsmart the situation. It worked, so I love it. Yeah. Even if it didn't work, I think I love it. They didn't burn a single relief pitcher. They have, I mean, Erkitty and Javier, I think, and the full bullpen today, game two. And McCullors three, I think that's the plan.

I love that they said we had a plan and they weren't bullshitting. Like, we're not going to tell you, but we do have a plan. And the plan was, let's get through game one with our two best starting pitchers and they'll split it, piggyback it, and we won't burn any bullpen. They did have to burn someone in the end, right? Frambert. No, Frammer finish it off. They had Presley up.

He did two singles in the double play. They had Treffs Presley up. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, I mean, 79 pitches from Grinky. 66 by Valdez through the final five innings of a game. Insane, I think it was the last time this has happened in the postseason since that Mad Bum Game 7, Nut Job Performance. Yeah.

And yeah, I think the other things that we kind of haven't talked about, A, Reddick was having a bad day. The Cruz double bounces off the wall, goes over his head. I wanted to make that point. It's a little mean to Twins fans. No, it's playoff baseball. I mean, Kepler scores by a foot. He gets in there.

If Reddick feels that cleanly, who knows what happens? I mean, what a relay by Correa? Jesus Christ, what was it? 91, you said, from stat cast, Correa thrown from the infield. Oh, yeah. If Reddick plays that ball properly, the twins are shut out. What did he do wrong? I watched the play.

What did he do wrong? It bounced over the wall and then it bounced over his head. If he got too close to the wall there, if he, and he was a little laxidazical. It's, yeah, but if he, if he grabs that and doesn't have, to track it down and he didn't track it down with much haste um you know it's it's uh trev i understand it's a hit i i and they would have had they would have had two on to continue the inning so like they still probably would have scored there was a moment of playoff baseball where you're looking back and you're like is that going to be the difference in this game it's a one nothing game if

josh reddick known as a really you know solid fielder if he feels that cleanly off the wall what are we doing? And then, yeah, I mean, I think the two things that kind of need to be hit on still are Polanco at short and obviously the play. Well, also, I mean, they tied the game on a ball that Marwin couldn't. It's a hot shot to third, but you've seen third basements change innings. What's that? Two minutes.

Two minutes? Two minute. I thought you were playing the teradactal sound bite. Hot shot to third, Maldonado beats out an infield single to score the tying run, and then Polanco throws it away. And if you're a Twins fan, it's just now you're like, fuck us, 17 straight. The Polanco owner's bad. Marwins was a hot shot.

It's a do-or-die play. I really don't think Redick did. I saw people coming at him, but I don't think that was that poor of a play. I don't think it was incredibly poor. Under the overhang there is a very tough field to play. A lot of people misplay balls out there, including if you're a twins right field, so it makes for a tough play. Really, I thought the play of the game. The play of the game.

And it happened twice. It was Alex Spragman at third base coming in on, Roll Rollers. The first inning, Sinole hits one, saves a run. That changes the whole outcome of the game, a whole outlook of the game right there in the first inning.

And he made, he did it twice once with Sineau, once with Cruz, I believe. So yeah, I mean, just the twins lost that game. You got to just say,

look, we lost that game. They played well. We didn't play so well. So boom, put it in your rearview mirror and come back. I have one quick question before time. out. Tyler Duffy, Trev, bad outing by him. I think he got two outs and then it goes single,

single, single. And the third out is Maldonado baiting the throw to let the runner score and getting out on the base path. Bad base. A lot of base runners will tell you there. I was baiting the throw. I think that was bad base running. He wasn't baiting. I don't think so either. Maybe in his head he was. Yeah, you hear runners say a lot. He'll tell you. Duffy. I mean, Jake and I have, we see Chad Green, Zach Britton, Otavino. And we see formerly out of the

formerly out of him. But the Yankees are very spoiled with their bullpen. Like Romo in a tie game, Jake and I were both like, we like Romo. Well,

this is pretty scary. You have still the confidence you had in the bullpen that you did before? Or do you think it's a little, has that changed? No, I do.

I think they went a little off speed heavy yesterday. Obviously, not talking about Romo, because that's what he does. And that was interesting to hear Eduardo Perez being like, these guys should sit slider.

They got to sit slider. I'm like, everybody's sitting slider. It's Sergio Romo. Maybe the casual fans don't know that. They should have presented it in... There was a guy with a good Twitter threat about that yesterday, though, so that was cool. Honestly, it was ridiculous.

I was, like, laughing. I was like, you guys, have you watched Sergio Romo and pitch before? But I do have confidence in the bullpen. Trevor May looked good. I think Duffy relied on his off-speed a little bit too much there. But yeah. Look, you just got to bounce back. Hey, and playoff notes you could say about any game.

Twins, 0 for seven with runners in scoring position. Houston, two for nine. And hey, Michael Brantley, Teal Bar's got some nasty, lefty stuff. Brantley stays in there and essentially ends the game. Yeah. And not a cheater. Not a cheater. Moving on.

Game two of the day was the A's versus the White Sox. Damn, my voice is gone. Lizarro gives up three runs, and Gialito barely gives up any hits. Took a perfect game through six, was it? Into the six? I forget. I love this locked in look Golito gives. I thought this was a scared decision by the A's to start Lazzardo in this game.

Tim Anderson said, do you not have the scouting report on us? Tim Anderson, I think he had two hits in his first two at bats against Lazzardo. so I love that he came to task after saying like, what are you guys doing? Yeah. Really like that. Tim Anderson had three hits. Abreu had two hits.

Both those guys went into the playoffs incredibly cold. So they flipped the switch a little bit there. The story's Lucas Golito. I wanted to see how he pitched Trev. If he, if he like dominated like quick outs, he had two quick innings. Other than that,

the A's never, or the A's never got anything going, but he had six, three ball counts. Like it's not like he was breached. freezing through everyone. Now the bottom of the order, he took care of besides Luriano. I don't, he's a little low for me anyway.

Maybe he's struggling. I don't know. Those are, that's kind of what I got. I mean, we got to talk about Gialito. The A's, they didn't see a lot of pitches. The bottom of the order breezed through. Kana only saw eight pitches. And one of them he worked a walk.

So he's given quick outs. Sean Murphy, he averaged three pitches in that bat. And so did Pinder. So a lot of the bottom of the lineup gave Gialito easy. out when the top was working his pitch count. They could have knocked him out a little earlier. They had him at, what did I say? They had him at 40-something pitches after three.

41 through three, yeah. I don't know. That's still a decent pitch count. I like what you're saying about the bottom of the order, though. If the bottom order did their part, you could get Gialito out by the six, and I think you feel a lot better. I was expecting him to be like one, two, three inning, one, two, three-three-inning, like four pitch at bat, three-pitch at bat.

And it was a lot of deep. And go look at the reliever stats quickly. Jim, they had some pretty quick at-bats, too. And Marshall Bummer Colome, again, not your not your Pops' favorite relievers that you might be no, but they do their job yesterday. This story is Gialito and he's your guy, Trev, so I hate kicking it to you, but yeah.

I mean, if you're talking about three ball counts, that's the A's, that's what they want. They want to work the pitcher. So, yes, the top of the order did their job, I guess, in that regard. But, yeah, when you're going up a guy like Gialito, who's in that, like, freak show mentality out there, kind of like dancing like he's actually skyrocketing up my hot boys of summer list with what you're doing on the mound right now like you're performing you're also like in this zone

where you look like you're in a different world like he doesn't care who's in the box right now he is just doing his thing throwing high changeups basically reinventing the way people pitch uh but he was yeah he was a stud yesterday and then a brayu who just continues his Dick dropping mega world tour in 2020. He's the only one that's allowed to be touring right now because everything's shut down. But Jose Abray is like, you know what? I got to do it for the people.

And he had a bomb against Luzardo. And yeah, like you said, Tim Anderson looks like a genius now, or at least looks like, wow, he was really right. Don't start a left-hander against us. We're 15 and 0 now. Yeah.

And Adam Engels, the other guy you got to talk about. And that was my thing coming into this game. I said that the A's are either going to feel great and the White Sox are going to be deflated because their perfect record is going to be gone, or the A's are going to be sitting there feeling dumb because the White Sox beat another lefty. We talk, you know, 0 for 17 is an insane number for the twins. And when you really think about that, 17 games, hey, how about 15 the opposite direction for the White Sox versus lefties? And Tim or for debt, my other thing on this is, and this kind of ties to the Yankees game later.

The White Sox, they limped into this a little bit. But who do they have? Tim Anderson, Jose Obrayu. Those guys get hits in the first inning. They don't score. Lazzardo gets the last out of the inning. But as a White Sox fan, you're like, okay. I've got Tim Anderson, I've got Abraeu, I've got Gialito on the bump.

Let's do this damn thing. And for the A's, maybe this is a little biased because I picked the A's to win this series. I do think you can kind of wash your hands of this and say, hey, the bad man pitch yesterday. Gialito did his thing. When he's right, he dictates what's going to. going to happen. But he's done. Now you're the A's, you've got Bassett on the bump. At the same time, Keikl's coming. But you say the bad man's gone. Let's go get it today. We're still in Oakland. But damn, man. Good for Gialito. This takes him up a...

You guys have your book. I don't talk about my book a lot. Not a reader. This brings up Lucas Gialito a little earlier in my book. This was big for him. Oh, yeah. Yeah, we'll talk about the pregame show of game, too, about Kikol. I love Kikel. So I got a lot of faith in him. I mean, Angle has a home run and a double off Lazzardo. The home run was on an O2 pitch and maybe the worst O2 pitch in the history.

You know, tied, tied with a thousand other O2 pitches for worst O2 pitch ever. Yeah. But a fastball right down the middle, oh two. You know, that's about as bad as an O2 pitch as you can get. And he banged it. So I think one guy who shows up that isn't supposed to show up. I'm not saying angle is going to be the guy, but we always get one guy during the playoffs 14 that makes a run.

It's like, oh, we're getting production out of this guy. Oh, okay. Yeah. So that was a big home run. I mean, the White Sacks didn't walk, Trev. They didn't have one walk. It's not good. They had nine hits.

They didn't have one walk. They're not walkers. I know, but they swing. They swing a lot. a high chase rate. I mean, I don't know. And hey, this is a kind of a weird way to look at things, but that's how I live my

life. The yes-men, yes, Mani Grandal hits a homer in this game, and he was like the only catcher to really contribute offensively yesterday. So, hey, I don't know. That can be a difference maker, maybe not necessarily in this game. It gave them another insurance run,

which does feel good come playoff time. But yeah, good for Yismani. It was a bomb. And he's like, He's like a bonus piece on that offense when they're right, which is pretty nuts. Hey, maybe don't throw a lefty. Yeah. Maybe don't do that. Especially a rookie lefty.

Yeah. You know, if it was Keikl going up against the White Sox, then you're like, all right, well, Kykel's lefty, but sure, he's a veteran and he's, like, been having a great season. I don't know. Yeah. Anything else on this game? They didn't even have to pitch croquet last night. Your guy.

My guy. I don't know, man. I think that the A's are in a tough, tough position. Bassett is going to have to do a Gialito. He's going to have to do a Gialito. Because I don't see them coming out and scoring a ton of runs off Kikl. He's going to do a Jimmy start.

What's the Jimmy's good start line? Like five-eatings pitch, two-run runs. They did save a good amount of bullpen to do that with Gialito going into the eighth. I mean, I think... I know what Kikel's going to happen. It's called the Kikl, isn't it? Yeah, Kikil is.

And Keikel's been better than that this year. I know. 1-99 ERA. And he's been going deeper. He's been going deeper in the game. He's been going deeper in the game. He started the season doing it. But yeah, the White Sox have their bullpen backing him.

So they feel great. I mean, they feel great going into game two. Simeon and Olson, wake up. Yeah. Olson, long foul ball yesterday. Add it half point to the homer draft. We'll get there later. All right.

Game three. The Rays versus the J's. Now we found out that the J's had the same cute thought process as the Astros did. Let's use instead of Ryu. We'll save our best starter for game two. The Astros didn't do that. But they split game one with their next two best starters. Or I don't even know because you still have Walker.

But they split it with two starters. They go, let's go Shoemaker to Robbie Ray. Both pitched pretty well. Yeah. The timing. of the Robbie Ray move was a little inopportune and I'll let Jake speak on that

because he was tweeting about it and stuff like that but the Rays have a Rays baseball game Snell pitch is really good he allows one hit strikes out nine he doesn't finish the sixth inning he has to hand it to the bullpen but then you got Castillo Anderson Fairbanks

and then the Rays you know they have some shift beaters they have a triple and then a wild pitch they have a walk and then a bomb they did this was this is how you close your eyes and you picture a raise win. Yeah, I keep flip-flopping a little bit on this because I think if you're the Jays, you scored a run, and I do think that's important that you didn't leave a goose egg on the board. And it's close game.

Because that, you know, if you see that goose egg and then they could carry into tomorrow, you're wondering, are we going to do it? You got one across. The Robbie Ray, Matt Shoemaker, we were talking about what was Matt Shoemaker's leash going to be. He goes three innings, shuddy, two hits, 35 pitches through three innings. they bring in Robbie Ray. So they're trying to do the Framber piggyback that we talked about in the Houston game. And again, we're giving dusty compliments for it. And, hey, Robbie Ray looked pretty good. The one thing that got me, they brought him in his first batter is Randy or Razaner, who, again,

Ray's, if you're not familiar, a young player. The biggest thing I think you need to know is that he malls lefties. He has an eight OPS first righties, which is good, but he's got a one. 1.4 OPS versus lefty. So you bring in Robbie Ray, Arasoraina puts one in the gap. It's a triple passball. He scores it's 1-0. And again, tying it to that Redick play, you're doing this kind of playoff baseball mindset

where you're like, is this going to be the difference? It's a 1-0 game through 7, and then in Ray's fashion, it's who does it today? Mani Margot, after a nice Joey Wendell at bat, that makes it 3-0. With the Ray's bullpen, it's near-impost. And hey, we're giving starting pitchers love.

We gave Gialito love. Blake Snell, 5.2, one hit, two walks, nine Ks. That's dominant in game one of a playoff series. I will say this. Actually, Trevko. I don't want to go ahead of you. What do you got, bro? I felt like you're going to talk some shit.

Yeah, I don't like this Ray's strategy. If they want to get into the DS and CS, you got to let Like, Snell hasn't gone six innings all season. None of their starters really go deep. And we're seeing the same thing with the Dodgers. And I wonder if when they get to the DS and the CS, there's no off days. So if you're going to rely on your bullpen, you've got to have six arms that you rely on in close games. So we may see them go.

Like, I think you have to let Snell go deeper, come the DS and the CS if you want to have your bullpen alive for the World Series. So their bullpen's amazing. This is the race strategy. I don't like this strategy when they get to that slog of potentially 12 games in 12 days. But it's fantastic for now. It's a good strategy. I thought Shoemaker, you let him go batter by batter. Like the Granky Framber worked, but Granky went four innings.

That's such a difference. And it's a little tricky because Robbie Ray is traditionally a starter, so you want to give him the clean inning. So I do get it, but not with a Rosnerana. Maybe you let Shoemaker go and then Bridge and Robbie gets the next clean inning. But he only has only at 35 p. pitches, he looked really good, and the piggyback's not going to work when the first guy only goes three. He needs to go at least four or five. And the only thing before Trevor gets hot. Sorry, Trevor's raise, his former team that won yesterday. Sorry, Oakland and Minnesota.

I will fight you a little bit on pulling Snell there, because Boba shats up, runner on base in a one-nothing game. Snell did his job. You have that. I'm fine with it for this game. The scenario helped. I just, if that's their strategy, five and getting three, plus from the bullpen every night. 5.2 is a little different than 5. All right, Trev. Sorry. I agree with a lot of you guys' points. I'm looking at this team and you're talking about the strategy they're doing.

This reminds me of the 2014-2015 Royals teams. You better have a lead going into the 6th, 7th inning because you're not going to get a lead from their bullpen. They just better sweep. They have to swing the bats. This team finds ways like Jake was saying, who is it going to be today? Last night, Margoe comes up with a huge homer. But if you go into a game and it's the fifth, six inning, you're tied or behind with this team, you know it's going to be a lot of work to get that victory.

Nick Anderson last night was around the plate a lot. I think a lot of his off-speed was ending in the middle of the zone instead of starting in the middle of the zone and ending out of the zone. So he gave up that run to Bichette. It was a sack fly, I believe. But I mean, this is, they map these games out, and it went exactly how they wanted it to go. And that's kind of what you say,

almost every dang game with this front office and cash and what they do. I just, they believe in their process, and they're going to do it. And I don't know if you guys saw, watch the game. If they have the off days in the DS and CS, I think it's the best formula ever, but it's a little tougher when you don't have those unless you sweep,

you win in three, you win in five, you know, and then you get some off days at the end. Yeah, I mean, look, you could say that or you could say

they've been doing it all year and they do have, they don't have three guys in the bullpen and they rely on everybody. So, you know, they can do that. I think one of the things that's missing

from everybody talking about this victory was like the positioning. Willie Adomis at short, made two like great plays, but he was, positions there. There was a line drive up the middle, I believe up Nick Anderson. Boom, he's out end the inning. Another one in the six hole, Adomis, right there. You're like, where is this guy playing? He's everywhere. And that's just part of the machine they have going there. I mean,

they're going to beat you with their preparation, their analytics, they're positioning, not letting a starter go through the order the third time. I mean, that's that's their philosophy, basically. Yeah. We all know. It's, it's, it's, pitchers advantage, neutral, hitters advantage. When you go through the orders, they don't want to ever give the other team an advantage. And that's what they try to do. And you couldn't, like you said,

you couldn't imagine to more raise victory. No, even the two-run, home run off AJ Cole, Joey Wendell, I just watched that bad again. Joey Wendell had two strikes out of me. It's a foul ball home run, basically. And then Cole stayed pretty far away from the zone after that swing. And then he came back in the first three-two pitch, and Wendell fouled it off.

Then he draws the walk. Then Margot's up. But Cole and the J's are really worried about Wendell stealing. And Margot is not like a big homer threat. I think he threw four pickoffs and then finally put one in the zone to Margot and he crushed it. So Joey Wendell, it's a walk, but he kind of changed that inning there. It was, you know, the walk and the distraction of him, the threat of a steal. They don't show up in the box score, but he definitely changed Coles' like mindset on the mound there a little bit.

It was pretty good. Jay's 0 for 5 with runners in scoring position. Alejandro Kirk D.Hs and goes one for three. By the way, gets the first hit of the game. And something you might want to circle, or if you're a Jays fan, you want to circle, Routy tell us, pinch hits. You know, he's been hurt, he doesn't get the start, he gets a hit in his pinch hit at bat. I'd assume he's going to be in the first.

the lineup against Glassnow today. And yeah, if you're the Jays, my only thing would be like, don't try to out-raise the race. The Rays do their thing. If you're the Jays, go out there, hit with your dudes. And again, tough task yesterday. But you were in that game. You were in that game.

You pushed one across. And you held the Rays pretty close on Shoemaker, Ray, Cole, Baroquee, Hatch. You got Riu going. Fight back a little bit. Push one across early. Triceratops Oh, two minutes, right? That was a lot of, I'm looking at their lineup right now

and I blank the glass now is starting today. They got a ton of Ritees on that in that lineup. That's, it's going to be a tough one for the Jays today. Yeah, the Adamas catch is a really nice guy. I just went back and watched it, Trevin. That's probably a run, makes it three to two with a runner on. Or in the six hole? In the six hole.

Yeah. Yeah. That was like two hits and then a sack fly and then that. So it would have been like a little bit of a rally as well for the race. Jake, I have some for you because I think we have some role over time. Yeah. Jake and I love some good early settler names. These lineups are full of early settler names.

Yeah. Like Brandon Lowe. I don't know if Brandon's an early Sitler name, so I'm going to cancel that one. Nate Lowe. Joseph Wendell. Yeah. Matthew Shoemaker is a real sneaky, very good early settler name. Nick Anderson.

Peter Fairbanks, Nick Anderson. Oh, kind of like Robbie Ray. Robbie Ray, Robert Ray. Yeah, just tons. Tom Hatch is the all-time. The all-time early settler name. He's the number one reliever out of the pad of the early settlers team. This is the best early settler game.

I think it's a lot of... What's A.J. Cole's real first name. Andrew? Joseph Wendell's great. Joseph Wendell, Andrew Cole. I mean, it's a lot of the Jays. right or we're doing the jays pitchers besides Ryan Baroquee

tons Rowdy to Les is like a nickname for Alejandro Kirk someone that you're looking for like an outlaw that'll go find that rowdy Liz got a big bounty on his head yeah okay I like that Rowdy to Les

rowdy huge yeah he's like a bandit yeah yeah okay last game of the day have we come in early on all these So far we're crushing it. Doing a good job. Right on time. Tight.

Yankees. I didn't say. What was that? It's inappropriate. Oh, about sex? Jackie later. Pre mature? Yeah, we call that the Jake.

Not him though, Jake Sanders. Everybody does. Like, just have a conversation about it. All right. The fourth game of the day was the primetime game. It was the pitching matchup of the decade. No, it was really good, though. Beaver versus Cole.

Yankees have their way with Bieber. I was very, I'm still a little confused about what actually happened if it was pitching poorly or a fantastic approach because ESPN gave out this one stat that I'm now leaning on, even though I think it's a dumb stat. But the Yankees banged, man. They flipped the switch. And Garrett Cole did what they, he's getting paid to do. It's a scary game one.

If you thought the Yankees were going to roll over and die. It is only one game, so I'm coming back down to Earth. But Trev, can I tell you the stat they showed on ESPN that's been boggling my mind? They called it non-competitive pitches. And it was pitches that are 18 inches away from the zone. And they said, Shane Bieber has the most swings and misses on non-competitive pitchers out of any pitcher. And he had like 55. It's like double.

And the second place had like 28 or 32 or something like that. I never heard this stat, and I kind of called bull spit when they showed it. I was like, dude, that's pretty arbitrary and weird. But then I watched Shane Bieber pitch the rest of the game. His breaking stuff was never near the zone. Like people were saying the Yankees were spitting on it or had a fantastic approach. I'm not giving the Yankees credit. Like, they weren't even chaseworthy pitches.

And I think when he did throw his breaking ball close to the zone, he got swings and misses. Like, I can remember some on Voits. some on Judge, some on Glaber. I think Geo chased a couple of times as well. Stanton for sure. So a lot of, I heard a lot of people saying the Yankees like, he was tipping maybe, or the Yankees just had like a fantastic scouting report, which it might be good.

But I didn't even think that Bieber's pitches were competitive. And I think then the relievers came in and they were, it was the most amount of non-competitive pitches I've seen a team throw just away from the zone. All their breaking stuff started, out of the hand was a ball. So do you have any, do you know that stat? Have you seen it?

Did you have any thoughts on that aspect of what happened? Or your thoughts on just what happened with Bieber? I didn't see the staff. But I mean, look, if you look at the Yankees lineup, they'll do that to a pitcher. I mean, you're trying to be perfect against this lineup. When you try to be perfect and make perfect pitches, you're going to start them, you know,

on the outer parts of the zone. They're going to run away way off of the zone. When pitchers are good and you're throwing your off speed, or you want it, you present it as a strike and then it's not a strike. When your fastball is good, you present it as a ball and then it's a strike. That's what Bieber does. I mean, he makes you chase pitches because they look different coming out of the hand. But last night, like you said, trying to be too fine, when a pitcher has a good off-speed pitch like he does,

and it's not starting where you know it needs to start, it is an easy pitch to lay off of. It's so nasty that you know what, like you said, it's out of the hand, the ball and that just happened way too many times last night but you have to give credit to the Yankee hitters I mean I just came and did it dude and like when he was in the zone he banged judge now has three home runs and three wildcard games first pitch right first pitch and I think in the A's wild card game it was first or second pitchers first inning as well um judge loves those fuck you home runs we kind of said that all season on the pregame show and I was telling you, Trev, like when he comes back from injury,

he usually hits a home run first game or second game, just like, uh, fuck you guys. And, uh, judge's, judge's, judge's playoff resume is starting to get pretty impressive, Trevor. He has nine home runs, uh, in 28 games. That's, uh, I think it's like 19 RBIs too. Yeah, he's, so he's, he's starting to do it. And I, I think that was the big thing.

You come into a playoff games, the nerves, Bieber, all of it. DJ LaMayhew, you know, I'd said the Tim Anderson thing before, batting title champ. And this is kind of like, you know, two teams come together. Here's the team from the east playing the team from the central. Here's our batting title champion. He slaps one to write off Bieber, the ace, the Cy Young winner, and then Big Aaron Judge goes yard.

It's 2-0. You can exhale a little bit. And yeah, Jim, I think the Bieber thing we're over-analizing. I think it was a guy's first start. He does end up with seven punchies and 4.2. I do think he was trying to be a little too cute And the Yankees did a good job Not getting into any of those bad pitches

Because you're right They did feel non-competitive, a lot of them Even the O2 pitches like You know, it was like Hicks Even Simber to Hicks I think it was Simber right? Yeah, I mean Simber was done I mean Simbers

But I'm just saying Simbers coming in and doing voodoo on the mound And so the Yankees and A, they press some buttons. They look great. They shuffle the lineup a little bit. Luke Voigt gets an RBI double to make it three. And then the offense just starts going nuts.

Glaver Torres with a four-hit day. It's a little cheeky. He has two infield singles, but he hits a home run. And Glaver hasn't shown a ton of that this year. So is he on now? And then, I mean, the big thing, Brett Gardner was controversial because him or Clint Frazier, Garty's been hot, the guard dog. and he hits, you know, what could have been two home runs.

And the fact we've gotten this far without talking about Garrett Cole is insulting. Yeah, I mean, that's what they pay Cole to do. He buckled down when he needed to. It's good. He threw some breaking balls that were like. Tight. He looked really good. And this Indians team is not built to, like, come back from a large deficit.

That's just not how they're going to win ball games. It's a pitching team. I mean, yeah. You got to align your pitching. You have guys that can do it. You try to get the bottom of the order on for the top of your order. That's how they're going to win baseball games. They're not going to win baseball games having to overcome five, six, seven run deficits.

So they got to have the starters do it. Obviously, Bieber, you know, just wasn't his start. No. But now you're fighting for your life just one day after, you know, you're kind of coming into the postseason feeling really good about yourself. You get knocked in the mouth by the Yankees and by Garrett Cole. And now you're, you got an elimination game next day. Yeah.

And then speaking of the Indians lineup, Josh Nailer gets four hits. Yeah. Do you remember me telling you, watch out for him, Trev? I don't. I did. Oh. That might have been on a different show. No, no, no.

I told you about he gives up home runs to the bottom of the order. Oh, yeah. I have Nailer pegged as my scary guy. But Nailer has a great game, screaming and yelling. And then Ramirez does get their RBI in this game. He came up with runners on and he did come through. It wasn't the three-run home run that would have tied the game. That had me very scared.

It was a hard hit ball down the line. But that's the guy that the Yankees are going to have to worry about. He's on fire. And he did, I mean, was that his only hit? I mean, look at a box store. Yeah, that was his one hit. He had a walk. The bottom of the lineup had six of the eight hits.

Four of those were up for McIler. Yeah, it's crazy. Is this a must-win game for the Yankees? Now that you know that Hap is probably going to start game three. No, no, no. Hap's not, Hap's starting game three. And he could go two innings. Like it's, it's like, it's like,

and it doesn't like give me the, oh, no, Hap has to go six strong. Like it's, he's going to start the first inning and we'll see from there. That depends on how today goes to. You could also see funny business. I mean, you know, think about all the piggyback starts. That could be Hap Davy pretty quick. that could be a lot of things. Cap Dabby Monty can be a lot of guys.

I just think it goes, again, these three games series, we haven't seen them, so I don't really know. I think momentum could be snatched easily today. Are the A is going to be going into a game three at home? You know, and having taken down Kuykel. The Yanks, again, we've talked a lot about playoff Tanaka. We'll see what that looks like today. And again, Cleveland, it's kind of funny because these teams are going to look at games differently.

like this is an elimination game for Cleveland. If Carasco somehow doesn't have it, they're going to go to their pen instantly. It's going to be Plunko. It's going to be Savali. It's going to be, you know, they didn't use their best guys last night. I think they're going to have everybody. Fizak is going to have spikes on in the pen.

Yeah, it's a great call for the pregame show. Like whoever's down, this is. This is it. Every single pitcher is going to have its spikes on. And whoever's sitting in the dugout without his spikes on. whoever's one up, they're not going to be as quick to go to their bullpen because they want to save them for the potential game three when they need to go all hands in. So it's a very interesting point. We'll talk about that more on the pregame show, which is starting in like 10 minutes if you're a Patreon.

Every Yankee starter had a hit except for Hicks who had two walks. Eight out of nine scored a run. They banged all night and that was good. And they save their bullpen traps. So like today they can throw Chad Green, Britain, Chapman. and those guys can still go game three. So the fact that Cole went seven and Sessa was able to get the last two,

you know, and that's why I love the Astros as well because they won only using two starters. They didn't burn any pen. So the Astros and the twins, the twins are going all hands on deck, but the Astros like the Yankees, they can use all their relievers and still use them game three.

They're not really worried about that. Two games in a row ain't nothing. So I do, it worked out. And then clean defense by the Yankees. That needs to be mentioned. They have not been doing that of late. Most errors in the major leagues. Are we going to let Gary Sanchez play today?

Are we just going to? Yeah, yeah. Does Tanaka have his own freaking catcher too? Well, yeah, because the twins don't have many catchers. I'm sick of that. Gary. Don't want to be compared to the twins in that regard. No, Gary should get the start today.

And Tanaka's been thrown to Gary for the last four seasons. And they have a really cute relationship. and I love it. What did Higashoko do yesterday? One for five. It was an infield signal. It was kind of like a backbreaker for the Indians. He did just enough to not be problematic.

And he did just enough to not be a problem about Gary starting tomorrow. He would have had an error if Glabors' Deak didn't work really well. And by the way, I just think this needs to be emphasized more because I don't think the stat line was actually said. It's seven innings pitch 13Ks from Garrett Call. I mean, you know, Gialito, gave Snell love. That's the craziest line. All right.

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free for everyone live on periscope live on facebook live on YouTube, and then it does get posted on the podcast apps under a new stream, the talking baseball. Pre-game show, eight games. Let's go get it. Thank you guys very much for listening. Jake, do you have any last words? Enjoy. One of the craziest baseball days in history.

Sounds dramatic, but honestly true. Eight playoff games one day. Yeah. And we have four potential elimination games. Bang. Bang. We're out