Talkin' Baseball (MLB Podcast) - 40 | Nats go up 3-0, Yanks face Cole in Game 3

Episode Date: October 15, 2019

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The nationals take a three to none lead over the Cardinals, and the Yankees are squaring off against Garrett Cole for game three. What's going on, everybody? Welcome back to talking baseball. We thank you for joining us for another daily episode to recap what happened yesterday and preview what's going to happen today. My name is John Boy. I'm coming to you from New Jersey.

I got my co-host, Jake, with his conference. computer glasses on, Mike in hand, coming from Denver. And this episode is brought to you by our two most recent Patreon supporters, Hood, Polotix, and Powerhouse. Powhouse. So thank you to those two people who use their real names for sure when they signed up. But support nonetheless, it's $2 a month. It really helps us out.

If you go to Patreon.com slash John Boyd Media, there's some other perks. as well. Jake, how you doing on this fine Tuesday morning? Good. I want to thank our European listeners for signing up for Patreon. Thank you, Powerhouse and Hood Politics. I'm good, man. I'm good. The NL has NLed. That feels done. And then, well, you and I both know, today is going to be a doozy. We've got 4 p.m. shadows in the stadium. We've got Garrett Cole on the mound. And what will be, you know, game three has always been labeled the most important game of the series. It's not if you win all the other games.

But this will either give, if the Yankees win today, they are going to be clamoring to not let this series even go back to Houston. If Houston wins today, they're going to be confident they win. the series. So, uh, big one, little nervous was deep diving in Garrett Cole stats. That's a scary place if you're a Yankee fan. Also pretty awesome if you're a baseball fan. Uh, he's good. Yeah. He's good. Do you have a, do you have a burn of, uh, this Cardinals Nats game? Oh, yeah. How could you burn it? So boring, man. Oh, come on. Was this the most boring game of the postseason so far? Yes, this was the

Well, I mean the 10-1 Braves game But that was kind of like a car accident Like you kind of had to watch that I mean for like an hour That was the most exciting game You had to text your friends And be like tune into this first inning dude It's crazy

This game was fucking a dud Yeah, it was like a tragedy I mean this one was I mean scoreless for the first couple With Flaherty and Strasbourg But yeah It became a it became a flip to Sunday night football for a little bit game.

Monday night football. I was watching the rerun of Sunday nights game. You know, I love getting the tape. I forgot. You're a big got to get in the tape. Got to get in the tape. That's how you know. All right.

We can burn this one. I'm still feeling a little sick. Still out of it. As you burn this, I might chug some coffee and hope it does something to me. Yeah. I watch this game. And I can really like, I can't seem to find like a lot of talking points.

So I'm hoping your burn reminds me of a lot of stuff. I feel bad for the Cardinals. Let's burn it and then we'll get into the game a little bit. On your mark. Get set. Burn. Jakey burn. Game three in the District of Champions as the best asterisk pitcher of all time.

Steven Strasberg takes on Jack Flash into me, Flaherty, as him and his band of Cardinals try to reduce the space between them in the Nats. Bottom three, Cardinals fans are going to have nightmares about the eight-hole hitter forever. Robles gets on. Adam eats him home on an RBI single. Anthony Davis Rendon. He blocks one out for an RBI double. And then Howie, Kendrick Lamar, sit down.

Be humble, another huge hit for Kendrick, a 2 RBI double, 4-0-Nats after 3, Flash, and the cards get taken out after 4, basically. Give me something real like an ass with some stretch marks. Kendrick, another RBI double. Zimmerman, retweet RBI-B double. Dime P's straight 8 ball, Robles from the A-Spot goes yard, first MLB game in front of his moms, that's awesome. Day Young, singles, and Soto stumbles, but the asterisk man is about to shake it away. Seven innings pitch, zero earn runs, 12Ks from Stephen A. Strasbourg on his first take with the cards. Jim, it's 8-1 final 3-0 series lead just filled with Nattitude. Natitude.

All right, a couple quick comments from your burn. take the asterix away from Strasbourg. I think this was a seventh game now in the postseason. He's officially earned. The sample size isn't a joke anymore. And I'm happy for him. Someone's at my door. This isn't good.

Someone go check it out. I can BS about Strasbourg a little bit. Employee Bill. Talk for a little. Oh, okay. Yeah, it is Strasbourg's. Is it the seventh start? Yeah.

Seventh game, 41 innings pitched. 57 strikeouts. Oh, my God. A 1-1-E-R-A. Yeah, he came into this postseason with four. We were laughing about him a little bit. Now it's bona fide.

He is proven himself. And, yeah, the Strausberg story, it really is interesting. You and I circled around this a little bit during the year. But, you know, he had such high expectations as a young pitcher. that he's been really good, but I don't know, in 2015 and 2016, when we were kind of expecting him to take off, he just kind of had these years, you know, 3, 460RA, 3-6 ERA. But his body of works pretty incredible.

In 10 years, he's 112 and 58, a 3-170RA, more strikeouts than innings pitch. And, yeah, it's cool seeing, it's the opposite of Kirschild. Like if you're a true baseball fan, you hate seeing Kershaw's struggles in the postseason like he has. If you're a baseball fan, you love someone like Strasbourg, unless you're a Cardinals fan, taking off and proving that he's a bona fide stud. Yeah, the Sespas family barbecue guys have been all over it saying like, how is one of the most hyped prospects ever an underrated MLB player?

Yeah. You know, he was the most hyped prospect and now he's overlooked. and he's still like just performing. It's an interesting thing. I think maybe we just, I think Bryce Harper still was hype. And then the Nats kind of used him. Once the Nats sat him for their last postseason run

when he was a young pitcher, that was kind of like, I think baseball was like, what are they doing? I'm over this. Yeah, they kind of, I mean, and the Nats kind of went down for a little bit. Like everyone thought they were going to be a dynasty instantly. They weren't.

And then, and I think the other. factor is Scherzer. I mean, Scherzer's, you know, the Cy Young winner. Scherzer's, he's got two different colored eyes. He was the dude leading the way and kind of bigger. He's got two different color eyes. Hey, that's, you know, it's not huge when he's pitching. Maybe it is. Maybe that's how he freaks hitters out. Yeah, well, sure. Strasberg's got a beard that makes him look like he's in the second half of a Civil War movie where he's aged 10 years now and they had to put a fake beard on his face. Strasbourg's beard ears combo isn't doing much for him

No he looks like an extra in the movie Lincoln And I can say that as someone that my beard and ears combo Ain't doing much for me either At least you plug him up with those headphones Get your Shrek on What I love my I'm like that's the chuelers

Khears How about Howie dude Three doubles Yeah he uh three RBIs. I mean, what an incredible postseason. And he's covering for his dude Soto.

Soto's numbers aren't looking so hot anymore. But yeah, man, Howie Kendrick, he went from, and dude, think about if Clayton Kershaw doesn't hang that one pitch to Soto, the Dodgers win, Howie Kendrick goes down as a fool. He had three errors in a base running gaff

in five games in the division series. And now all of a sudden, a little walk-off, well, not a walk-off, but a little extra inning Grand Salami later, and now he just continues to rake. And his stats have been stupid. I think since the start of September, he's hitting like over 400 with a crazy OPS. So, I mean, good on Howie Kendrick,

but it's also a fantastic case study on how a couple things can change, how you're looked at. Because if they lost game five to the Dodgers, we would have been saying like, oh, Howie Kendrick is a dunce. They should have played as Struble Cabrera. That's like, and if they move on, Soto gets a chance to redeem himself in the next series for this bad series.

Like, there are many seasons, which is just so much more fun. And, um, you can be the zero to hero. I saw a lot of Cardinals fans that were kind of upset with Ozuna for missing that, that sliding grab. with Rendon's hit to left field. Yeah. But,

I mean, he missed it. It went right in his glove, yeah. He was in his glove. And I, you have to slide, but I don't think it's a crazy, hard play. I do think, like,

Ozuna should have caught that. But also, you can't pinpoint that and, like, try and be mad at Ozuna as if that's the reason this game was lost. You were losing this game, no matter what. Yeah, I mean,

you've had two runs and three games. Um, Jim, I think, and unless I miss something, I'm pretty sure that a lefty hitter does not have a hit for the Cardinals in this series. I think they're like 0 for 30 or something. Damn. Yeah. So that's Fowler, Wong, Edmund, and Carpenter.

and maybe Wheaters gets thrown in there. But yeah, I might have missed something and I could have slaughtered that stat, but I'm pretty sure it's during like the fourth inning, I think it was 0 for 26. And I didn't see it lefty hit or get a hit. That's so bad. It's incredibly bad. They should have a little meeting as a group.

And John, I don't know if you want to get credit for this, but I think you said, you know, coming into this game, were looking for anything for the Cardinals. We were actually excited for Ozuna. He had good numbers versus Strasbourg. We told Goldie, or I think you specifically mentioned Goldie, he goes golden sombrero. Yeah, no, he's having a bad series, right? I get, I think his numbers on the series are terrible now.

Yeah, I mean, the numbers that are going to leak out, the norm, we've kept going back to the word historic. And yeah, this Cardinals team, unless they pull some. something out of their butt real quick are going to be historically bad. Dexter Fowler is hitless. Colton Wong is hitless. Goldschmidt's hitting 083. Tommy Edmund is hitless. I mean, just outmatched and outclassed. Yeah, Goldie is, Goldie has a 0.83. He's got one hit in 12 played appearances, no walks and six strikeouts. Yeah.

Bad. Yeah, man. I mean, if it's historical either way now, I mean, they better get no hit tonight or they have to win four in a row and then that's historical. Yeah, a lot of pressure on Patrick Corbyn, dude. Are you up hits to these guys?

You're a bum. Are you personally mad at the Cardinals? No, no. I am. I am. I don't. I mean, I, I was rooting for Flaherty, and they got to them, like pretty much straight up.

I was rooting for Flaherty as well. I like Flaherty. It was a really cool story. The Ozuna, you know, the Ozuna missed catch, whatever. But yeah, I mean, they got to Flaherty. The eight-hole hitters are going to haunt them. Robles gets them today. It was Jan Goams, and then it was Michael A. Taylor, the game before that.

You have to be kicking yourself over those in front of the pitcher. Maybe they don't have the eighth hitter. on the scouting report. That's something they do. And then the 8th hitters coming up. Don't worry about him. And then you got the pitcher. So just one through seven, worry about it.

And Jim, the biggest thing you have to be mad about, Mike Maddox, the pitching coach, hits two holes in ones before the game. Really? Like you lost the game for your team. Yeah, there was some celebrity, there's some celebrity golf outing the day before, hit two aces.

He stole all the luck. Yeah, you lost the series. man smoltsy maddicks what are they doing i know um yeah and jim i don't know and it was kind of i i gave the hesitant speech after game two where i said nat or cardinals fans were going to hate me i'd said it before game one i mean if you go through like those corny checkboxes the matchups before you see each series that they'll do on like the the pregame show and it'll be like hitting checkmark pitching check mark i mean if you really really run through those, the Nats

had every check mark. You know, you say Cardinals fans are going to hate you. I'm mad at the Cardinals. This is boring. I made a commitment to watch every game this postseason and last night I stayed home and I was watching the game

and it was just like I said, either don't get a hit and be historically bad or win the game and make it exciting. And they did neither and it's just wasting everyone's time. And game four Are we even going to preview this? I mean, to a degree, I think my biggest preview is like, yo,

there is an odd amount of pressure on Patrick Corbyn. I don't think so, man. Like, dude, if Corbyn gets knocked around, A, like the other pitchers are just going to make fun of them on the Nationals team. And then B, like, there's the whole, like, what if he sparked him? Not that I think he's going to. But, like, Corbin, dude, if you look bad against these guys, you're going to be the joke of the pitching staff. Yeah, that's true.

All three did. I thought the pressure was going to be... Anabal one hit him. What's that? Anabal one hit him. Well, how many hits the Scherzer give up in the end? Strasberg 12Ks. I think Scherzer was only one hit.

I think the other hits, technically, because there was that misplayed ball, came off relievers. Strasberg actually gave up a few hits. Okay, so what does Corbyn have to do? But he didn't give up an earn run. What does Corby? have to do to, like, be part of the club.

If he gives up one... He can't give up an earned run. He can't give up an earned run? No starting pitcher has given up an earned run yet for the Nats. Cool. So, Corbyn, you can't give up an earned run or you're a loser? Yeah. That's tough.

Tough, bad break. What do you think the Cardinals plan is? I mean, I would genuinely do this. If I was Ozuna or at Goldschmidt, Goldschmidt doesn't really have the personality for it. Not a shot at him, but what I'm about to say is a little over the top. I mean, you go full major league and you kill a chicken. I bring a chicken.

I bring in a live chicken and I kill it in front of everyone in the clubhouse. Give me a better plan. I did not see that coming. Give me a better plan. You're going to take more swings? You're going to watch more tape? No, you have to do something. When the Red Sox were down three games to none against the Yankees,

they all took a shot before game four. And we're like, hey, whatever, fuck it. Let's take a shot. So maybe, yeah, maybe you put all the bats in the middle of the clubhouse and the whole team circles around and peas on all of them. And then like, you're like, all right, pee bat rally. Something like that. Yeah.

Got to do something. You can't just go out for game first. like your normal selves. Yaddy or Molina has to kill a chicken in the middle of that clubhouse. Well, that's scary because I mean, he's not doing it peacefully. No, and that's the point. You should feel shook. Like, it's not, it's not watch Yadi kill a chicken.

And then you're like, okay, oh, Yadier's back at it. Like, no, you should be like visibly shaking. Okay. Well, let's take a quick break before we go into the preview. Imagine if there is like a Tyson chicken ad All right, we have two games going on tonight Like we kind of mentioned There's game four in the Nats Cardinals series

Which I don't even know what to talk about Where we do need a chicken sacrifice or a peabat rally And there's the Yankees Astros game which is Garrett Cole versus Luis Severino in the Bronx Zoo And this game matters a whole ton so we'll probably spend a little more talking about this. Let's finish up game four for the Nats cards, Jake.

Obviously. We're breaking chronological order first time in pot history. Yeah, we're not, this is we're stepping away. You did this to us, Cardinals. We're stepping away from our Cron Podways because I'm just, I just don't even really have anything to say about this game four. Do you, like honestly, who are the Cardinals pitching? Dakota Hudson

Okay I mean It's Dakota Hudson versus our guy Corbin like we mentioned And yeah No like I You know we're

Quote unquote jokes With the chicken stuff And Corbin not being able to give up an earn run I don't know man I mean if you're the Cardinals This is what you're actually saying You're saying we haven't seen Corbin yet He's 11

let's get some hits going. You know, maybe they can win in kind of crushing fashion. You know, maybe they can have a two-hit performance and score one run and win one-nothing game or something like that. Because you are telling yourself technically Annabal Sanchez would be on deck after Corbyn and then you could go home. Like, it's digging deep when you don't have an earned runoff of starting pitcher yet. But if you somehow win this technically,

you've got Anabal next game. Yeah, almost no hit him. Yeah. Should they start Fernando Rodney? I would. Right? Change the vibe of the game right away. Rodney's awesome.

No earned runs in the series. Fernando Rodney is going to be pitching in the 2019 World Series. He has no earned runs this postseason. It's a stud. He's locked in. Changeup looks dirty. I think he's got a couple inherited runs. Note it is, though.

It's the classic you come out, you're playing JV baseball, you're playing, you know, a team from three towns away, pitcher gets on the mound to warm up. You've never seen him before. And he comes out and you're like, all right, is this kid going to be throwing cheese today? What's this kid got? And he comes out and he's thrown 55.

and you're like, boys, we're eating today. And then you hit a liner to short, someone pops out. And then you're like, damn, we can't hit this dude. That's what Rodney's got going right now. Okay. I like that. Also, he's very intimidating on the mound. Yeah, doesn't care.

Doesn't care. I don't know what to say. I mean, if you're the Cardinals, try to get some hits and play perfect defense. If you're in nationals, kind of just relax because you're going to win. Corbyn's got pressure on them. The batters can be so loose up there, which is a good thing. That's the thing.

Well, I'd say that for the Cardinals, too, at this point, like, it can't get worse. Like, you're already historically bad. If you have another bad game, you stay historically bad. If you have a good game, you could change the story a little bit. Yeah.

Start a fight. They need Yadi getting mad at someone. I told them, lean into two pitches. Didn't happen. Damn. Damn. All right. Game three Yankees Astros is going to be a big one.

It's a tall task for the Yankees. Garrett Cole has been the best pitcher this postseason. He's one of the best pitchers all season. I mean, maybe Strasbourg has him. Maybe he doesn't. I don't know the stats. This is Garrett Cole's first away game in the postseason this year. I think he's had three away postseason starts before.

He's one and two. Talking about a different pitcher, though, from back in the day. Severino had one start this against the twins. He got himself into a lot of trouble but never broke. It's going to be a close game. What do you got? I don't know how much we want to dive into or not dive into here, but... Yeah, I mean, first I'm going to say you and I bit our tongues a little bit

when they announced that this game was going to be a four Eastern game. In hindsight, MLB, you screwed up. You screwed up. Now you've got a 3-0 game against a team that hasn't scored an earn run against a starting pitcher being the nightcap when you have two of the best pitchers on the two best teams in baseball going at it in game three. This should be the night game.

Anyways, thanks for listening, MLB. Severino, I think, is interesting, Jimmy. You mentioned his playoff start. You know, he got out of a bases loaded, no-out jammed. Four hits, two walks, four strikeouts, and four innings. That's all they really asked of him. And he's still got a pitch limit. I mean, like, it's, you know, the Yankees plan to let him rip and get to the pin when they need to

is still going to be there. I'm a little worried because I think his last two starts, he struggled with control a little bit. the last series against Texas, which those games didn't matter at all, but he had four walks. And then the twins start, his control didn't look locked in. So if he doesn't tighten that up a little bit, yeah, I mean, you could see the Yanks go to the Penn early

because Houston has a lot of good, a lot of good hitters that'll be ready and they'll take pitches. They pass the baton. Yeah, you saw them go to the Penn super early with Paxton. who hadn't given up a lot of runs in the third inning and Boone said it'll be just as aggressive again because it worked out

I mean if the Yankees had three runs they would have penned it the rest of the way the stadium should be jumping despite the four o'clock start but the bats will not be I mean Buckshall Walter has a great quote like four o'clock start no one can see

I mean if you Buckshaw Walter's score was if you if you're a pitcher and you can't get through the first three innings of a four o'clock start unscathed, then you're a bad pitcher. Yeah, you have to be pretty bad to not get through. Yeah, that's what he said. Because the shadows, if anyone doesn't know,

because the shadows are in between the pitcher and the batter, and it makes it harder to pick up the seams, and it should be a lot of early curveballs. Yeah, and I know you tweeted that out. And it really is, there's like three different good questions, quotes in that quote. Bucks talking about how pitchers used to fight for the 4 p.m. starts because basically you could put it in cruise control the first few innings. Yeah, and I mean, that's what you'd expect. Even if this game wasn't, you'd expect Severino and Cole to be zeros early. I mean,

it's going to be definition of playoff baseball. If there's a lead-off double somehow and the teams will do anything and everything possible to try to get that run home because it would be huge. And maybe this sounds corny. Maybe we're sounding like Yankees homers. I think the storyline is going to be how crazy is the stadium and can they get to Cole? You know, if the Yankees, because the Yankees will, they'll do something against Cole, whether it's a solo shot or a walk and then a single, whatever it is. You know, the Yankees are a really good lineup.

And it's, you know, when Garrett Cole finds himself in the second inning and there's runners on first and second one out. You know, is he get a little nervous? Does he start shaking a little bit? Does he leave a fastball over the plate? Or does he lock down and throw even filthier stuff than he normally has? I mean, that's, I think that's the only watch. I mean, I'm hoping not to because I'm a Yankee fan, but like, I bet on call.

Yeah, and I dove into the numbers a little bit, looking for anything on Cole. the only thing that I did find, and you will find this with a lot of pitchers, so I'm not breaking news, but batters this year on the first pitch versus Garrett Cole have a 356 batting average in a 1.051 OPS. And, you know, we've seen the first pitch, a lot of hitters attacking the first pitch already in the playoffs. And when batters get ahead of Cole, they have an 878 OPS this year. So, and contrary to that, when Cole is ahead in the count, batters hit 149 with a 259 slugging and a 412 OPS. I have a question. Sure.

Based on those numbers, if Cole is ahead in the count, you're spooked. If Cole is behind in the count, you have a good chance of putting up some good numbers. What the hell is the strategy? because if you're cold, that means you've got to throw first pitch strike. If you're the Yankees, does that mean you try to attack a first pitch fastball? Or is it better to try and take the first pitch and hope it's a ball? Like that bakes that first pitch very fucking tricky. Yeah, the first pitch is kind of what to watch for.

And it's like what zone does the umpire have going? And it's, I mean, it comes back to the whole Yankees mantra, control the zone and all that. And again, the numbers, the numbers off. of the first pitch are really good too. So I think the Yankees are just saying like, hey, you know, Cole's going to be out there for a while either way. You know, there's no automatic first pitch takes. Like you see it in the regular season a lot.

You'll see guys just put the bat on their shoulder after the pitcher throws the ball or do things like that. That's not acceptable today. If you see something in the zone, you got to swing. If not, I mean, that's the mind fuck. you know, that first pitch, if everyone's going to be geared up and Cole's just going to drop a nasty off-speed pitch, the Yanks could look really bad and really ugly for the first couple innings.

If not, and they can constantly get ahead, you know, I think that would be huge in the Yankees' best chance. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know what their strategy is going to be. They've been trying to attack early. They tried to attack Granky early. They were very aggressive in the count.

They tried to attack Verlander early, very aggressive in the count, swinging at the first or second pitch, first time through, trying to get those early fastballs. I think they're going to try and do the same thing with Cole. We'll see if they can. He likes to work high in the count, or high in the zone, just like Verlander, which is tough. My wish is some of the varieties can just, you know,

kind of make contact and fly that out to the short portion right there. We'll see. Yeah. We'll see. I will say for lineup-wise, I think the Yankees will be start. guarding Aaron Hicks in center, moving Gardner to the left. And then the D.H question is, is it Stanton or is Edwin?

Who knows? And for them, I believe, I think Kyle Tucker's going to get the start. That's kind of the only position that's been roving around. Mariznick got the start versus the lefty, Paxton. But as soon as Paxton was out of the game, Mariznick came out of the game and Kyle Tucker got at bats the rest of the way. So I think Reddick kind of lost his job. Yeah, they pulled back pretty quickly on Mariznick, too.

I think he only had one at bat. As soon as the pitcher changed, yeah. Yeah, at the end they were just like, yeah, no. I think if they do that again, they'd rather just have Tucker out there for the one at bat and then have Mariznick available as a defensive replacement later if you need them. Like that early defense is kind of a weird play.

Yeah, and I don't know. it'll be interesting. I feel like for Severino... I think Mersnick was in there for splits, not defense. Lefty pitcher, he was a righty. Kyle Tucker's lefty. His numbers are bad for his lefties. Like, the dude doesn't hit anyone.

But still, it just seems as soon as a righty pitcher came in, they switched. Right, but I'm saying, like, even if you're going to do that and you know Paxson might only get through the lineup once, like you just burned a guy for two innings of defense. I don't know. That it's just just my humblest of opinions. And yeah, I think for Yankees fans, they're going to know in the first inning like, all right, is Sevi going to basically give us five or are we going to be fighting through three? Yes.

Yeah. Because if Sevy, like we said versus the twins, he came out unscathed, but it was a fucking battle to get through four innings. And he, he's never really had a breeze. playoff start like we saw Tanaka have like we see Verlander Cole Strasbourg have Sevies had some good results in a couple games in the postseason but he's never been look Sevy's throwing nice and easy today you know yeah so hopefully the zoo can play a part Yankee fans are nuts uh yeah also and and I'll take it a step further Jim now that I am looking at his playoff stats because I don't know the strikeouts are there um you know the hits

are a little higher than normal, including, you know, that one albatross. The walks are what's pretty wild. And I just mentioned his past couple. In 27 playoff innings, he has 16 walks, which just isn't Louis Severino. So that's, again, goes back to control and early on. We'll see what if he's dotting them or if he's walking guys, you could see the bullpen as early as you saw it with Paxton. The other thing I'm going to say is, when we said this from the start of this series,

from a Yankees fan perspective, Adamadovino is the key. He's pitching both games, Springer got to him. They're going to see Britain for the third time tonight if Britain comes in. When does the familiarity effect come in for these relievers? And Smoltz has kind of been on that. Like, hey, if you bring relievers into every game, hitters get to see the relievers every game. So we'll see how that goes.

I mean, Chad Green threw a lot of innings. so they got a good look at him. They've gotten a good look at Tommy Canely, all that stuff. We'll see how it goes. And then for the bullpen for the other side, the Yankees, they had somewhat of a good strategy versus Verlander. They made Verlander work really hard. And then the Astros bullpen came in,

and it kind of seemed like the Yankees forgot a strategy. They forgot to bring a strategy to the plate against the bullpen. Maybe it was just like, oh, thank God Verlander's out. Let's go hit these guys. and they forgot like, oh, you have to have a plan against them too. So if they get into the Yankees, the Astros bullpen again, we'll see who wins that battle. Yankees won at game one, Astros bullpen won at game two.

If I'm fucking hinch, I'm throwing Joe Smith again. Yeah, and that's the other thing. I mean, Joe Smith also executed and looked dirty. Yeah, he looked really good. A little bit shot at the Yankees, but also the Stroes bullpen who, hey, Jim, I did my whole football speech, how the Yankees starting pitching was looking at Houston's starting pitching saying like, hey, we're pretty good too.

Houston's bullpen compared to a lot of baseball teams is pretty good compared to the Yankees. They're on a different level. So I bet that Houston bullpen's kind of been itching down there all week saying, hey, let, you know, we did pretty good too, guys. Itching down there all week. Oh, my God. Sounds like a burn line. Yeah, it sounds like it burns for sure.

Yeah. Talking STDs. Usually are. Wow. Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow. All right, this is an early game, so we got to get going. We got to do the Yankees pregame show. It's a 4 o'clock start, which sucks. So I think that ends this episode. We hope you guys enjoyed some baseball talk.

We thank you for tuning in each and every day, listening. If you're enjoying it, leave a rating, review, subscribe, but leave a comment on YouTube. I read those because it's like one of the only places you can get. feedback. There's no comment section for podcast, you know. Kind of interesting. Yeah, but that's not like instant. Like this episode, this episode, you know.

So we'll see you tomorrow. Two games to recap. Cardinals, don't let me down. Lose easily.