Jon Lackey pitches on short rest to try to save the Cardinals season as the Cub go for the NLDS series win behind Jason Hammel. The Cardinals deep starting staff seems to have disintegrated as Michael Wacha and Lance Lynn pitched poorly down the stretch, and Carlos Martinez is out with an injury. Lackey pitched a great game one, 7 1/3 shutout innings. Lackey pitched well in his previous short rest playoff outings, but he was a much younger man. Hammel is prone to give up the long ball at home with 15 of his 23 home runs allowed coming at Wrigley Field. He also pitched poorly against the Cardinals, allowing seven runs in 11 innings, those 11 innings coming in three starts.
The Dodgers face elimination in New York as they send Clayton Kershaw against the Mets on short rest. New York counters with rookie Steven Matz. Kershaw took the loss in game one, and now holds a post-season record of 1-6 with a 4.99 ERA in nine starts and three relief appearances. He’s becoming the Barry Bonds of pitchers when it comes to regular and post-season comparisons. In his post-season career, Kershaw has been hammered with runners in scoring position. Matz gets the assignment despite just 35 2/3 major league innings. He is a mature rookie at age 24, and he dominated the minor leagues. His only weakness so far is the four home runs he allowed.
Enjoy!
Update: The comparison with Bonds is on runners in scoring position, not his overall post-season numbers.
“He’s becoming the Barry Bonds of pitchers when it comes to regular and post-season comparisons”
Mr. Pinto, let’s please be fair. Bonds’ postseason career spanned 48 games (208 PAs) in which he had a 936 OPS (433 OBP, 503 SLG). Is Bonds really the player whose postseason career should be synonymous with “bad”? As a point of comparison, Yogi Berra – a man eternally linked with postseason success – had a career postseason OPS of 811.
Aryeh » Early in Bonds’s post-season career, he was terrible with runners in scoring position. I don’t know off the top of my head how well he wound up doing in that category, but with an 0 for 25 to start his career, it probably wasn’t that good. That was my point, a great hitter who performed poorly with runners in scoring position in the playoffs, versus a great pitcher who performed poorly with runners in scoring position during the playoffs. Sorry I didn’t make that clear.
Years ago George Steinbrenner called Dave Winfield “Mr. May” in contrast to Reggie Jackson being “Mr. October.” Perhaps Kershaw can be labeled as the “Anti-Mr. October”? It’s hard to explain his great regular season successes with his post-season failures other than there being some sort of psychological factor in play or the Dodgers are forcing him to do too much with too little rest.
James Crabtree » Or small sample size. 🙂