{"id":402,"date":"2009-10-19T12:16:35","date_gmt":"2009-10-19T16:16:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.broadstreetbelievers.com\/?p=402"},"modified":"2009-10-19T12:18:51","modified_gmt":"2009-10-19T16:18:51","slug":"nlcs-game-3-thoughts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/?p=402","title":{"rendered":"NLCS Game 3 Thoughts"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"lee-I don’t think Joe Torre ever explained\u00a0why he\u00a0decided to go with Hiroki Kuroda in Game 3 and Randy Wolf in Game 4.\u00a0 Wolf clearly had a better season,\u00a0has much more\u00a0major-league experience, and didn’t spend the last three weeks recovering from an injury.\u00a0 I know Wolf didn’t pitch great in his Game 1 start in the NLDS, but\u00a0it’s not like he imploded, and his ERA over the second\u00a0half of the season was under 3.00.\u00a0 So why did Torre decide to set-up Kuroda for two starts in this series (including a potential Game 7), and leave Wolf in the one-start spot of Game 4?\u00a0\u00a0Obviously, hindsight is 20\/20, but\u00a0that was probably a\u00a0pretty big mistake.<\/p>\n

-Shane Victorino’s 3-run homer in the 8th inning last night didn’t mean anything to that game, but it was nice to put up some more runs on this Dodger bullpen and maybe chip away at their aura of invincibility and confidence.\u00a0\u00a0Ronald Belisario and George Sherrill have both been tagged already in this series.<\/p>\n

-If you’re going to win a World Series, you need guys to get hot at the right time.\u00a0 If one of those guys is a starting pitcher who’s already really good, that’s the best-case scenario, and Cole Hamels showed that last year for the Phillies.\u00a0 Now, I don’t want to jinx anything, but what Cliff Lee is doing this year has been very reminiscent of Hamels last year.\u00a0 He’s now given up 2 earned runs in 24.1 innings, good for an ERA of 0.74.<\/p>\n

-Lee’s dominance might also have a psychological effect on the Dodgers.\u00a0 Even with just a 2-1 deficit in the series, their margin for error is almost non-existent.\u00a0 With Lee looming in Game 7, and being opposed by either Kuroda or Chad Billingsley (who the Dodgers clearly didn’t want to start any games this post-season), the Dodgers may be feeling like they have to win the next three games in a row if they want to take this series.<\/p>\n

-I watched Charlie Manuel’s press conference after the game last night, and I just can’t get enough of\u00a0him anymore.\u00a0 He’s such a good guy and has proven to be an equally good manager, and I hope he stays healthy enough to stick around for a lot more years as manager of this team.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

-I don’t think Joe Torre ever explained\u00a0why he\u00a0decided to go with Hiroki Kuroda in Game 3 and Randy Wolf in Game 4.\u00a0 Wolf clearly had a better season,\u00a0has much more\u00a0major-league experience, and didn’t spend the last three weeks recovering from … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[769,382,655,222,70,717,768,765,16,360,310,770,369],"class_list":["post-402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mlb","tag-chad-billingsley","tag-charlie-manuel","tag-cliff-lee","tag-cole-hamels","tag-dodgers","tag-george-sherrill","tag-hiroki-kuroda","tag-joe-torre","tag-phillies","tag-playoffs","tag-randy-wolf","tag-ronald-belisario","tag-shane-victorino"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}