11 things.
All righty.
Here we go.
Eleven things:
1. So it’s Yovani Gallardo kicking things off in Toronto, and not because he’s being looked to as the de facto leader of the staff like he was in April. In fact, it’s conceivable the righthander might not have made the playoff rotation at all had Texas drawn Kansas City (and its parade of core lefty bats) rather than the Jays, whose most dangerous hitters bat from the right side — and against whom Gallardo fired 13.2 brilliant innings this season over two starts (no runs on six singles, with an opponents’ slash line of .136/.224/.136).
In his two starts against Toronto, one in late June and one in late August, Gallardo held Josh Donaldson, Jose Bautista, and Edwin Encarnacion to a combined 2 for 13 line.
Gallardo has a 2.08 ERA in four career post-season starts and a relief appearance. His first playoff work came in the very first playoff game he suited up for, Game One of the 2008 NLDS pitting Milwaukee against the Phillies in Philadelphia. Gallardo’s opposition? Cole Hamels.
Hamels laid a bunt down with a man in the third inning of that game and reached on second baseman Rickie Weeks’s error. Three runs would score in the inning, all with two outs and thus all unearned, and it’s the only scoring the Phillies would muster. But it was enough, as Hamels (and Brad Lidge) four-hit the Brewers, who scored once in the ninth to avert a shutout. Gallardo lasted only four innings, but he and four relievers held Philadelphia to just four hits themselves.
The short Gallardo outing is a familiar result, even when he’s been effective. The Rangers have determined that the spin rate on his breaking ball starts to diminish at around 90 pitches, and because he typically falls victim to deep counts, that 90-pitch mark often arrives before six innings are complete. Texas kept the leash on Gallardo short in 2015, and with a rested pen that will include either Martin Perez or Colby Lewis, the leash isn’t going to be any longer in the playoffs.
2. David Price gets the ball for the Jays, and he faces a Rangers team that he’s had more trouble with than any regular opponent over his career, in both the regular season (3-4, 5.15 ERA, .270/.330/.403 slash) and the playoffs (0-3, 4.66 ERA, .296/.305/.444 slash). Elvis Andrus (.429/.535/.429 in 43 regular season plate appearances against Price), Adrian Beltre (.306/.306/.583 in 36 plate appearances), and Mike Napoli (.263/.317/.474 in 41 plate appearances) have also faced Price in a combined five playoff games, hitting safely in all five games (a robust 8 for 21). Shin-Soo Choo is a .316 hitter against Price (though over only 21 plate appearances).
What does all that mean? Very little, unless you believe confidence can play a role in a turbo-competitive situation like the playoffs. (I do.)
By the way, Gallardo has opposed Price one time, on July 30, 2014. Final: Milwaukee 5, Tampa Bay 0. Gallardo scattered four singles and a walk over seven frames, fanning five.
Some even more tasty history?
As a Ray, Price faced the upstart Rangers in Games One and Five of the 2010 ALDS, both in his home park — which will be the case in this series in the event that the teams stretch this one to five games.
He struck 14 Rangers out in 12.2 innings, walking zero — but he lost to Texas both times.
3. On the subject of which Rangers starter might be available out of the pen tomorrow, Jeff Banister told MLB Network Radio on Monday that “we like what Martin Perez can do — there’s a good chance you’ll see three lefties in there” as part of the Texas rotation in this series.
Would Texas really leave Lewis out of the contracted rotation, in spite of his tremendous season and his strong post-season track record (4-1, 2.34 in eight starts, .178/.275/.344 slash)?
The fact is that Lewis has struggled in his last two starts and was beat up by the Jays a bit in late August, while Perez has been sharp in his last two outings and three of four. On the other hand, Lewis is unflappable and has routinely risen to the occasion in October for this team, while Perez has been prone this season to a loss of composure on occasion when things threaten to unravel.
It’s a fascinating decision. Game Four, by definition, is an elimination game (for one team or the other), and I can’t decide which of the two I think the Rangers might be leaning toward for that one.
If Gallardo doesn’t manage to get deep in the game tomorrow, we may have the answer to who gets the ball in Game Four before Game One ends.
4. Much was made yesterday of the fact that you could count on zero hands the number of ESPN’s 23 expert baseball analysts who are picking Texas to win the series with the Jays. Toronto 23, Texas 0.
There’s no doubt that the Jays are running a historically explosive lineup out there. They have a legitimate Cy Young candidate slated to pitch twice in the best-of-five, if needed. They’ve been the hottest team in baseball over the second half, and have home field. It would be silly to think the Rangers would be the favorite, even as strong as their last couple months have been.
But not one analyst out of 23 willing to go out on that limb? None of the other Division Series had similar unanimity.
MLB Network Radio’s Casey Stern believes the Jays will win the series, but he offered two underlying predictions: (1) If Texas is able to steal Game One against Price, he likes the Rangers to advance; and (2) regardless of which team prevails, he believes Toronto or Texas will represent the American League in the World Series.
For what it’s worth, the Jays won four of the teams’ six meetings this season. They beat Texas in a Nick Martinez start and a Chi Chi Gonzalez start, won a late-August game that Derek Holland was in line to win before Shawn Tolleson suffered just his second blown save, and hammered the Rangers the day after that, 12-4, in a game that pitted Price against Lewis.
The Rangers’ two wins against Toronto this year were the two games Gallardo started.
For what it’s worth, MLB Network Radio’s Mike Ferrin, Steve Phillips, and Todd Hollandsworth each believe Toronto (1) and Texas (2) have the best lineups of any playoff team in baseball. Fellow MLBNR host Jim Duquette has Toronto first and Texas third (with the Mets second).
Duquette has the Mets rotation number one and Texas number two. Ferrin doesn’t include the Rangers in his top six.
5. As far as the Rangers lineup is concerned, right now Choo (AL Player of the Month) and Beltre (AL Player of the Week) are the engines that make it go.
Choo — who finished the season’s first month hitting an incomprehensible .096 — finished the season at a healthy .276/.375/.463. He hit .343/.455/.560 in the second half of the season, including .387/.500/.613 over the final month. After moving permanently into the two hole in the order behind Delino DeShields on August 9, Texas posted a 33-20 record, second only to Toronto’s in the AL.
Jon Daniels on Choo: “He was maybe the best player in baseball during the second half.”
What a machine that guy has been.
As for Beltre, whose broken body is apparently irrelevant, he drove in 53 runs in the team’s final 48 games, which is just silly.
In the final 22 games of the season, he hit .427/.485/.719 and seemed to come through in just about every big spot. Over that time span, he led the American League in hitting, RBI (33), and OPS (an absurd 1.203).
He did it with a thumb that, when he dislocated it at the end of May, had bone break through the skin and had ligament “turned upside down,” according to Jon Heyman (CBS Sports).
And yet, when he returned to the active roster on June 23, without so much as a rehab assignment and clearly still in some degree of pain (every one of those swings that resulted in him walking slowly around the catcher and around the umpire and back to his perch in the batter’s box was probably a simple effort to give his thumb an extra five seconds to quit barking), guess how many days Beltre didn’t start over the Rangers’ final 92 games?
It’s the same number as ESPN analysts taking Texas to win this series.
Choo is a machine.
There’s not a word for what Beltre is.
(Unless you count #favorite.)
6. Mitch Moreland may sit against Price and he almost certainly won’t get the props from the national broadcast that he deserves. He’s been counted out repeatedly over his career, before quietly putting things together in 2015. I hope he does huge things in this series and quiets the critics.
What do these players have in common: Beltre, Albert Pujols, Jose Altuve, Adam Jones, Todd Frazier, Kyle Seager, Robinson Cano, and Troy Tulowitzki?
Moreland out-OPS’d every one of them in 2015.
7. There may or may not be a minor league coach in the Rogers Centre stands these next two afternoons named Tom Signore. If you’ve never heard of him, you’re excused. There are probably lots of diehard Blue Jays fans unfamiliar with the 53-year-old.
But he’s the man who may have played the biggest role in turning Sam Dyson from a fourth-round pick who had shoulder surgery and elbow surgery as a pro before throwing his first minor league pitch into what he is now.
Signore was the pitching coach for the AA New Hampshire Fisher Cats in 2012, Dyson’s second stop in his first pro season on a mound. Dyson featured a sinking fastball when Toronto drafted him in 2010 out of the University of South Carolina, but it wasn’t until Signore started working with the righthander that he began to manipulate the ball differently in his hand and develop the devastating heavy fastball that may be the most dominant pitch on the staff that Texas takes into this series.
Dyson shockingly reached the big leagues in that first healthy pro season, moving from Class A Dunedin to New Hampshire to Toronto in early July, but after a poor showing in that off-season’s Arizona Fall League, he was waived by the Jays and claimed by the Marlins.
Miami had Dyson throw his sinker half the time, if that. Rangers evaluators — including Daniels himself — felt there was added upside there if Dyson were asked to throw the pitch at more like an 80 percent rate, and the club obtained him with minutes left before the expiration of the non-waiver trade deadline on July 31, for the mere price of catcher Tomas Telis and left-handed relief specialist Cody Ege.
Telis and Ege? Where were the other 28 teams?
What was Miami thinking — when they had another five years of control over Dyson and didn’t need to move him impetuously? It’s not as if Telis and Ege was a “blow ’em away” offer that the Marlins just couldn’t let slip through their fingers, was it? Why not wait until the winter?
All moot.
They probably won’t show Tom Signore in the crowd the next two days — well, maybe they will and I’ll have no idea — but, sir, I offer you the heartiest of standing slow claps.
8. I bet 97 with bastard sink is killer on the hands, and especially in cold weather. They’ll surely close the Rogers Centre roof on Friday, when it looks like rain is a strong possibility. But what about tomorrow, when it’s supposed to be clear and in the low 50’s?
9. I’m a little worried about Rougned Odor, not so much because he hit .172/.209/.359 over his final 17 games and had a handful of errors and other mistakes that didn’t register in the box score.
I’m a little worried because he’s shown a tendency to try and be really big in situations that don’t necessarily call for it, and while Texas has always believed heavily in adding players who have never won and bring that extra hunger to the team (veterans Beltre, Choo, Napoli, Joe Nathan), Odor has never tasted the playoffs and I fear he’s going to try and hit six-run home runs with the bases empty.
Vince Gennaro, a SABR guy who shows up on MLB Network on occasion, talked this week about players with big swings who often struggle in the post-season because the number five starters and middle relievers against whom they often do lots of their in-season damage tend to gather dust in the playoffs. He mentioned Josh Hamilton as an example, and it prompted me to look up Prince Fielder’s post-season numbers, which it turns out are not pretty (.194/.287/.333 in 164 plate appearances). I think Odor probably fits the profile, too, as much as I hope I’m wrong about that.
Slow the game down, man, just a little. Just be Rougie.
10. Jeff Banister was the bench coach for Pittsburgh when that club fell in five games to St. Louis in the 2013 NLDS and lost the Wild Card Game to the Giants last year. I like that he’s had the playoff experience — the planning, the unusual scheduling, the different ways to use the roster, the heightened intensity.
There’s little that I imagine could ever be too big for Banny, given what he’s gone through on and off the field and given the life he’s devoted to the game, but I do take added comfort in the fact that he was on the front lines with Clint Hurdle the last two Octobers.
Greg Amsinger (MLB Network) said a few days ago: “I think Banister’s season . . . is arguably the greatest rookie season in sports for a manager.”
Hyperbolic, perhaps, but that man seems 100 percent to have been born to do this job — how did he never get this shot before Texas gave it to him?? — and while he’s new at managing a big league club, he’s not new to big league playoff baseball. That’s good.
11. I have no hate for the Blue Jays. I kinda like that team, actually. I had no hate for the Rays or the Giants or the Tigers or the Cardinals, either, at least going into those playoff battles.
Someone like Kevin Pillar or Chris Colabello is going to make me bristle at his name forever because of something that happens over the next week. And that’s cool. The thing is, Texas is still playing ball, and 21 other teams aren’t. Some of them are firing managers and introducing new GM’s and planning winter directions. The Rangers are trying to decide who will start Game Four.
I don’t hate the Blue Jays, but there’s a chance I will in a few days, and on a certain sports-level you just can’t ask for anything more.
Let’s go, Yo.
Bring it, Jays.
Let’s go.