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| alright let's focus up no cutters ever here we go good stuff |
I will grant you—fully and without reservation!—that we need to score more than just the one run, and that Vladdy up with the bases loaded and two out in the bottom of the eighth would have been a particularly rad time for a ball to be, say, ripped into the gap, or indeed right over the left-field fence, or something (really anything) at all in that register. All true! But it is also true that I am literally begging Eric Lauer to stop throwing that cutter. It just sits there, man. Bad cutters are arguably the worst bad pitches, a lesson that 実況パワフルプロ野球' / Jikkyō Pawafuru Puro Yakyū, or its former (and future? if we ask Konami so nicely?) iteration as MLB POWER PROS is only to eager to teach you: in Power Pros, more than in any other game I have played, bad cutters are transmuted into monstrous bean tanks at a rate that is truly harrowing, and enough to make you swear off the pitch entirely if you are not among its foremost exponents. I am asking Eric Lauer to be cognizant of this going forward. I am also asking that he please be cool about pitching behind an opener, especially against an exclusively right-handed lineup like the Angels can run out there. Was I little surprised to see Tommy Nance come out for an inning after Spencer Miles' three? Sure! I bet we all were, a little! But that part of the plan worked perfectly, and kept the Angels off the board until Lauer appeared in the fifth. His final line on the day: six runs (I mistyped this initially as "six funs," but that is way more funs than were on offer in this one) on five hits and two walks, and while he did strike out four, it does bear mention that he also allowed three home runs (that's too many of them).
What a mess! Lauer's ERA is way up over six! I wonder how his FIP is looking . . . okay, just the faintest tick under seven; this is to say, if anything, he is actually maybe outperforming his peripherals a little. Yikes! It isn't clear what exactly can be done, either: Berrios might be finished, as might Scherzer, and Bieber is still weeks away. Word is the Blue Jays are calling up Yariel Rodriguez, which feels like a drastic measure, but maybe its just crazy enough to work? It's strange how dark a series win can feel if you lose the final game. It's true, too, that there was a bit of a shadow cast over this game before it began, as Addison Barger was a late scratch with soreness and limited mobility in his throwing arm after uncorking that insane throw to the plate yesterday. It's not clear if he'll be headed back to the IL, but given the way things have gone injury-wise so far this season, I don't think anybody would be shocked!
And yet virtually none of the other AL teams seem willing to be really any good at all, and so here we sit but a single game out of the Wild Card spot(s)! It is for sure a shame that our next three are against the Rays, but at least we are at home, rather than at the legitimately cursed Trop, and we've got Gausman, Corbin (don't laugh! he's been so good!), and Cease lined up. Two out of three would be just heavenly, if we could swing it.
KS
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