(3) St. Louis Cardinals vs. (2) Los Angeles Dodgers

personally, i'm more worried about the hitting tonight. Ellis' little speech about their regular season fight with Giants at the end there and having to come back from that 9-0 beat down was OK, but this is the post season. quite a bit more pressure because you're goin home guaranteed if you fall behind 2-0 to this STL club. so hopefully the bats won't be gripped too tight tonight. a big 1st or 2nd inning would help..or something crazy like another Ellis bomb to get guys feelin good and juiced up.

 

It's my understanding that we were going CK, Grienke, Ryu as the rotation and Haren would be a long arm.
Guys get tired when it's hot in the Ravine. He got tired. He should have been pulled mid way through. Especially given his history with the birds.

All I was seeing last night was dejavu of Pedro. Everyone could see he was gassed and Gump, for better or worse, couldn't pull the trigger.

 

I'm more worried about grienke than our bats. We've been on fire since August. I will prob break my tv if I see bozo pull Crawford out of the game again. Now that puig is focused again I see 5 runs average with this lineup.

 

because all of baseball shares notes, or because everybody in baseball has the same level of competence in this area? i guess everybody in baseball should be the same baseball factory that that Cards are if that's the case. they do it better. plain and simple.

pitcher, catcher, manager. 95MPH is far from 98MPH. 95MPH, when you know it's comin, is far more hittable. Kersh changed eye levels with it, but when you work the count and get in a situation where you know it must come into the strike zone..there it is. and that's aside from the fact that everybody knows Kersh is going fastball on pitch #1 in general. they jumped on those 2-3 times as well.

i don't know about that " pen stuff "..before i go to THAT pen, i wanna talk to Kersh about a plan to get out of that inning. i'm not goin up there to ask he and AJ anything other than " OK, what are we doin here? " fuck our bullpen..that's just pressure that our starters are gonna have to deal with..unless the pen starts manning up and get our starter's backs when they see them struggling. Baez didn't tho.

 

they can't lean on August games right now..they weren't facing a 0-2 " entire season on the line " deficit in August. these little pressures of the game and situations really happen. guys tighten up. i look up and down our lineup and i know for certain that Dee was a bit nervous yesterday..Dee is our guy, but i might try Turner today. that's just me. Turner is a loose guy by nature. i know they won't tho because they don't wanna shatter Dee's confidence. but Hanley is also tryin to go yard with every swing because he's still fightin his contract status/pressure and what not. i'm starting to think his knee issue could actually do him some good if somebody can just tell him " hey..if you swing hard as fuck all the time and try to kill fans with HR balls, you don't think that'll hurt your knee a lil? smooth strokes, baby. "

i was actually surprised to see Kemp flex the way he did in his 1st REAL post season action as a big impact bat. he was just a lil 7-hole guy during Mannywood. Kemp's a leader tho..i believe that..i think he'll be alright tonight. possibly even great. we have some guys with experience, but when you're lookin at a 0-2 hole against that same Cards team that took you out, you might want it too much and see it slip away. see; Kobe/Game 7 in the rematch vs. Boston. even the most gutsy of players can fall victim to it. and i gotta give Lance Lynn cred too..he handled LAD last year and he's gotten better.

 

http://hardballtalk.nbcsports.com/2...-scream-at-me-youve-got-to-be-ready-to-fight/

 

Like I was telling Nirvanaskurdt,
I probably won't watch a single pitch today.
I don't like how I react to losing. I went an entire regular season without getting upset over baseball and I don't want to ruin that progress.
I just can't get over last night's loss. So saddening. And I know they're going to allude to last night's game throughout the entire broadcast tonight. Last night will haunt us for a long time unless we somehow come back.

Hoping for the best.

 

i'm not even mad at Yadi for thinking that way..not at all. i'm also not happy with him colluding with his manager and staff to throw at our hitters either tho. but if Yadi's emotional enough to get into a fight and get himself tossed..great. i think we'll see a different Yadi going forward tho..i'm sure they've told him that they can't afford to lose him.

however, and i said this when it 1st happened..you could tell from the start of it all that AGon wasn't looking for a fight..1st of all, AGon is too smart to get himself tossed when we're the more talented team anyway. and secondly, all he wanted to do there was stick up for Puig and bring attention to the fact that this shit keeps happening..AGon woke up the umps with what he did and now the Cards are being watched. i think some ( not all) of that had to do with Wainwright's fall yesterday..he no longer commanded the inside of the plate after that..and that's what i don't want to happen to Greinke tonight, so he just needs to pitch and not bean anybody. we're more talented than they are anyway. leave that shit to them, unless it's a situation where we need to clear the benches again on behalf of them doing something. i used to feel like " fuck this..hit them back! ", but not anymore because that's what they want being that they know they can't meet the Dodgers on equal ground.

 

but what if they win and you miss that?

you could handle it in the regular season, but you should've let the regular season prepare you for this post season because this team is just up and down. they're very strong in certain areas and very weak in others..they're just gonna be up and down. they seemingly have to learn their lessons as they go. hang in there. i do believe they'll fight and rally around Kershaw. we've seen leadership from AGon, Kemp and Ellis recently.

 

^This is a DVR situation tonight.
Just from a personal standpoint and certain things going on in my life I have to learn to not let the postseason take such priority over everything. Less to do about lack of faith in the team and more to do with other stuff.

 

Yes I do, mistake on his part. He kept throwing fastball after fastball in very hittable places and they kept hitting it.

 

oh ok. understandable. i'm exercising caution because i have seen pressure work against teams, but this team rallies around Puig regularly..i have to think the Dodgers will be buzzin for Kershaw as well. the fact that he's down on himself right now might even add a little extra fuel for them. i mean they roared back last night and fell just short.

 

no, i was talkin about you pretty much saying that knowledge given beforehand would make no difference in his case.

 

It would make a difference, yeah, and Kershaw might have been tipping his pitches unknowingly, but all he was doing was throwing fastballs, it is what he does a lot of the time on the first pitch and they were jumping all over it. His inability to change it up caused him to give up more hits than he should have because he became too dependent on one pitch.

 

BZ said something in jest that God hates the Dodgers. Though I don't believe this to be true, and it's silly to personalize a game...I'm actually sacrificing this game as an offering to the big guy.

Go LADs!

 

Haha yeah man! What a small world. Out of all the sad dodger fans I pick up you guys lol . It immediately made my night more enjoyable.

Definitely still have a shot. Reminder the Giants came back from 0-2 and 1-3 in the DS and CS in 2012. Fuck them, we're better than them.

 

What do aces do? They step up in the postseason. Lee, Sabathia, Halladay, Lincecum, Cain, Verlander. They pull their dicks out put it on the fucking table and beat the other team. If Kershaw gets another chance (he will because, baseball) he needs to come through. If he doesn't, and something like this happens again... absolutely no confidence in him in the postseason again. How can you be that good and just flop? Inconceivable. From the fucking MVP. so disappointed. Step the fuck up

 

Have an on call shift at work and it's looking like the will call me in from 5-11 and if not I'll be with family. Keep hitting boys.

 

i expected Kersh to mix it up, you expected Kersh to mix it up, we all expected Kersh to mix it up..and i'm quite sure the Cards would've been expecting Kersh to mix it up too had he not been tipping pitches/or having his signs picked off.

and still, he changed levels with the fastball..went high, went low, went in, went out..but it's still just 95MPH and not 98MPH. there's a big difference between the two and when you're talking about a count being worked..gotta get one in the strike zone at some point.