=====Game 2 Review=====
Waiting for the hopeful conclusion of the NLDS Reds-Giants series tonight, there’s a number of noteworthy articles around the interwebs on Bronson Arroyo’s masterful performance on Sunday:
— Fangraphs says that the Giants got Arroyo’d. The article provides several still images showing his varying arm angles and a pitch speed table showing that Arroyo hit every speed on the gun from 69 to 90 at least once.
— ESPN Stats and Info focused on Arroyo’s pitch location. Arroyo threw 62.6% of his pitches on the outer third of the plate or away. Giants hitters were 0-for-15 in at-bats ending with a pitch in that location.
— ESPN’s SweetSpot compared Arroyo’s approach and results to left-handed batters in 2012 to 2011.
=====Game 3 Preview=====
Of course, there’s the game tonight, too! There’s the daily statistical game preview from baseball-reference and a traditional narrative preview from ESPN.
“I had this one kid give me a sweatshirt that said, `The Year of the 12,” said manager Dusty Baker, who wears the uniform number. “He gave it to me in spring training. I believe in that. I’m only going to see one `12 while I’m living. It’s a special year. I just feel that it’s our year.”
=====Homer Bailey=====
Over his last 7 starts, Homer Bailey has a 1.85 ERA with a 0.74 WHIP, .463 opponent OPS, 1.7 BB/9, 8.9 K/9, & 0.7 HR/9. This includes 3 starts at GABP. Bailey faced the Giants once this year, back on April 26th in GABP against tonight’s starter, Ryan Vogelsong. Bailey was in line for the win after tossing 6.1 IP and allowing 3 runs (2 earned) on 7 hits and 2 walks, while striking out 6. He threw just 86 pitches, 59 for strikes. It was Sean Marshall’s first blown save of the season, back when he was still the closer, as he allowed a 3-run homerun in the 9th inning to Angel Pagan.
=====Reds Media Day=====
There are a handful of videos from the Reds media day yesterday at GABP. Stay hungry my friends:
[mlbvideo id=”25363867″ width=”400″ height=”224″ /]
I’m surprised the writers here didn’t come up with the term “Arroyo’d” by now.
I feel pretty good about the game tonight. I know this year that Bronson has been better at home than away and the opposite for Homer, but statistically it should be the opposite since Bronson is a fly-ball pitcher and Homer is a ground-ball pitcher and Bronson already did his part to buck this year’s trend.
I think when Homer gets in trouble at home he simply makes a single mistake and then is harder on himself since he’s in front of the home crowd so things just escalate. Although I think he has matured quite a bit over the season so I think we’ll see less of that the more he pitches. Hopefully we won’t have to even worry about that tonight as the entire team seems to be locked in.
“It was Sean Marshall’s first blown save of the season, back when he was still the closer, as he allowed a 3-run homerun in the 9th inning to Angel Pagan.”
I was at that game and I’ll be at tonight’s. Please don’t let it happen again.
Who is “upset”? Sounds like hyperbole to me.
At least for this season, moving Chapman to the closer role was a great move. I think Marshall was doing fine, but if Chapman wasn’t going to start this year, he may as well be the closer. That being said, let’s sweep the Giants tonight!
5:37 cannot get here soon enough!!!
I think the thing to keep in mind is that the decisions that were made this year with regards to Chapman (and Marshall, to a much lesser extent) will have repercussions next year. If this season ends in a WS title, we’ll all be craaazy happy with the results – heck, at this point I’ll be craaazy happy regardless. It’s been a great Summer!
But things don’t happen in a 2012 vacuum.
Cueto with a mild oblique strain. Not good.
I’m guessing we would not see him until the World Series.
The question is, can they get to the World Series without him?