Atlanta Braves: the Game 4 pitching dilemma (for Sun morning)
Having a short playoff series raises tough questions about match-ups, saving players, and more. At the forefront, though, it’s mostly about the Atlanta Braves’ pitching.
The “easy” decision for the Atlanta Braves is about Sunday. Mike Soroka gets the ball to start this game in the den of the Cardinals – Busch Stadium, St. Louis.
It’s after that where things get complicated quickly, and there’s no good way to script it at this point.
At 1 game apiece, this National League Divisional Series is effectively down to a 2-out-of-3 affair now. As such, it’s pretty redundant to say that Sunday or Monday or Wednesday is a ‘critical’ game… they all are now for both teams.
The Braves managed to survive the disaster scenario where they could have been behind 0-2 coming into today’s game, but that Friday night game merely got the Cardinals’ attention.
They are also keenly aware of what they have to do and who they are facing in Game 3 – just like the Braves were doing their own personal reflection about Friday with Jack Flaherty on the mound.
This Sunday affair will be the last game with a ‘pre-determined’ starter for the Atlanta Braves. They came in to this series knowing that they’d go with Dallas Keuchel, Mike Foltynewicz, and Mike Soroka in some order – Soroka is the last of these.
After that… it gets complicated, but it also opens up an interesting philosophical discussion:
Based on the Game 3 outcome, Teheran or Keuchel on short rest are the most likely Game 4 options. When asked about the possibility of going with Tomlin, Snit said there is a chance it could be a bullpen game.
— Mark Bowman (@mlbbowman) October 5, 2019
The Choices
Dallas Keuchel pitched on Thursday the 3rd.
- He threw 4.2 innings
- He threw 74 pitches
- He was charged with a single run
- 5 hits, 3 walks
He has not been that good at Busch Stadium, giving up an opponents’ OPS of .863 in … well, okay, it was 1 start and 19 batters.
A better indicator? Rest days. In general, the less rest he gets, the better he pitches:
- With a standard 4 days of rest, (96 games): 3.45 ERA
- With 5+ days of rest (105 games): over 3.75 – a bit worse.
- He once threw 6 innings after 2 days of rest and gave up 2 runs that day.
- This would be a 3 days’ rest situation – he doesn’t have any history for that.
We’ll check on Julio Teheran on the next page…